A Cautionary Tale from UniSuper: Lessons Learned from a Google Cloud Migration Catastrophe

Rewinding One Year: The Beginning

On May 1st, 2023, the Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) team was enjoying a well-deserved break when they received a critical ticket from one of their Australian customers, UniSuper.

UniSuper, a major industry superannuation fund, manages around 135 billion Australian dollars for over 600,000 Australians. In Australia, employers must contribute 11.5% on top of wages to a super account, similar to the 401k system in the United States.

UniSuper relies on VMware, a platform that offers solutions for building on-premises cloud environments.

They needed cloud features like virtual machines, autoscaling, load balancing, and more, without dealing with big cloud providers directly. So, they used private cloud software like VMware to manage their infrastructure.

However, seeing the benefits of Big Cloud, UniSuper decided to migrate to Google Cloud’s VMware Engine, allowing them to move their VMware-based applications to Google Cloud without changes to their apps, tools, or processes.

This migration seemed perfect: a seamless transition for a small fee of $5.11 per hour over three years.