Vigilant.IT is a Microsoft infrastructure partner with gold certifications in Datacenter, Cloud Platform and Cloud Productivity, and silver certifications in Enterprise Mobility Management and Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions. With more than 15 years in the industry, the company provides managed services, professional services and hosting services to clients in finance, government, food and healthcare. Its clients are spread across Australia and New Zealand, and it migrates large clients into its Infinitis.IT data centre.

Vigilant.IT used a legacy dual 100Mb connection to Microsoft Azure to push backup virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud. The link was saturated by the volume of Azure Site Recovery workloads running across it. To keep business as usual and maintain high-performance services for its customers, the company needed considerably more capacity.

At the same time, Vigilant.IT was completing ongoing migration projects that moved large clients into its Infinitis.IT data centre. It needed an easy way to isolate that migration traffic from other traffic on its ExpressRoute link, and it needed a flexible solution in place quickly, without disrupting day-to-day operations, that would leave the network architecture future-proofed.

The conventional route, building out a new link with its ISP, would have been costly and would have taken an extended period to set up and provision. The company also needed connectivity that could be maximised for high-capacity 'lift and shift' scenarios and minimised for monthly data backups.

Vigilant.IT learned about Megaport through Microsoft in October 2015. Because Megaport was the only vendor able to facilitate a direct drop into an Interactive data centre, the team explored Megaport's software defined network (SDN) as a way to spin up fast, flexible connectivity to the cloud.

The company provisioned a 10G Azure ExpressRoute connection via Megaport's SDN to carry the overflow of Azure Site Recovery workloads and its migration projects. The connection was set up, provisioned and moving data to Azure within two weeks of the first conversation with the Megaport team, compared with the roughly two months a traditional ISP option would have taken.

Megaport's on-demand, scalable bandwidth lets Vigilant.IT dial the connection up and down to match capacity demands. When it onboards a new customer that needs a high-capacity 'lift and shift', the team increases bandwidth to speed the migration, then drops back to minimum capacity so monthly data backups run consistently through Azure Site Recovery. Under Megaport's consumption model the team can also close the circuit when it is not in use and avoid additional costs, right-sizing cloud connectivity to the business.

Looking ahead, Vigilant.IT plans to make greater use of the Megaport Marketplace, where clients that lift and shift into its Infinitis.IT data centre can connect directly and save on network bandwidth, and to use Megaport Cloud Router as a connectivity service for its clients' ExpressRoute peering across Australia and New Zealand.

• 10G ExpressRoute connection provisioned via Megaport's SDN to carry overflow Azure Site Recovery and migration traffic
• Data moving to Azure within two weeks of the first consultation, instead of the typical two months
• Bandwidth dialled up for high-capacity 'lift and shift' migrations and back down for monthly backups
• Circuit can be closed when not in use under Megaport's on-demand consumption model, avoiding extra cost
• Future-proofed architecture, with plans to use Megaport Marketplace and Megaport Cloud Router for client ExpressRoute peering