Cutting IT Costs by 38% with Cloud Migration

Before migrating to the cloud, the company faced several roadblocks that made managing their IT infrastructure increasingly unsustainable. Their on-premise setup, consisting of 20 file servers, was not only expensive but also required continuous maintenance and oversight. The key challenges included:

Maintaining on-premise servers came with hefty infrastructure expenses, including hardware upgrades, software licensing, power consumption, and cooling requirements. At $4,000 per month, the cost of compute, storage, and IT management was eating into their budget and limiting their ability to invest in strategic initiatives.

Managing multiple file servers meant dealing with frequent system updates, manual configurations, and time-consuming troubleshooting. The IT team found themselves caught up in reactive maintenance instead of focusing on strategic initiatives.

As data storage needs grew, the company faced a difficult choice—either invest in more physical servers (leading to even higher capital expenses) or try to optimize an already stretched infrastructure. Neither option was sustainable in the long run.

On-premise file storage required continuous monitoring to prevent data loss, downtime, and unauthorized access. Ensuring disaster recovery and compliance with industry regulations was becoming more challenging without a cloud-based strategy.

It was clear that the existing infrastructure was holding them back. To reduce costs, simplify operations, and future-proof their business, the company turned to a cloud migration strategy that would transform their IT environment.

To overcome these challenges, the company needed a cost-effective, scalable, and secure storage solution. After evaluating multiple options, they chose to migrate their 20 traditional file servers to NetApp Cloud Volumes, a cloud-native file storage solution designed for high availability and performance.

Rather than a disruptive, all-at-once migration, the company followed a phased approach completed over a 6-week period to ensure a smooth transition:

One of the key benefits of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP was its seamless integration with existing workflows. The solution maintained full compatibility with SMB/CIFS protocols, allowing Windows-based workstations to access cloud file shares using the same network drive mappings they had used with on-premise servers. Active Directory integration ensured that all existing user permissions and security groups remained intact throughout the migration.

The implementation leveraged Google Cloud's private networking with Cloud Interconnect to provide low-latency access to file shares, ensuring that users experienced performance comparable to—or better than—their previous on-premise setup. Data deduplication and compression features built into NetApp Cloud Volumes reduced storage requirements by an additional 30%, further amplifying cost savings.

The company leveraged cloud auto-scaling features and intelligent storage tiering to optimize both performance and costs. By implementing NetApp's Cloud Tiering service, infrequently accessed data was automatically moved to lower-cost object storage (Google Cloud Storage), while actively used files remained on high-performance SSD storage.

Performance monitoring and optimization included:

By migrating to cloud-native storage, the company successfully streamlined file storage, reduced IT complexity, and positioned itself for long-term scalability—all while cutting costs. The implementation was completed in just 6 weeks, with measurable results appearing immediately.

Assessment & Planning (Week 1-2) – Analyzed current storage usage, mapped dependencies, and identified high-priority data.

Pilot Migration (Week 3-4) – Tested cloud storage with non-critical data to fine-tune performance and validate the approach.

Full Migration & Optimization (Week 5-6) – Gradually moved all file shares while optimizing costs and performance settings.

Quality of Service (QoS) policies to guarantee performance for critical applications

Storage efficiency features including inline deduplication and compression

Snapshot-based backups with configurable retention policies, eliminating the need for separate backup infrastructure

Cross-region replication for disaster recovery, with RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of 15 minutes