The Solution

Due to the limitations of Small Business Server, it was necessary to split the roles of User Authentication, Email Server, File & Print services, as well as their LoB SAP application across a virtualised and cloud hosted platform to ensure continuity of the existing setup during the developments – as well as ensure that Siebert Telecom Solutions had a flexible platform should there be any requirements for future expansion and development.

Once Siebert’s Email was migrated across to Microsoft Hosted Exchange and the Small Business Server roles were repurposed to a more flexible virtualised platform using Microsoft Hyper-V, a development environment was virtualised for the SAP development team to implement and test the new system without impacting the day to day operation.

The flexibility of using Hyper-V and VLANs allowed us to isolate a testing environment on its own network, whilst being hosted on the same physical equipment as Siebert’s live network. This would ensure secure development of the SAP system in a protected environment and a seamless integration with the production environment once development and testing was completed.

The virtualisation of the setup also allowed the offline preparation of the new Domain Controller to take place, minimising any downtime when this was brought into production and the Small Business Server was decommissioned.