Case Study: Origin Energy
Cloud VM Infrastructure and Cloud Storage
CASE STUDY OVERVIEW
Origin Energy were preparing for the listing for sale of the entity, Lattice Energy, to the open market. They required high-performance low-latency Cloud VM infrastructure and Cloud Storage to support their critical and performance demanding Geosciences applications and data sets.
- The first requirement was to rehost the Geosciences platforms, so that Lattice Energy could run the system in an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Storage as a Service (STaaS) environment.
- Then to provide high speed, low latency connectivity with redundancy, between the Digital Sense Kenmore Data Centre and Lattice offices in Milton, Qld.
- Leverage advanced VMware NSX routing and firewall capabilities within the Digital Sense Public Cloud to meet complex networking and strict security requirements.
- Provide professional ongoing support services to Lattice Energy.
KEY PROJECT CHALLENGES
Origin Energy faced many challenges that were addressed as key outcomes:
- Origin Energy were unfamiliar with a Hybrid Cloud environment and the extra layer of complexity introduced by this integration of physical and virtual environment was a new challenge to the IT team.
- The detailed routing and security firewalls required to connect and isolate multiple disparate networks, including several private cloud connections.
- An IaaS environment hadn’t been in operation at Origin before, and this was the first move into Cloud for these challenging workloads.
- A parallel connection to AWS was needed for the backup and disaster recovery.
- Multiple suppliers were involved, and Digital Sense had to liaise with Telstra to ensure an integrated network connection.
- Finding a partner who could help in the testing, design, configuration phases and who could provide ongoing support services to Lattice Energy.
PROJECT OUTCOMES
Digital Sense demonstrated the superior networking knowledge needed to ensure that the various components of the overall system were communicating seamlessly, and that data was flowing efficiently across different platforms and locations.
“5 years ago I wouldn’t have considered having 40 staff access 50 terabytes in a datacentre that was 15 kms away….but Digital Sense gave us the confidence to step into this new IaaS world”.
– Randall Taylor, Chief Geophysicist for Lattice Energy.
Key project outcomes
- Timely transition of the Geosciences capability to a virtual environment for the sale of the Lattice entity.
- All systems and data operating efficiently off-site.
- Maintained a productive workforce in Milton – the change was almost transparent.
- A cost-effective and flexible native NAS and VM data storage solution.
- Large reduction in the need to manage physical hardware.
- More control over the backup solution which was managed by a previous supplier – now provided through Digital Sense across the AWS gateway.
- Provision of Virtual Machine support services including Patching, Operating System Monitoring and Anti-Virus.
