A Hong Kong Government Agency

Facing surging licensing costs, scalability constraints, and platform compatibility challenges due to VMware’s shift to a subscription-only model, a government agency in Hong Kong sought a robust alternative. The agency required a solution capable of seamlessly integrating with its existing Red Hat OpenShift container platform while ensuring a smooth migration. ZStack was selected for its open-architecture design, agentless migration capabilities, and flexible subscription model. Following the implementation, the agency significantly reduced its Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), achieved high operational stability, improved IT efficiency, and successfully realized a synergistic evolution of virtualization and containerization, effectively eliminating vendor lock-in.

As digital transformation deepens and government systems continue to evolve, many public sector organizations have relied heavily on VMware for their virtualization infrastructure. With the agency already utilizing Red Hat OpenShift for container management, the new virtualization foundation needed to support both traditional virtual machines (VMs) and containerized workloads simultaneously. ZStack Cloud emerged as the preferred choice, offering an open architecture, seamless migration tools, and a flexible subscription model.

To meet the agency’s core requirements, ZStack implemented a three-phase, phased-in replacement strategy to build a next-generation government cloud infrastructure:

Phase 1: Foundation Deployment. The ZStack Cloud private cloud platform was deployed to unify compute, storage, and network resources. By establishing a standardized resource pool, the platform provided essential features such as VPCs, security groups, and load balancing, creating a secure, isolated, and highly reliable environment for government services.

Phase 2: Seamless Migration. Leveraging the ZMigrate agentless migration tool, the agency migrated workloads by directly interfacing with VMware APIs. This approach required no agent installation within the guest VMs, ensuring zero impact on production workloads. Support for online hot migration and multi-round verification ensured a smooth cutover with no data loss or service downtime.

Phase 3: Container Platform Validation. The project team conducted comprehensive validation of the Red Hat OpenShift platform on ZStack Cloud. The successful integration confirmed that the agency could replace the underlying virtualization layer without modifying the container platform, thereby maximizing the protection of existing investments in containerization.

ZStack Cloud’s core technical advantages are perfectly aligned with the stringent requirements of government environments:

Multi-Architecture Support: ZStack offers “One Cloud, Multiple Chips” capability, ensuring compatibility with mainstream domestic and international CPU architectures to support long-term business evolution.
Open Architecture: By avoiding hardware vendor lock-in, ZStack supports seamless integration with various server and storage brands, allowing the agency to leverage existing hardware and avoid redundant investments.
Flexible Subscription Models: ZStack provides highly flexible licensing options—including per-CPU core, per-physical server, or on-demand subscriptions—allowing the agency to align costs with budgets and business scale, ensuring transparent and predictable long-term expenditure.

Project Outcomes:

The successful implementation has delivered comprehensive benefits to the Hong Kong government agency:

Significant Cost Efficiency: ZStack Cloud’s inherent resource reuse capabilities provided a cost-effective solution, drastically reducing TCO and eliminating hidden costs associated with vendor lock-in.

Enhanced Stability and Performance: ZStack Cloud delivers high-performance, high-availability compute, storage, and network services. Its distributed architecture eliminates single points of failure, guaranteeing business continuity.

Improved Scalability: The platform supports both horizontal and vertical scaling, allowing for flexible resource allocation based on evolving business demands.

Investment Protection: Full compatibility with Red Hat OpenShift ensures that existing containerization investments remain intact, fostering a harmonious coexistence between virtualization and containerized environments.

Increased Operational Efficiency: ZStack Cloud’s “4S” characteristics (Simple, Strong, Scalable, and Smart) streamline daily operations. Automated management reduces manual intervention, enabling the IT team to focus on driving innovation.