GFS upgrades to Dynamics-Migrate from Dataverse to BlobStorage
Executive Summary
About Client
Newzealand’s most awarded mortgage & insurance advisor Global Finance caters to about 1,500+ customers for their mortgage or insurance needs every year so that they can meet their financial goals. Global Finance offers more preference & freedom, with loan approvals from numerous lenders if chosen by the customers. Dealing with a large number of clients & team members, Global Finance was facing issues managing their unstructured data. As Peritos had already been managing their Dynamics environment, we successfully guided and supported Global Finance’s move from saving data from Azure Dataverse to Azure blob Storage which saved them 1500$ a month.
https://www.globalfinance.co.nz/
Location:Auckland, Newzealand
Project Background
Global Finance has been offering smarter loans and insurance since 1999. Working as one of the best mortgage & insurance advisers in NZ, Global Finance helped clients to save on their loans, by avoiding unnecessary interest and getting mortgage-free faster. Since the beginning, they have helped some customers become mortgage-free in as little as 7 years rather than the standard 30-year term. Global Finance was already using Dyn365 and saving data from Azure Dataverse, now moving to Azure Blob Storage has optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data for them.
Scope & Requirement
In the 1st Phase of the Windows Virtual Server Setup, implementation was discussed as follows:
- Setting up for saving data from Azure Dataverse to Azure Blob Storage has sustained a lot of unstructured data for Global Finance
- Setting up the demands for storing and analyzing large volumes of unstructured data have increased over the past decade & Azure Blob Storage is one solution that fulfills the enterprise needs accurately.
Implementation
Technology and Architecture
Technology
The migration was deployed with the below technological component
• For Azure Dataverse-The underlying technology used was Azure SQL Database
• For Azure Blob Storage- It supported the most popular development frameworks including Java, .NET, Python & Node.js
Security & Compliance:
- Tagging Policies
- Azure config for compliance checks
- NIST compliance
- Guardrails
- Security Hub
Backup and Recovery
Azure Backup provided a simple, secure, cost-effective, and cloud-based backup solution to protect the business or application-critical data stored in Azure Blob in two ways- Continuous backups & Periodic backups
Network Architecture
- Site to Site VPN Architecture using Transit Gateway
- Distributed Azure Network Firewall
- Monitoring with Cloud Watch and VPC flow logs.
Cost Optimization
- Alerts and notifications are configured in the Azure cost
Code Management, Deployment
- Cloudformation scripts for creating stacksets and scripts for generating Azure services was handed over to the client
Challenges of Migrating from Azure Dataverse to Azure Blob Storage
- It was a bit of a challenge to ensure the new environment after migration meets all of the compliance criteria and still remain cost effective.
Project Completion
Duration
July 2022 ~ 1 week
Deliverables
- Dynamics License
- Power App License
- Power App per use License
- Power App per app license
Support for Dynamics Discounted Licensing
- For all Licenses we implement we provide monthly billing with 20 days credit Terms.
- We provide Value added services by sending reports to the client on the license usage and last activity date for each user to help them manage their license cost and to get visibility
Testimonial
- Azure Blob Storage has a lot of organizational features that has solved the storage problem of Global Finance at a lower cost. Despite being developed for unstructured data, containers permit businesses to construct their preferred categories by uploading specific blobs to specific containers.
- Shifting from Azure Dataverse to Azure Blob Storage has provided a free hand to Global Finance to access objects in Blob Storage via the Azure Storage REST API, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, or an Azure Storage client library.
Now Global Finance is securely connected to Blob Storage by using SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) & mount Blob Storage containers by using the Network File System 3.0 protocol. Peritos handled the Microsoft Dynamics 365 domain for Global Finance and provided discounted licensing, which proved very cost-effective.
building Manager
Global Finace services
Next Phase
We are also in discussion with other projects for the client
1. Dynamics CRM system Support
2. O365 License Management
