WGU E027 | TASK 1 TECHNICAL PROPOSAL
TECHNICAL PROPOSAL
Virtualization and IaaS Migration for
NovaMart Retail Group
Legacy E-Commerce Infrastructure Modernization | Microsoft Azure Hybrid
Cloud
Submission Information Details
Course WGU E027 - Virtualization and Infrastructure as a Service
Assessment Task 1 - Technical Proposal
Student Name [Your Name]
Student ID [Your Student ID]
Date [Submission Date]
Use note: Replace the bracketed identity fields and compare every section against the rubric displayed in
your WGU assessment portal before submission. This proposal is an original model based on the scenario
described in the request.
Page 1
, WGU E027 | TASK 1 TECHNICAL PROPOSAL
I. Executive Summary
A. Company Background
NovaMart Retail Group is a fictional mid-sized omnichannel retailer that sells home, lifestyle, and consumer
products through an e-commerce website and eight regional stores. The company employs approximately 420
people and processes an average of 6,000 online orders per day, with seasonal peaks approaching 18,000 orders
per day. Its corporate office hosts the e-commerce application, inventory integration services, file services,
reporting tools, and a Microsoft SQL Server database in a small on-premises server room.
NovaMart's production environment grew incrementally over ten years. Twelve physical servers now support
workloads that could operate on fewer modern hosts, yet the servers average only 20-30 percent CPU utilization
during normal periods. Several systems run Windows Server 2016 and depend on manually maintained
configurations. Internet-facing traffic enters a single web tier, while the database and shared services rely on the
same local power, cooling, and network path. Backups are copied nightly to a local network-attached storage
device and weekly to removable media. This design exposes revenue operations to hardware failure, site outage,
inconsistent recovery, and limited capacity during promotions.
B. Problem Statement
NovaMart's legacy infrastructure cannot reliably support its growth strategy. Aging hardware requires
increasingly frequent maintenance, replacement parts are difficult to obtain, and physical capacity must be
purchased months before demand is known. Seasonal utilization spikes create slow page loads and abandoned
transactions, while normal utilization leaves expensive equipment idle. The single-site design also creates a
concentration risk: a prolonged power, cooling, storage, or network failure could interrupt ordering, inventory
synchronization, and fulfillment simultaneously.
The current environment also complicates security and governance. Administrative privileges are broad, firewall
rules have accumulated over time, recovery testing is inconsistent, and the payment-data boundary is not
sufficiently isolated from ordinary corporate workloads. Because NovaMart accepts payment cards, systems that
store, process, or transmit payment account data fall within the PCI DSS scope. The Payment Card Industry
Security Standards Council describes PCI DSS as a baseline of technical and operational requirements for
protecting payment account data (PCI SSC, n.d.).
C. Purpose of Proposal
The purpose of this proposal is to replace NovaMart's hardware-dependent operating model with a controlled
hybrid-cloud architecture that combines local server virtualization with Microsoft Azure IaaS. Hyper-V will
consolidate the few workloads that must remain on-site during transition, while Azure Virtual Machines,
managed storage, segmented networking, identity controls, monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery will host
the primary e-commerce platform. This approach preserves compatibility with the company's existing Windows
and SQL workloads while adding elastic capacity, standardized deployment, stronger recovery, and consumption-
based cost management.
Recommendation: Approve a phased hybrid deployment with Azure as the target production platform and
a two-node Hyper-V cluster as the temporary local virtualization layer. Place the public web tier in Azure,
keep databases private, isolate the cardholder data environment, and migrate by application wave after
testing.
Page 2
TECHNICAL PROPOSAL
Virtualization and IaaS Migration for
NovaMart Retail Group
Legacy E-Commerce Infrastructure Modernization | Microsoft Azure Hybrid
Cloud
Submission Information Details
Course WGU E027 - Virtualization and Infrastructure as a Service
Assessment Task 1 - Technical Proposal
Student Name [Your Name]
Student ID [Your Student ID]
Date [Submission Date]
Use note: Replace the bracketed identity fields and compare every section against the rubric displayed in
your WGU assessment portal before submission. This proposal is an original model based on the scenario
described in the request.
Page 1
, WGU E027 | TASK 1 TECHNICAL PROPOSAL
I. Executive Summary
A. Company Background
NovaMart Retail Group is a fictional mid-sized omnichannel retailer that sells home, lifestyle, and consumer
products through an e-commerce website and eight regional stores. The company employs approximately 420
people and processes an average of 6,000 online orders per day, with seasonal peaks approaching 18,000 orders
per day. Its corporate office hosts the e-commerce application, inventory integration services, file services,
reporting tools, and a Microsoft SQL Server database in a small on-premises server room.
NovaMart's production environment grew incrementally over ten years. Twelve physical servers now support
workloads that could operate on fewer modern hosts, yet the servers average only 20-30 percent CPU utilization
during normal periods. Several systems run Windows Server 2016 and depend on manually maintained
configurations. Internet-facing traffic enters a single web tier, while the database and shared services rely on the
same local power, cooling, and network path. Backups are copied nightly to a local network-attached storage
device and weekly to removable media. This design exposes revenue operations to hardware failure, site outage,
inconsistent recovery, and limited capacity during promotions.
B. Problem Statement
NovaMart's legacy infrastructure cannot reliably support its growth strategy. Aging hardware requires
increasingly frequent maintenance, replacement parts are difficult to obtain, and physical capacity must be
purchased months before demand is known. Seasonal utilization spikes create slow page loads and abandoned
transactions, while normal utilization leaves expensive equipment idle. The single-site design also creates a
concentration risk: a prolonged power, cooling, storage, or network failure could interrupt ordering, inventory
synchronization, and fulfillment simultaneously.
The current environment also complicates security and governance. Administrative privileges are broad, firewall
rules have accumulated over time, recovery testing is inconsistent, and the payment-data boundary is not
sufficiently isolated from ordinary corporate workloads. Because NovaMart accepts payment cards, systems that
store, process, or transmit payment account data fall within the PCI DSS scope. The Payment Card Industry
Security Standards Council describes PCI DSS as a baseline of technical and operational requirements for
protecting payment account data (PCI SSC, n.d.).
C. Purpose of Proposal
The purpose of this proposal is to replace NovaMart's hardware-dependent operating model with a controlled
hybrid-cloud architecture that combines local server virtualization with Microsoft Azure IaaS. Hyper-V will
consolidate the few workloads that must remain on-site during transition, while Azure Virtual Machines,
managed storage, segmented networking, identity controls, monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery will host
the primary e-commerce platform. This approach preserves compatibility with the company's existing Windows
and SQL workloads while adding elastic capacity, standardized deployment, stronger recovery, and consumption-
based cost management.
Recommendation: Approve a phased hybrid deployment with Azure as the target production platform and
a two-node Hyper-V cluster as the temporary local virtualization layer. Place the public web tier in Azure,
keep databases private, isolate the cardholder data environment, and migrate by application wave after
testing.
Page 2
