Revolutionizing EvoEnergy's Digital Landscape: Seamless Transition to Sitecore on Azure
Aceik empowered EvoEnergy with an optimised Sitecore environment on Azure, ensuring top-notch performance, stability, and efficiency.
The brief
Evoenergy, a partner of the ActewAGL distribution network, engaged Aceik, one of Australia’s leading Digital Experience Platform agencies, for expert assistance with Sitecore. Evoenergy sought support in finalizing the configuration and implementation of their new Sitecore 10.2 Build and Production environment, hosted on Azure.
This transition to an Azure-hosted Sitecore environment marked a significant departure from Evoenergy’s previous on-premises solution. Evoenergy needed additional Sitecore expertise and capacity to complete the Production environment configuration by the targeted go-live date. As a result, they turned to external support from Aceik to ensure a seamless, top-quality transition.
Sector
- Utilities; Energy
SERVICES
- Strategy
- BED
- DevOps
- Delivery & Support
TECH STACK
- Sitecore 10.2
- XM
- Managed Cloud
- Azure
The project aimed to:
- Identify and rectify any significant areas for improvement in Evoenergy's new Sitecore build and Production environment before launch.
- Define and configure DevOps pipelines and processes for Evoenergy, aligning with anticipated release scenarios. This included designing streamlined automated processes where feasible.
- Identify and troubleshoot any issues in the setup and implementation of the new Azure-hosted Production environment.
- Provide effective Sitecore and DevOps support during and after the initial Production go-live.
What we did
Throughout the project, the following activities were undertaken:
- Design and implementation of DevOps processes.
- Business analysis and documentation of required release scenarios. Design of necessary DevOps pipelines.
- Provisioning of a new Production-ready Sitecore XM infrastructure topology.
- Deployment of code releases from local development environments to the newly provisioned instance.
- Migration of existing Sitecore environment configuration.
- Deprecation of the previous non-DevOps driven environment.
- Regression testing of the new environment and infrastructure.
Additional challenges addressed
Provisioning of New Solr SearchStax Environment for Stability EvoEnergy's previous search infrastructure faced stability issues, leading to inconsistent search results and system downtimes. Aceik introduced a new Solr SearchStax environment, enhancing search reliability and ensuring a consistent user experience.
Enabling Blue-Green Deployment with Staging Slots
To minimise disruptions during updates, Aceik set up Blue-Green deployment strategies using staging slots. This approach allowed EvoEnergy to seamlessly switch between versions, ensuring zero downtime and immediate rollback capabilities in case of issues.
Migrating MVC Forms Solution from TFS to Azure DevOps
EvoEnergy’s legacy MVC Forms solution, managed in Team Foundation Server (TFS), was outdated and cumbersome. Aceik transitioned this solution to Azure DevOps, integrating it with the new Sitecore environment to streamline development and deployment processes.
Merging MVC Forms and Sitecore Solutions for a Unified Codebase
By consolidating the MVC Forms and Sitecore solutions into a single codebase, Aceik reduced development overhead, simplified the build and release process, and improved efficiency. This unified approach minimised errors and ensured faster, more reliable deployments.
The move from our old on-premises solution to a modern Azure-hosted Sitecore environment was a major shift for us. Aceik’s support throughout this process has been invaluable, providing us with a robust and scalable solution.
Shaun Fanning
EvoEnergy, IT Development Manager
Key outcomes
Due to the expert services and improvements, Aceik was able to work with EvoEnergy to reduce the total Build (CI) time to 2-4 minutes for the whole solution.
In addition, Release (CD) time is reduced to 10-15 minutes, with maximum time taken to swap the slots (10 minutes) and the actual deployment only taking 3 minutes. This type of highly optimised and streamlined process means that Evoenergy has an efficient way to releasing updates that does not burden internal teams and tie up scare resources for long.
Aceik has successfully improved overall stability of the new solution. There is no downtime of the live site during production deployments, and the code change and deployment process is streamlined.
