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Pretoria-based engineering firm upgrades end-of-life servers, expands storage, and implements automated disaster recovery to support future growth and ISO 27001 certification.
Zutari, a leading infrastructure engineering and advisory practice, has successfully modernised the server environment at its main data centre in Ashlea Gardens, Pretoria, to meet rising performance demands and strengthen operational resilience.
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The project, delivered by long-term technology partner Datacentrix, a hybrid ICT systems integrator, also included expanded storage capacity at Zutari’s Cape Town data centre, enabling seamless virtual machine replication between the two sites.
The upgrade positions Zutari with a scalable, high-performance foundation designed to support future workloads while improving energy efficiency and disaster recovery capabilities.
Aging Infrastructure Reaches End-of-Life
By mid-2025, Zutari’s primary server environment had reached end-of-life and end-of-support status, creating urgent operational risks. Upcoming platform migrations added further pressure.
“We were moving to VMware vSphere 9.0 and the legacy CPUs weren’t supported,” explained Stephan Botha, IT Operations Lead at Zutari. “Our existing servers had performed well, but we had reached a point where replacement was essential.”
Datacentrix, Zutari’s trusted infrastructure partner for over seven years, was engaged to evaluate workloads, model future requirements, and guide technology selection.
“Datacentrix supported us from start to finish,” Botha added. “They provided options and recommendations, including the comparisons we needed to make an informed decision.”
A Modern, High-Performance Platform for the Future
Following a comprehensive assessment, Datacentrix recommended x86-based servers for the Ashlea Gardens data centre, delivering:
- Higher performance gains
- Improved energy efficiency and stability
- Cost benefits
- Better alignment with Zutari’s SQL-heavy workloads
To strengthen disaster recovery, Datacentrix expanded production storage at Zutari’s Cape Town site, enabling seamless replication of critical virtual machines from Pretoria to Cape Town.
As part of the solution, Zutari renewed its VMware licensing, migrating to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and implementing VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to automate and orchestrate cross-site replication.
“Zutari needed a platform that could support future workloads,” said Kristoff Kasch, Senior Architect at Datacentrix. “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.”
A Step Change in Performance and Efficiency
The modernisation project has delivered immediate, measurable value to Zutari:
- Server consolidation:Â Reduced from 12 production servers to just seven, significantly lowering cooling and power consumption
- Performance gains:Â Processing power has tripled, delivering noticeable improvements across all workloads
- Enhanced disaster recovery:Â Expanded storage capacity now enables full replication of Zutari’s 20 most critical virtual machines to Cape Town
“While we don’t measure usage granularly, we are definitely seeing the positive impact on our utility bill,” Botha noted. “We’ve also observed noteworthy performance gains—performance has tripled, if not more—and the difference has been clear across our workloads.”
Strengthening Security Compliance
The infrastructure upgrade also forms a critical component of Zutari’s journey toward ISO 27001 certification, which requires all infrastructure to be fully supported, maintained, and under warranty.
“This was step one of multiple office upgrades that we need to complete,” Botha disclosed.
A Partnership Built on Trust
The successful project underscores the strength of the seven-year partnership between Zutari and Datacentrix.
“Datacentrix has guided and supported us across multiple environments and even helped with the seamless move of our data centre to our new head office building in Ashlea Gardens several years ago,” Botha reflected. “From maintaining our infrastructure to supporting offices across Africa, they’ve been a one-stop shop. We couldn’t ask for a better partner.”
Kasch echoed this sentiment from the Datacentrix side:
“Trust is earned over time. Zutari knows we’ll bring the right expertise, deploy correctly, and continue to optimise the environment so that they enjoy maximum business impact and return on investment.”
