A wholesale distributor upgrades IT infrastructure and migrates to the cloud

Upgrading the in-house server

To create a more efficient environment for supporting the client’s day-to-day business productivity tools, a new virtual machine would need to be created. This new setup would assume the primary roles of the existing web server while also hosting the client’s website.

Moving communications to the Cloud

Shifting their email system to Office 365 would enable the customer to leverage the large scale and highly redundant infrastructure of Microsoft without the need for a hefty local MS Exchange deployment. This would also reduce the dependence on the in-house servers for employees that need email access while working outside the office.

We started the project by installing and configuring the new physical host.

Next we had to update the compatibility for remaining on-premises infrastructure to the new 2012 servers.

Once the infrastructure was in place, we reviewed the customer matrix to ensure users were provided with the appropriate Office 365 license (e.g. Business Essentials, email vs. kiosk).

We began the email migration to Office 365 using relevant migration tools to set up appropriate DNS records and cut over inbound mail flow to new accounts.

Once the migration was complete, we properly deprecated MS Exchange from the Active Directory (AD), removed AD domain roles, and removed the server from AD.