Today we finally finished a large migration project for a small company.  Migration is more than just an upgrade, it is a major shift to more efficient technology, faster resources, better security and ultimately cost savings.

Here is what this project entailed.

1. Migrate 4 mail servers to new hardware, CentOS 6 and faster resources.
Mail servers are very important to organizations so migrating 4 servers takes time as mail must always be available. Part of this project was to create a MX Backup so if local mail servers were down now mail would be lost as it is collected on a remote mail server sitting on a cloud.  Another aspect of this migration was to enhance the Spam checking with special configuration to Spamassassin and rules to help the organization lower Spam rates.

2. Migration of 2 DNS Server
DNS is where a lot of organizations really slack off.  We have seen repeated situations where organizations set up a DNS server and nothing is done to it in years and by that time no one remembers how to fix it or migrate it to a new location.  For this project we rebuilt two DNS servers at different locations across the country so that no matter what happened locally their DNS was functioning correctly.

3. Migration of 10 Web Servers
When we migrate web servers it is not only moving the domains and setting up SSL certificates for shopping carts but is also involves these key features for security:
* PSAD (Port Scan Attack Detector) – a program to stop attackers from scanning ports
* rkhunter – a rootkit hunter that searches for rootkits daily and sends an email to an administrator
* AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment) – checks for changes in the operating system
* ModSecurity – prevents zero day exploits, a must if you use PHP and MySQL environments

Security is extremely important these days and any migration needs to include an update of current technologies.

4. Updated Technology
One of the goals of this migration was to include daily images of all servers and weekly images of all servers.  This provides a way for organizations to save big when there are problems.  If a server has a security event or if an administrator makes a mistake, it can easily be fixed by pushing out an image in less than 5 minutes.  In the long run this allows organizations to limit their IT staff as they have something to fall back on.

5. Cost Savings
This entire project with faster hardware, better technology, updated systems, etc. actually was completed with the company savings of 40% each month!  That is the big deal about migration, it ultimately provides a better system at less cost.  We often find companies could make big savings if they ultilized some of the new technology that is available.

Migration, it should lead to more efficient technology, better security and ultimately greater savings for an organization.