Case studies · Virtualisation & HCI
Fashion & Lifestyle
Sangfor HCI cluster with quorum appliance
entire backup estate replatformed
Every layer of this environment was due for replacement at once: physical hosts years into their service life carrying the business's virtual machines, an end-of-cycle firewall whose rule set nobody wanted to lose, an endpoint backup product past its relevance, and — underneath all of it — the one service no refresh can afford to break: Active Directory. Rebuilding compute, network, security and backup as a single project means sequencing them so the directory stays authoritative throughout: new domain controllers had to be promoted, FSMO roles moved, and the old controller decommissioned while the business kept logging in, printing, and reading its file shares.
The compute layer became a two-node Sangfor HCI cluster — a pair of Xeon-class aServer nodes with SSD-cached hybrid storage, licensed for server, network and storage virtualisation — with a witness appliance holding quorum so two nodes can still deliver failover honesty. Existing hosts were taken through firmware current before the cluster came up, and failover was tested across every server before anything was scheduled to move.
The workloads moved in behind it: existing VMs migrated onto the cluster — backup-and-restore where no shared storage existed, live storage migration where it did — with guest tooling reinstalled and downtime requested per system, not assumed.
The directory and the file server were rebuilt underneath a live business: new Windows Server 2022 domain controllers schema-updated and promoted into the existing forest, FSMO roles transferred, DNS cut over, the legacy controller decommissioned and the domain raised to native mode; the file server re-platformed with shares and permissions recreated, mapped by group policy so users' drive letters landed on the new server without a helpdesk call, and storage quotas applied at the same time.
At the edge, a Sangfor next-generation firewall with the full premium security bundle replaced the expiring box — with the existing rule set migrated across rather than rewritten blind, DMZ and VLAN routing rebuilt, SSL VPN for remote users and site-to-site VPN re-established, and configuration backup built into the design. On the floor, Huawei CloudEngine switching — L3 stackable PoE at the core, L2 access below — and centrally managed AirEngine Wi-Fi 6 access points were assessed, installed, cabled, and commissioned as one wireless-and-wired handover.
Backup moved platform: a Lenovo ThinkSystem backup server on 24x7 four-hour response support, with a 10-gigabit-attached Synology NAS as target, running Veeam Backup & Replication. Every Backup Exec agent came off, Veeam agents went onto the physical servers, and a daily schedule was set for all servers and VMs — one product watching the whole environment again.
The revamp landed complete: the VMware estate runs on the two-node Sangfor HCI cluster behind tested failover, the business logs in to a rebuilt Windows Server 2022 directory with its file shares re-platformed and quota-managed, the edge is a Sangfor NGFW carrying its migrated rule set, and Backup Exec is gone — every server and VM under a single daily Veeam schedule on new Lenovo and Synology hardware. One engagement, one coherent platform, from compute to backup.
Whether it’s a critical server issue or a long-term digital transformation project, our team is ready to assist. Reach out and experience ITR’s expert support that actually works.
