With CentOS7 on Azure approaching end of life, the cybersecurity company needed a simple Azure-compatible OS that could securely and reliably support its application control software.
With the critical support from Canonical, Airlock Digital migrated 600 virtual machines to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure in a matter of weeks.
Post-migration, operations performance increased by 30% to 40%, and cost savings have been up to 40%.
Australia-founded Airlock Digital provides a simple, proactive approach to application control for its customers worldwide, with its Deny by Default solution creating confidence that endpoints are always protected.
Co-founder Daniel Schell says it’s often described as making sure that only the people you invite are allowed at your wedding. Thanks to Deny by Default, “wedding crashers” like unknown applications, unwanted scripts, malware, and ransomware that aren’t on the allowlist will never make it in the door.
To support this critical work, Airlock Digital needs software and systems that are reliable and secure. For more than 10 years, the company has been running CentOS 7 on Azure, but that OS was nearing end of life. With existing deployments in more than 22 Azure regions around the world and a strong reliance on Azure Site Recovery, Airlock Digital needed an Azure-compatible replacement to seamlessly support its continued growth. With CentOS 7 reaching its end of life, Airlock faced a massive logistical challenge: modernizing its global fleet of virtual machines without disrupting security services customers rely on.
This migration would be no small feat, with more than 600 virtual machines and billions of events. Many of the vendors Airlock Digital spoke with couldn’t help at all or wanted Airlock Digital to build and maintain their own images. Then they spoke with Canonical, who provided an easy, Azure-compatible migration option: Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS on Azure, using Ubuntu Pro with 24/7 support and livepatch to help with security patching. Ubuntu Pro images are available globally, and Airlock could build on top of them dynamically. Ubuntu Pro on Azure provided the ideal balance of performance, support, and security, offering livepatch for in-place kernel updates and 24/7 support to meet Airlock’s enterprise-grade needs.
“It was about Canonical trying to understand what we’re trying to do and then offer advice on ways we could do that,” Schell said. “It was just simple.”
Because of its size and complexity, the migration required careful planning and execution. The team at Airlock Digital spent approximately two months getting ready, including evaluating its existing infrastructure, a hodgepodge of a dozen systems and machine sizes accrued over the years to support various customer needs. This migration was an opportunity to standardize, and Airlock chose D-series virtual machines for their processor speeds and balance between performance and cost.
Much of that two-month prep period was also spent writing automation scripts, which would shut down the old virtual machines, take snapshots, migrate data disks, and deploy the new virtual machines with Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS. This automated approach ensured that the migration was efficient and minimized the risk of errors. It also meant it took a mere six weeks to migrate all 600 machines—a feat that Schell says could have taken years if done manually. The Azure platform provided a consistent, programmable environment that allowed Airlock to fully automate every step of the 600-virtual machine migration.
“We want to make sure that we’re designing innovative solutions and solving real problems out there. We’ll be continuing to build within the Azure platform.”
Daniel Schell, Co-founder and Chief Research Officer, Airlock Digital
“My advice would be to take the time to think about how you could do things to simplify your deployments because it’s really helped us now,” Schell said. “It was a small commitment of our time to actually take a breath and plan how we wanted to be able to get those benefits, and that’s really paid off for us.”
That payoff is significant: Schell cites 30% to 40% improved performance and up to 40% in cost savings, largely because of the streamlining that came by standardizing virtual machines. He adds that the flexibility of Azure as a platform means there are indirect cost savings as well, because there is less time spent handling edge cases or jumping between machine sizes. With simpler infrastructure, he says it’s also been much easier to onboard new employees.
And while Schell says the company has not yet experienced an outage, Azure Site Recovery and Traffic Manager provide reassurance for Airlock Digital and its enterprise customers that a virtual machine could be spun up in another region in a matter of minutes if needed. Azure Backup is also doing regular backups for all of Airlock Digital’s customers. Combined with Azure Site Recovery, Traffic Manager, and Azure Backup, the new environment gives Airlock—and its enterprise clients—confidence that systems can recover in minutes, not hours.
In addition to its recent migration, Airlock Digital has a new multi-tenancy version of its platform on Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) that allows for automatic scaling and increased efficiency for smaller customers. For Schell, who recently shifted from being the CTO to a new role as Chief Research Officer, the most rewarding part of the job is knowing that Airlock Digital is helping customers succeed by preventing incidents or limiting their impact, and Azure’s reliability and security are a key part of that.
In his new role, Schell will be able to dig into the data and continue to find new ways to help customers, all supported by Azure.
“We want to make sure that we’re designing innovative solutions and solving real problems out there,” he said. “We’ll be continuing to build within the Azure platform.”
With a simplified infrastructure and more time to focus on innovation, Airlock can double down on what matters most: keeping customers secure.
Discover more about Airlock Digital on LinkedIn.
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