How Publix Employees Federal Credit Union strengthened its disaster recovery strategy with Azure Local

Publix Employees Federal Credit Union (PEFCU) has always been about empowering hardworking Publix associates with better financial options. Founded in 1957 to serve Publix Super Markets associates and their families, PEFCU has grown into a $1.54 billion member-owned credit union grounded in a culture of service, trust, and forward-thinking leadership. 

With a flat organizational structure and a deep commitment to empowering its team, PEFCU fosters an environment of collaboration and innovation. “Having the freedom to explore and implement change—that’s what makes working here special,” says Ali Molavi, Infrastructure Solutions Architect at PEFCU. That spirit of innovation was put to the test when increasingly erratic hurricane patterns threatened the data storage infrastructure of the Florida-based credit union. 

“We used to assume that having our two data centers on opposite sides of the state would provide enough protection from storms,” says Molavi. “But in the last three years, hurricanes have hit both sides at once. That changed everything. We needed a more resilient solution.” The very real threat of hurricane-related outages—and the aging, fragmented infrastructure that couldn’t adapt—forced PEFCU to rethink everything about its disaster recovery and hybrid architecture. Ensuring robust disaster recovery became not just a theoretical priority, but a very real imperative.

The case for change

The existing setup included servers in Lakeland and Jacksonville PEFCU’s infrastructure had been built around a fully virtualized VMware environment, supported by traditional SAN storage and branch-level servers. But this approach created increasing complexity, operational inefficiencies, and rising costs. “Everything was aging out,” says Molavi. “We were facing hardware replacements, licensing uncertainty, and the limitations of a system that just couldn’t scale or simplify.”

Adding to the pressure was a pending site relocation in Jacksonville. “We had no choice—we had to vacate the site,” Molavi recalls. “But rather than relocate the same stack, we took a step back and reimagined what our infrastructure could be.”

From dual sites to a unified hybrid cloud 

After evaluating multiple options—including refreshing the existing hypervisor hardware and exploring other popular solutions—PEFCU ultimately selected Azure Local and Azure Arc for its hybrid flexibility, simplified management, and seamless integration with Azure Public Cloud.

“We weren’t ready for a full cloud migration—some of our legacy apps and vendor tools required on-prem infrastructure,” explains Molavi. “But Azure Local let us bridge the gap with a hybrid solution that’s simple to manage, cost-effective, and future-proof.”

PEFCU consolidated its data storage footprint into a single location, HostDime, a Tier IV data center in Orlando, gaining a more resilient foundation for disaster recovery, with higher availability and uptime built into the facility’s design. Pairing this with a cloud-optimized strategy allowed the team to eliminate the need for a separate physical disaster recovery site, reducing costs while improving scalability and failover capabilities.

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) played a pivotal role. “Failover and failback with ASR were smoother than I’ve seen with any other platform,” says Molavi. “Testing and deploying our disaster recovery plan became faster, easier, and more affordable.” These changes weren’t just technical—they ensured continuity for members who rely on PEFCU’s services every day, especially in times of crisis.

Looking forward 

With core infrastructure consolidated and stabilized, PEFCU is turning its attention to the future. Molavi envisions migrating 20–25% of workloads to Azure Public Cloud in the near term, with a goal of reversing that ratio within five years. “We’d like to have 80% of our environment in the cloud eventually,” he says. “Azure Local has made that pathway possible.” 

And PEFCU is still in the early stages of its AI journey but is actively exploring potential applications, particularly around conversational AI and customer service. While any new technology must meet strict regulatory requirements, the organization is keeping a close eye on developments in the space.

Partnership with Lenovo

To successfully implement Azure Local, PEFCU partnered with Lenovo, whose close collaboration with Microsoft ensured seamless hardware integration. Lenovo's solution, ThinkAgile MX for Azure Local, provided enterprise-grade performance, reliability, and ease of management. “Lenovo was fully integrated with Azure Local, making daily management and updates significantly easier,” says Molavi.

PEFCU leveraged Lenovo’s hardware to consolidate the legacy servers into just four compact 1U nodes, greatly reducing physical space, power usage, and maintenance efforts. The nodes offered advanced All-Flash storage solutions, including NVMe technology, aligning perfectly with PEFCU's performance and scalability requirements.

Lenovo’s competitive pricing, coupled with certified, continually updated hardware, provided substantial cost efficiencies. “Purchasing Lenovo hardware was actually less expensive than maintaining our existing setup, simply because the hardware is more efficient,” Molavi notes.

The Lenovo-Microsoft partnership enabled PEFCU’s infrastructure transformation, streamlining operations and laying a robust foundation for the credit union’s long-term cloud strategy.

A seamless migration—even across the state

Azure Migrate played a central role in simplifying the process—enabling VM migrations with near-zero disruption, even across limited network bandwidth. The credit union migrated 120 virtual machines and 30TB of data from its two legacy data centers over a wide-area network, while retaining IP addresses and minimizing disruption. “We had limited bandwidth—just 500 Mbps—but we still kept downtime under 10 minutes per VM,” Molavi says. “Using Azure Migrate, we were able to move entire subnets in batches without anyone noticing. It was a seamless experience for our internal teams and our members.”

In tandem, PEFCU eliminated servers from its seven branches by migrating workloads to SaaS platforms like SharePoint and Azure Files and establishing a centralized cloud-based VM accessible via a secure SD-WAN network. “We built in redundancy using Azure’s Virtual WAN,” adds Molavi. “It’s fast, reliable, and dramatically simplified our branch architecture.”

Operational simplicity, centralized management

By moving to Azure, PEFCU not only reduced complexity—they unlocked new efficiency and agility. By replacing aging servers across two sites with a compact, hyperconverged infrastructure, PEFCU significantly reduced its maintenance burden. “Everything’s easier now,” says Molavi. “No more SANs, fewer physical servers, faster firmware updates—and it all runs through the Azure Portal.”

Centralized management has transformed day-to-day operations. “We can train new engineers in a matter of days instead of weeks,” he notes. “The unified dashboard means faster monitoring, troubleshooting, and provisioning. Our engineers can now focus on value-added work instead of constantly fighting fires.”

Immediate and long-term ROI

The investment paid off immediately—financially, operationally, and culturally.

Cost savings were immediate. Refreshing hardware instead of maintaining aging infrastructure cut long-term expenses, and eliminating legacy virtualization licensing saved over $35,000 annually. "Maintaining the old setup was twice as expensive as buying the new one," Molavi explains.

But some of the biggest returns came in reduced administrative overhead. “The time we save maintaining and patching this environment is enormous. It’s freed up engineering hours for other priorities. That’s harder to quantify, but it’s real,” he says.

Derrick Perry, Vice President of Information Technology at PEFCU, adds, “We’re not just modernizing, but we’re creating an environment that attracts the kind of IT talent we need.”

The road ahead

With a solid foundation in place, PEFCU is now looking ahead and focusing on scalability, flexibility, and deeper cloud integration. What was once a distant ambition is quickly becoming a practical reality, with the organization building toward a more agile, cloud-first future.

The team is also exploring the deployment of Azure-native tools such as Azure Update Manager and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, with an eye toward enhancing automation, patching, and security. AI is also on the horizon. “We’re still early in our AI journey,” says Perry. “But we’re exploring options—especially around conversational AI in our contact center.”

“This project has been a game-changer,” says Molavi. “And we couldn’t have done it without the support of our leadership. Having the freedom to innovate, explore, and implement change: that’s still what makes PEFCU special.” From reactive recovery to proactive innovation, PEFCU is building a future-ready infrastructure one strategic step at a time.

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