A Hyperconverged Infrastructure Migration Case Study

Why Staying on VMware Was No Longer an Option

Allied Services was running an eight-node hyperconverged environment, five SimpliVity large nodes and three compute resource nodes, supporting approximately 250 virtual machines across roughly 60 terabytes of storage. The platform had served them well, but two converging pressures made the status quo unsustainable.

The first was cost. VMware subscription pricing was set to increase by 3x at renewal, a budget impact that was difficult to absorb and harder to justify when alternatives existed.

The second was platform uncertainty. HPE, the manufacturer behind SimpliVity, had not committed to a clear development roadmap for the product. For an organization planning around long-term infrastructure stability, that ambiguity represented real risk.

Allied Services also recognized a longer-term limitation in the existing architecture: scaling required adding entire nodes even when only additional storage was needed, making growth both expensive and inflexible.

What Made This More Than a Rip-and-Replace

Before a solution was ever proposed, Derive Technologies had already spent years building the relationship that made this project possible.

That context shaped how Derive approached the project. Rather than defaulting to the most obvious path, Derive analyzed the full picture: current infrastructure, workload demands, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Alternatives like refreshing the existing SimpliVity platform or moving workloads to Azure were considered and weighed against a hyperconverged-to-hyperconverged migration. Nutanix emerged as the right fit based on its VMware-comparable feature set, its broader ecosystem of included capabilities, and its ability to address Allied Services' scalability constraints.

How the Migration Was Executed

The project followed a structured sequence: discovery and assessment, planning and design, implementation, pilot migration, standby support, and formal project closure.

Derive worked remotely alongside Allied Services' onsite team throughout, keeping the engagement collaborative rather than prescriptive. Rather than executing the full migration end-to-end, Derive conducted a pilot migration and then trained Allied Services' team to complete the remaining workloads, giving the client both a working environment and the in-house capability to manage it.

Post-migration standby support remained in place until the project was formally closed, ensuring Allied Services had backup coverage throughout the transition period.

Timeline:

• Deployment: 2 weeks

• Migration: 6 weeks

• Project closed on deadline

What Changed After Go-Live

Allied Services decommissioned their HPE SimpliVity environment and moved fully onto Nutanix AHV, eliminating VMware dependency and the licensing cost structure that came with it.

The Nutanix platform delivered feature parity with VMware from an operating system support and functionality standpoint, while including ecosystem capabilities that would have required paid add-ons under the previous environment. The node-based architecture also removed the scaling constraints that had made infrastructure growth more cumbersome.

Looking ahead, Derive and Allied Services have identified the next phase of the engagement: introducing a formal business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. The current environment uses offsite backup copies; the roadmap calls for a more comprehensive DR solution that reflects the organization's evolving needs.

Why Allied Services Chose Derive

The relationship that led to this project wasn't built on a single proposal. It was built over years of consistent engagement: regular communication, proactive education, and a track record of following through on commitments.

When Allied Services needed a partner to lead a high-stakes infrastructure migration, Derive was the obvious choice, because the decision didn't feel like a risk.

Helping Organizations Modernize Infrastructure with Confidence

Derive Technologies works with organizations navigating infrastructure modernization, vendor consolidation, and long-term technology planning. As an MBE-certified IT solutions provider with deep experience in hyperconverged infrastructure, Derive brings both the technical expertise and the strategic perspective that complex migrations require.