Zutari modernizes data center infrastructure and disaster recovery systems in partnership with Datacentrix

The infrastructure engineering firm consolidated its primary servers and implemented automated cross-site replication to meet upcoming software compatibility and compliance requirements.

Infrastructure engineering and advisory practice Zutari has upgraded the server environment at its main data center in Pretoria while expanding storage capacity at its Cape Town facility. The project, executed by hybrid ICT systems integrator Datacentrix, was designed to establish automated virtual machine replication between the two sites and update hardware that was approaching its end-of-support lifecycle.

The hardware refresh was accelerated by Zutari's planned migration to VMware vSphere 9.0, which required newer CPU architectures. By mid-2025, the company's primary server environment would reach end-of-life status. Stephan Botha, IT Operations Lead at Zutari, explained the transition: “We were moving to VMware vSphere 9.0 and the legacy CPUs weren’t supported. Our existing servers had performed well, but we had reached a point where replacement was essential.”

Following a workload assessment, Datacentrix deployed x86-based servers at the Pretoria data center to support Zutari’s SQL-heavy databases. To address disaster recovery requirements, production storage at the Cape Town site was expanded. On the software side, the company transitioned its licensing to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and integrated VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to orchestrate the cross-site replication process. Kristoff Kasch, Senior Architect at Datacentrix, noted: “Zutari needed a platform that could support future workloads. The combination of the new servers, storage platform and the automated disaster recovery and business continuity solution gives them a modern, scalable foundation with built-in resilience.”

The modernization allowed Zutari to consolidate its physical footprint, reducing the environment from 12 production servers to seven, which subsequently lowered cooling and power consumption. According to Botha, processing performance has tripled across the firm's workloads. The expanded storage capacity in Cape Town now enables the full and continuous replication of Zutari’s 20 most critical virtual machines.

Beyond operational efficiency, the infrastructure upgrade fulfills a critical requirement for Zutari’s ongoing ISO 27001 certification process, which mandates that all active IT infrastructure must be fully supported and under warranty. “This was step one of multiple office upgrades that we need to complete,” Botha stated, adding that Datacentrix has managed the company's infrastructure requirements for over seven years, including previous data center relocations.