Within a few weeks, the telecommunications provider modernized its IT infrastructure for sensitive compliance applications and now operates them reliably and securely on the Nutanix Cloud Platform.
Telecommunications companies have applications that, for regulatory reasons, must be highly available. At Telefónica Deutschland, the Special Services department is responsible for providing these applications. When the contract with the previous infrastructure provider expired, the IT team decided to make a fresh start with Nutanix. With the support of IT partner SVA, Telefónica Deutschland migrated more than 100 virtual machines and numerous terabytes of data to a highly available Nutanix Cloud Platform across two data centers. The new environment offers the company high resilience for critical applications while simultaneously enabling cost-efficient and largely automated operations.
Seamless migration during ongoing operations
Telefónica Deutschland migrated the existing systems securely and with only a few minutes of downtime to the on-premise Nutanix Cloud Platform. Critical processes were thus able to continue running with minimal interruption.
High cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency
By replacing the previous virtualization platform, Telefónica Deutschland is reducing dependencies and creating a predictable cost basis. The Nutanix platform also simplifies operations through automated workflows.
One platform for all workloads
Virtual machines, containers, and AI applications can be operated on a common infrastructure in the future. New requirements can thus be implemented flexibly and without architectural changes.
At the beginning, I wasn't sure if we could really carry out such a comprehensive change to our infrastructure without disruption. But the result ultimately exceeded our expectations. The complete migration from the previous provider to Nutanix was completed within three weeks.
Telefónica Deutschland is a leading full-service provider of telecommunications services for private and business customers. In addition to traditional telephony and internet services, the portfolio of the core o2 brand and its various secondary and partner brands also includes innovative digital services in the areas of the Internet of Things and data analysis. In mobile communications, Telefónica Deutschland serves around 35 million mobile subscriptions and reaches more than 99 percent of the population in Germany with its high-performance mobile network. The company is majority-owned by the Spanish telecommunications group Telefónica S.A., based in Madrid, one of the largest telecommunications groups in the world.
Within the company, the Special Services department operates a number of IT systems that support regulatory processes. These systems process large amounts of data and provide applications that are operated under strict legal and organizational frameworks. "We operate in an environment where stability and reliability are the highest priority," explains Christian Wünsche, Head of Legal Digital Solutions at Telefónica Deutschland. "Our systems must be available at all times while simultaneously meeting the highest requirements for compliance and data security."
Telefónica Deutschland decided to re-evaluate the existing infrastructure and assess alternatives. The goal was to find a long-term strategic partner for the operation of these business-critical systems.
One of the biggest challenges was not only selecting the right technology but above all the migration itself. All systems had to be transferred to the new infrastructure with as little interruption to ongoing operations as possible. "We couldn't afford virtually any downtime during this migration," emphasizes Robert Tausend, Analyst Technology & Data Disclosure at Telefónica Deutschland. "The central question was therefore: How do we get our entire environment onto a new platform while our systems continue running and all regulatory requirements continue to be met?"
The requirements for the new infrastructure for the Legal Tech area at Telefónica Deutschland were clearly defined. The platform had to support a highly available architecture across two data centers, process data-intensive workloads reliably, and at the same time require as little administrative effort as possible.
"We quickly saw that there were only a few providers on the market that were suitable for us," explains Robert Tausend. "Nutanix was ultimately able to convince us on all points. With the Nutanix Cloud Platform, all our workloads can be reliably provided via a highly available cluster architecture. At the same time, the seamless integration of all components and end-to-end automation minimizes operational overhead for us."
In addition to the technical requirements, the economic perspective also played an important role. “The Nutanix Cloud Platform with the integrated AHV hypervisor offers us a compelling all-in-one solution for operating our critical business applications," says Christian Wünsche. "The expenses are transparent and predictable and are lower than the costs that would have been incurred for extending the previous infrastructure platform.”
