Migrating from CentOS 7 to Debian 12 using Devops first approach with future ready automation
Overview
Company: An automobile company
Industry: Automotive
Project: Migration from CentOS 7 to Debian 12
Duration: 3 months
Team:
- Solution Architect(1)
- DevOps Engineers(2)
- Database Administrators(1)
- Project Manager(1)
About Customer
An automobile company was having two plants in Pune, India with more than 400 physical and virtual servers in their datacenter. These servers used to provide both development and production workload. About 2000+ engineers were using these eveironment for their day tod day activities.
Challenges
a. The client was running its Development & Production infrastructure on CentOS 7 for over six years. The infrastructure includes web server (Apache), a database server (MySQL), a log server (for centralized logging), and monitoring solutions using Prometheus and Grafana. With CentOS 7 reaching the end of its life and the organization seeking to adopt a more stable and community-driven distribution, the decision was made to migrate to Debian 12.
b. The goal was not only to migrate the OS but also to modernize the deployment process by implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and Configuration Management using Ansible.
Solution
- Migrate from CentOS 7 to Debian 12:
• Replace existing CentOS 7 servers with Debian 12.
• Ensure minimal downtime during the migration.
2.Reconfigure Services:
• Migrate Apache, MySQL, Log Server, Prometheus, and Grafana configurations.
• Validate performance and stability on the new OS.
3.Infrastructure as Code (IaC):
• Implement Terraform for infrastructure provisioning.
• Use Ansible for configuration management and application deployment.
4.Monitoring and Logging:
• Installation of node_exporters as a part of IaC.
• Ensure Prometheus and Grafana are properly configured on Debian 12.
• Migrate log server configurations and data.
Key Business Highlights
- Successful Migration: The migration was completed successfully with less than 4 hours of downtime.
- Improved Performance: The infrastructure on Debian 12 showed a 20% improvement in response times and a 15% reduction in resource usage.
- Automated Deployment: Terraform and Ansible reduced the time required for provisioning and configuration by 60%.
- Enhanced Monitoring: Prometheus and Grafana provided better insights into system performance with enhanced dashboards and alerting mechanisms.
- Cost Savings: By moving to Debian 12, Client was benefited by using the latest community driven OS and tech stack with various tools coming as apart of Opensource community.