GTAC Data Centers in Need of Migration

The Geospatial Technology and Applications Center (GTAC) required support to coordinate the migration of their data center data, physical assets, applications and services to the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA). In parallel, they also looked to achieve moving GTAC facilities based on a hard move data prior to congruent GTAC local facility move in early January of 2019. This effort will also include copying “PBs” of mission critical data. The result was contracting Xentity to facilitate the successful GTAC data center and applications migration and associated activities. 

Major Modifications Needed in Order to Migrate

At the time, the USDA would require GTAC migrate applications to what had been a yet-to-be-identified AWS.gov cloud. Or, instead, another cloud environment destination. They would identify applications to migrate to this cloud destined environment. They also required major architecture modifications and scripting enhancements in order to run properly within this environment. To accomplish this, they required a partner to help facilitate the successful GTRAC data center and applications migration. Also, help with the migration of all hardware (e.g. data processing and storage servers).

Xentity helped migrate the GTAC data center’s applications and hardware. Furthermore, they migrated all geospatial applications to ensure their functionality at the National Information Technology Center. They identified necessary re-architecture (e.g. adjusting scripts due to changing technical environment or IT infrastructure and/or network changes such as IP addresses and/or optimize applications to work efficiently in the new environment). They analyzed the feasibility of moving some applications and associated data to a cloud environment. And even made suggestions as to which applications should migrate to partner agencies instead.

Organized and Accessible

The major outcome here is that their data center, applications and hardware underwent a successful migration to far more appropriate locations (be it a cloud-based application or more appropriate partner locations). And of course, the major benefit of migrating these applications and the data that reside on them, is that they are now accessible in locations that basically make a lot more sense, like moving your fine china into a dining room rather than a dusty old closet.