Shoalhaven City Council strengthens disaster recovery and security with Azure

Shoalhaven City Council is a large regional council overseeing 50 towns and villages on the South Coast of NSW. With a population of more than 108,500 people, Shoalhaven is known for its pristine beaches, striking coastal plains and surrounding mountains. In recent years, the Shoalhaven region has experienced numerous natural disasters, from bushfires to flooding and severe weather events. These experiences led the council to review its disaster recovery procedures and consider hosting options for its applications and corporate data.

The existing disaster recovery site was located just a few kilometres away from the main council chambers in a facility considered not fit for purpose. Aside from disaster recovery, the facility also housed several production workloads across a fleet of ageing servers, which were out of warranty and reaching their limits.

The Shoalhaven City Council already had most of its applications as SaaS-based services. However, critical applications were still housed onsite, including its document management system and a geographic information system (GIS) for spatial data. GIS data is also valuable during a natural disaster, adding to the need for a safer and more secure solution.

To meet these needs, Shoalhaven City Council turned to Logicalis Australia to outline a solution for Azure migration.

The Logicalis Australia team began with an initial consulting period to assess the environment and existing infrastructure properly. The in-depth analysis mapped out the possible approaches and allowed for a more complete costing of the recommended solution. The cost estimates considered several factors, including licencing, real estate, additional funding, and ongoing monthly costs based on current usage.

“Logicalis was able to bring their deep knowledge and experience in the space to present a well-packaged concept. They had a template and a solution design with aspects that had already been implemented elsewhere,” said Dane Hamilton, CIO at Shoalhaven City Council. “We were confident they could deliver the solution and that they didn’t miss any aspects in its design.”

Before moving to the cloud-ready framework recommended by Logicalis, the council first needed to upgrade its network and infrastructure. This involved improving internet connectivity and redesigning the network and firewalls for a hybrid cloud setup.

Working in an Azure environment was a new experience for the council’s IT team, and they upskilled quickly and received guidance from Logicalis on how to integrate their systems and networks into their Production Ready Cloud Platform landing zone.

Shoalhaven City Council moved more than 45 virtual machines to Azure during the migration, with staff giving positive feedback during the transition.

Recent feedback from council employees have reported applications perform better in the Azure environment and highlighted increases to speed, particularly with the records management system and SQL databases.

The project has delivered several key benefits, and by shifting its document management and GIS systems to Azure, Shoalhaven City Council has helped to ensure these systems are geographically separated, thereby reducing the risk of being impacted by a disaster.

Image: St Georges Basin in the Shoalhaven. Credit: iStock.com/lovleah