National Network Refresh

Background

Starfish Customer is a UK based cloud and managed hosting provider, with a 11 data centres in the UK and multiple network PoPs (Points of Presence) around the world. In 2023 the Customer took the decision to invest in a new national network ring, including new hardware routers at key locations, as well as circuits connecting the main data centres.

Due to resource constraints, the Customer engaged Starfish to deliver the upgrade as a turn-key solution including project governance, management of third-parties, upgrade of circuits and upgrade of core network hardware.

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Project Objectives

The key objectives of the project were as follows.

• Fully manage the network refresh programme.

• Manage 100G circuit upgrades.

• Manage core router refresh.

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Approach

The Starfish approach involved the full project lifecycle including design, implementation and migration, as well as project governance.

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Design and Planning Phase

For this project the fundamental design of the Customer network did not change, as circuits and core routers were upgraded. However, design consideration needed to be given to how parallel implementation and cutover would be achieved. This was captured in a design Wiki for approval by the Customer.

Planning also included significant liaison with circuit providers. Starfish collaborated with both the circuit providers and the Customer to arrange provision of the circuit, cross-connects, and dates for cutover that minimised duplicate circuit costs. Finally, planning required Starfish to work closely with the Customer change team, and external communications to inform end users of outages or at-risk windows.

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Circuit Upgrades

Circuit upgrades were carried out without impact to service. Routing metrics were used to drain traffic from the legacy circuit being migrated before the circuit would then be shutdown. The link was then upgrade and traffic balanced over the new link.

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Router Upgrades

Router upgrades were done as parallel implementations where possible, with the new routers brought online and links being migrated to them. This approach did not impact end users with dual links and was completed in a controlled and communicated manner for the end users with single links.

Where parallel upgrades were not possible, Starfish deployed multiple engineers onsite and a lead engineer working remote to disable one core router at a time and complete a full hardware refresh.

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Project Governance

Given the large number of dependencies on third party circuit providers, approved outage windows with end users, the availability of resources in different data centres and business critical time periods, strong project governance was vital. Starfish delivered project management in a structured manner, as outlined below.

• Weekly Project Reports

• Issue Management and Escalation

• Project Budget Management

• Resource Management

• Liaison with Third Parties

• Liaison with Change Management and Customer Communications

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Technology

The project involved the replacement of 10G circuits with 100G fibre. The core routers deployed were Cisco NCS5400 and Cisco NCS540s, which were used to replace Cisco ASR9000 routers.

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Conclusion

Starfish delivered the National Network Upgrade for SLC on-time, within budget and with minimal disruption. This demonstrated Starfish’s capabilities including planning, design, implementation, and project governance.

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