CHPK builds its dream hybrid cloud solution with Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server

High performance, reduced latency, and low costs: The building blocks for success

Although some might not consider property and construction to be a technology-reliant industry, CHPK is striving to change and lead the market with its digitally driven business model. From day one, Microsoft has been a core component of its day-to-day workflow and the shared IT environment among its employees and clients. “Whether our staff is using Outlook for email or accessing security features through its products and services, Microsoft provides great continuity across our business,” says Gavin Lacey, Group Chief Operating Officer at CHPK Property and Construction. “It’s also the common IT language we communicate in with lots of different client companies.”

Recently committing to an ambitious five-year growth plan, the company sought to reposition all of its on-premises technology, including the resources running its vital enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, to reduce application latency and improve performance while minimizing monthly costs. “We want to double our size over the next five years, and all the technology we put in place is there to facilitate that,” says Lacey.

With its faith in Microsoft offerings, CHPK identified Azure as the most future-proof platform to support and sustain its rapid business development. The company worked with IT solution provider Acuutech, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to configure a single-node Azure Stack HCI deployment, which marked its introduction to the cloud at an optimal price point. “The one thing we want from our IT system is for it to work behind the scenes without much effort,” says Lacey. “The more time we spend worrying about IT, the less time we spend servicing our clients. This is all about seamlessness, and Azure provides that for us.”

Establishing itself in the cloud with Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server

The nature of CHPK’s business creates high demands for computing capacity and data storage. At any time, the company’s different teams might be performing fluid dynamics calculations, AutoCAD work, building information modeling, or other computationally intensive workloads. As Lacey notes, “If clients ring up and our IT systems aren’t working, we simply can’t provide them with the level of service that we pride ourselves on.”

To ensure that its staff has capacity to focus on business-critical service delivery, CHPK turned to Acuutech’s software-defined approach to datacenter design. Acuutech’s initial strategy for CHPK was built on managed service solutions and shared storage servers. “Acuutech has always hosted our project information management software on servers in its datacenters and offered paid storage space,” says Lacey. “We also had a mix of on-premises drivers and servers for high-space requirements, including the big drawing packs, sizable architectural renders, and photographs that come with working in property and construction.”

With CHPK’s high-volume workloads taking up an ever-increasing amount of space in the shared environment, Acuutech considered moving the company’s resources to the public cloud or storing them in its own datacenter. “Looking at a single server deployment, it became clear that we could provide a service on-premises at a substantial cost savings to the customer compared with other offerings and still meet its required service-level agreements,” says Terry Storey, Chief Cloud Officer at Acuutech.

The result: a single-node cluster of Azure Stack HCI version 22H2 combined with Cloud Solution Provider–licensed Windows Server 2019, fully managed and hosted in Acuutech’s datacenter. Running Azure Stack HCI on a single server lends itself to lower costs and a small footprint with only the processor cores required to run switched on. It also sets up CHPK to run up to six virtual machines (VMs) at full capacity and align to specific workload and performance demands.

Fulfilling CHPK’s solution criteria, its new Azure stack is built on products that are tested, validated, supportable, and perhaps most important, simple to use. “Having something backed by Microsoft automatically gives IT pros and laypeople like me a high level of confidence in the solution,” says Lacey.

Tying in value-added services for workload monitoring, compliance checking, and disaster recovery

From Acuutech’s perspective, a straightforward VPN connection to managed services gives CHPK a seamless path to phase out its onsite infrastructure and go entirely offsite. “We’re enabling customers like CHPK to experience and obtain the value of the cloud by being in a very comfortable place running on-premises,” says Storey. Nothing visibly changes for the customer, but processes run faster and more flexibly, which has enabled CHPK and Acuutech to switch on complementary services to enhance the solution.

CHPK is using one such service, Azure Arc, as a single pane of glass for management, monitoring, and better visibility into its Azure Stack HCI deployment and resources in Azure. “For us, Azure Arc is a bidirectional bridge from on-premises to Azure, so we can have VMs on Azure Stack HCI on-premises within Acuutech’s datacenter as a managed service and project those VMs into Azure,” explains Storey. After the VMs are in Azure, Acuutech can gather and inventory them, provide security, and facilitate Azure license management, reporting, and other value-added monitoring and security services.

For security, CHPK benefits from a resilient, all-in service, including security protections from Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Microsoft Defender for Servers. It’s also using Azure Policy for audit and compliance checking and Azure Monitor for workload performance monitoring and alerting. “Connecting Azure Stack HCI through Azure Arc as a hybrid service with Azure enables us to facilitate the flexibility of adding capabilities as the business needs them,” says Storey.

Acuutech also supported CHPK by deploying Azure Site Recovery agents to the on-premises Azure Stack HCI to provide reliable disaster recovery with site failover to Azure as needed. “Using Azure Site Recovery with Azure Arc was very smooth, and regular test failovers worked exactly as expected within Azure,” says Stephen Payne, Head of Engineering at Acuutech.

The winning solution that “all businesses dream of”

CHPK found its winning solution with Azure and Acuutech, enjoying major upgrades with a relatively small financial investment. According to CHPK, although it’s a midsize business, it’s as empowered as any other company with access to powerful computing capabilities that are up to six times more performant than its original solution. “Tapping into Azure, we now have a very Rolls Royce kind of system for a similar cost to what we were paying for the average family car,” observes Lacey.

Working with Acuutech helped CHPK fulfill its IT goals with remarkable turnaround time, moving from initial discussions to having a comprehensive, collaborative solution in place in less than five months. “Azure Stack HCI is helping accelerate CHPK’s cloud adoption in a familiar, simpler way, giving it more control over cost while obtaining cloud benefits almost immediately,” says Storey.

CHPK appreciates that it can continue expanding its business and client base without disruption thanks to its simplified, streamlined, and end-to-end managed solution. “All of this—the performance and capabilities at the right cost—gives us confidence that our support infrastructure behind the scenes isn’t going to grind to a halt because we outgrew ourselves,” says Lacey. “Azure and Acuutech allow us to concentrate on our primary business and keep winning more work, which is what all businesses dream of.”

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