Success Story: Saving 7k Users from a Failed Windows 10 Migration

January 25, 2023

Every day modern IT organizations are challenged by the consistent demand for change. They are on the hook to keep up with updating major operating systems, frequent hardware refreshes, software updates, patches, security fixes, zero-day attacks, and more.

While change is inevitable, proactive IT teams find the right balance between speed and risk management, enabling them to protect their business from disastrous downtime and crisis events.

Aside from external forces, software and system issues are the most common cause of downtime. The latest research shows that the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute, and 98% of organizations say a single hour of downtime can cost over $100,000.

When implementing change means tipping the scales of business disruption, IT teams must consider all implications and fine-tune critical variables before real users feel the impact.

A Real-World Example: The Power of a Proactive IT Team

While the downtime of any virtual application or desktop negatively impacts employee experience and business continuity, for some organizations, even more is at stake. Public service organizations like healthcare and transportation companies rely on the performance of workplace technology, as people’s lives and livelihoods hang in the balance.

Recently, the company responsible for the day-to-day public transport network in one of the largest cities in England knew it was time to upgrade its virtual desktop system. IT was anticipating the organization’s future needs as a part of their TSL desktop experience project and looking at what virtual desktops they should offer their users next.

As they offered desktop access through Windows Server 2016, their team debated what would happen with RDSH and how they could transition to Windows 10 VDIs.

Down Goes Density

The team had a proactive mindset and knew they had to test the Windows 10 transition to see how the change could impact their environment’s performance and end-user experience.

They constructed an initial windows 10 build to test against Login Enterprise and compare the figures against their 2016 RDSH setup. Almost immediately, the team saw significant drops in density. Typically, the organization sees around 7000 users a day or 25k a month. The team runs 1200 servers in their 2016 production environment and uses Citrix server VDAs to accommodate their remaining user base.

With continued testing with a mix of internal and external access through NetScaler, the team saw even more significant drops, between 30 – 40%. There appeared to be differences with and without their AV product, TrendMicro Apex One.

Shocked by the results, the team looked at their console, knowing they needed to connect with the Login VSI team to ensure the test was accurate. Would they really be this severely impacted by transitioning to Windows 10?

“Are you sure?” 

The Login VSI team was able to hop into the conversation to help confirm that the Login Enterprise results were accurate. Per protocol, the transportation company’s IT team also ensured they performed independent testing and evaluation to cover all bases.

Ultimately, it was true. The organization faced serious density and performance issues with a potential Windows 10 and even Windows Server 2019 transition.

“I feel that Login Enterprise identified something which could have caused us a major headache,” said one of their team members. “If we weren’t proactive before migrating, the business implications would have been quite substantial. We have a dependency on our Citrix environment and our published Windows desktop. We would have saw issues across the dependent 7,000 users a day. We ensure the option to go back fast, but it still would have been a significant disruption, which is something you certainly don’t want to happen—that many users with issues.”

“We have massive work ahead that Login VSI will be a part of.”

The team is now back in the planning phase. Still, ultimately, having a proactive and investigative nature allowed them to avoid serious systems issues that would have impacted their employees and the public using their network on daily trips around the city.

The windows 10 migration is on pause for now, but within the next year, the team is sure to have a definitive road map. They know at some point they will purchase a new kit and move to Windows 11, but like many organizations, budget and cost are top concerns.

Throughout this planning process and once in production, the team can continue to use Login Enterprise to evaluate testing configurations, monitor new builds, and prepare their budget.

Keep Things Up and Running with Login Enterprise

You can avoid unexpected downtime too! With Login Enterprise to test and monitor the impact of change, your IT team can quickly:

• Identify appropriate baselines to evaluate capacity and performance in a new OS environment
• Validate thousands of applications to ensure they work on a new Windows build or in the cloud
• Run A/B test scenarios to fine-tune critical configuration variables and more!

Are you ready to learn more? Connect with a Login Enterprise expert today to see how we can help ensure the performance of your virtual desktops and applications.