Telefónica Deutschland was supported in the planning and implementation of the migration by the IT service provider SVA, a Nutanix Premier Reseller. Among other things, the company's experts analyzed the existing IT infrastructure and used the Nutanix Collector tool to capture the configuration and performance data of the VxRail environment. On this basis, the capacity of the Nutanix Cloud Platform was then planned with the help of the Nutanix Sizer tool.
Only a relatively small time window was available for the implementation of the entire project. SVA therefore began setting up the Nutanix platform in Telefónica Deutschland's data centers and preparing for the migration immediately after the hardware was delivered. Overall, the new cluster infrastructure comprises 23 nodes running extensive databases as well as demanding Linux and Unix systems. All data is mirrored synchronously between the two locations. This helps ensure that business-critical services remain accessible even in the event of a data center's complete failure.
Migration within a few days
The actual migration of the environment went as smoothly as the stakeholders at Telefónica Deutschland had hoped. With the migration tool Nutanix Move, the virtual machines were replicated into the new environment while the existing systems continued to run initially. This allowed the project partners to prepare the transition from the VxRail infrastructure to the Nutanix platform without disrupting ongoing operations.
In less than two days, Telefónica Deutschland migrated more than 100 virtual machines and numerous terabytes of data to the new platform. During the final switchover, the actual downtime in this environment was only about eight minutes. “We shut down the systems, synchronized the last of the data, and restarted the systems in the new environment. After eight minutes, all applications were available again,” reports Robert Tausend. “For an environment of this scale, that was truly impressive.”
Economical operation and minimal operational effort
With the Nutanix Cloud Platform, Telefónica Deutschland benefits from a turnkey and cost-efficient infrastructure for the Legal Tech area. The platform combines all the required compute, storage, networking, and management functions in a single integrated solution and includes the AHV hypervisor for running virtual machines. The company thus reduces its dependence on an external virtualization provider and no longer needs to budget for additional virtualization licenses.
In addition, the operational effort required to run the Nutanix clusters is very low. “We quickly became familiar with the Nutanix Prism management interface and can now control all important tasks through it—from monitoring individual components to provisioning new VMs. Thanks to the high degree of automation and features like one-click upgrades, we only have to invest a minimal amount of time in managing them,” says Robert Tausend.
The IT team at Telefónica Deutschland is also very satisfied with Nutanix support. Support requests are handled quickly and with a solution-oriented approach—working closely together over remote sessions whenever needed. “Nutanix support has genuinely exceeded our expectations,” emphasizes Robert Tausend. “The specialists actively help with troubleshooting and guide us step-by-step through the analysis. This significantly reduces our day-to-day workload.”
Future-proof platform for growing requirements
With the Nutanix Cloud Platform, Telefónica Deutschland has an infrastructure that not only reliably covers current needs but can also keep pace with growing business requirements in the long term. The Nutanix platform can be easily expanded with additional nodes whenever needed, allowing both compute capacity and storage to scale flexibly—a need that the Telefónica Deutschland team expects to arise in the near future.
“It was important to us to have an infrastructure that not only works today but can also cover future requirements,” says Christian Wünsche. “With the Nutanix Cloud Platform, we are really well positioned for the coming years.”
Looking to the future
Telefónica Deutschland is currently examining how the Nutanix platform can be used more broadly in the future. The focus here is primarily on cloud-native approaches and the integration of new application types into the existing infrastructure.
In this context, the IT team is evaluating the use of the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) for container-based workloads.
Furthermore, Telefónica Deutschland is looking at further infrastructure modernization and the operation of AI workloads with data sovereignty in mind. Together with its partner SVA, the company is continuously exploring additional options and solutions to strategically expand the platform and position it for the future.
SVA is one of Germany's leading IT service providers and employs more than 3,800 people at 28 locations. SVA's corporate goal is to combine high-quality IT products from leading manufacturers with SVA's project expertise, service portfolio, and flexibility in order to develop optimal solutions for customers. In addition, SVA offers a range of its own software products that significantly expand the possibilities for designing tailored solutions.
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