Client Overview
- Client: Regional Water Utility Authority, name anonymized
- Location: Critical infrastructure, water and wastewater utility
- Engagement: VDI modernization, managed infrastructure, Turbo based app delivery, co-managed IT
Modern VDI and Application Delivery for a Critical Water Utility
The Challenge
A Regional Water Utility that operates critical water and wastewater infrastructure engaged Z7 Solutions to stabilize and modernize its virtual desktop and infrastructure stack.
By the time Z7 became involved, the environment was showing clear pain points:
- Aging VMware Horizon VDI deployment that had grown organically
- Dual site DellEMC VxRail clusters that needed optimization and upgrades
- Carbon Black endpoint security to manage, plus DellEMC Networker and Data Domain backups to tune
- Long login times and inconsistent performance, especially for computer aided design and virtual workstation use cases
- Long login times and inconsistent performance, especially for computer aided design and virtual workstation use cases
- Many separate golden images and application packages that were difficult to maintain
- Limited internal engineering bandwidth to perform a full health check and carry out a complex modernization effort while keeping the water system online
The utility needed a partner that could:
- Modernize Horizon VDI and VxRail without downtime
- Improve CAD and engineering user experience
- Standardize images and applications for long term maintainability
- Provide managed infrastructure, help desk, and vCTO and vCISO advisory in a co managed model
Z7 Solution
Z7 delivered a combination of engineering, managed services, and application modernization tailored for a critical infrastructure customer.
Horizon VDI and VxRail Modernization
- Upgraded VMware Horizon from version 7 to version 8 across two clusters that use Cloud Pod Architecture
- Performed a complete VDI health analysis and tuned the environment for improved performance
- Optimized DellEMC VxRail for the VDI workload and validated storage and compute alignment
Master Image, Login time, and User Experience Optimization
- Updated and standardized existing master images for the Horizon 8 environment
- Created a new Windows 11 master image to support future ready workstations
- Provided detailed recommendations to optimize end user computing performance, reduce login times, and improve CAD and virtual workstation performance
- Improved utilization and performance of application volumes to enhance overall user experience
Managed Infrastructure and Help Desk
Under a managed services SOW, Z7 provided:
- An onsite Help Desk specialist to support staff at headquarters
- Remote enterprise infrastructure coverage for VxRail, vSphere, Horizon VDI, Carbon Black, Networker with CyberSense, and Data Domain
- Emergency assisted coverage, including 24/7 engagement option for incidents and vendor escalations
- A dedicated senior consultant and principal architect as ongoing escalation and advisory points
Turbo Based Application Modernization
Z7 partnered with Turbo to modernize application delivery for about 200 VDI users:
- Deployed Turbo SaaS portal and Turbo Studio packaging environment
- Built Turbo base images for standard and GPU backed workloads
- Created more than 50 Turbo application packages, including complex CAD, FoxIT, Office, Track It, and Laserfiche workloads
- Implemented a hybrid profile management approach using DEM and FSLogix
- Developed more than 20 automation and deployment scripts for repeatable image and app builds
Results and Impact
Modern, Stable VDI for Critical Operations
- Horizon VDI upgraded and tuned for dual site operation with Cloud Pod Architecture
- CAD and engineering sessions benefit from optimized images, GPU aware configurations, and improved storage performance
Golden Image Reduction and Operational Simplicity
- Consolidated from about 16 separate golden images to 4 core images for standard and GPU workloads
- Fewer images to patch and maintain, which reduces risk of configuration drift and speeds rollout of updates
Backup Efficiency and Resilience
- Tuning of DellEMC Networker and Data Domain resulted in approximately 2 to 3 times improvement in full backup speeds
- Faster backup windows mean more flexibility for maintenance and reduce risk during incident recovery scenarios
Significant Unbilled Effort Absorbed by Z7
- Scope changes, missing application documentation, and environmental blockers added about 16 weeks of extra level of effort
- Z7 absorbed this additional work with no change orders and no extra invoices, which is equivalent to about four extra months of senior engineering time delivered at no additional cost
Strong Onsite Presence Plus Remote Coverage
- More than 40 onsite engineering days across the life of the Turbo and infrastructure project, combined with 24/7 capable remote support
- This hybrid model kept critical water operations stable while modernization proceeded
Strategic Partnership for Critical Infrastructure
- vCTO and vCISO style advisory helped the utility align VDI, backup, and application decisions with risk, budget, and regulatory requirements
- The result is a more resilient virtual desktop and application platform that supports a mission of safe, reliable water service for the community
Want the full VDI modernization stack, architecture, and performance metrics?
Read the full Regional Water Utility Authority case study for deeper details on consolidating golden images from 16 to 4 , tripling backup speeds , and optimizing CAD workloads for critical infrastructure.