Contract Type
Consultancy / Contract Engagement
Location
Remote with potential customer workshops and stakeholder engagement sessions
Customer/ End User
Global E-Commerce Provider
Renumeration: Negotable on Expereince
Overview
We are seeking an experienced Legacy Xen Migration & Virtualisation Consultant to lead a customer discovery and assessment engagement for a complex legacy virtualisation environment.
The customer is progressing a broader AWS migration and data centre exit programme and has identified several business-critical workloads hosted on a legacy Xen platform that have proven difficult to migrate using conventional approaches.
This engagement is focused on technical assessment, remediation planning, and migration strategy recommendations. The successful consultant will evaluate the current environment, analyse previous migration failures, identify operating system and virtualisation dependencies, and provide a recommended migration path.
This is not a delivery role at this stage. The primary objective is to conduct a structured discovery and assessment engagement that may ultimately lead to a formal migration project.
Customer Environment
- Customer: Global E-Commerce Provider
- Legacy Xen Version: 3.0.34-0.7-xen
- Approximately 4-5 Xen virtual machines
- Windows-based workloads
- Business-critical applications hosted on the affected servers
- Preferred target platform: VMware ESXi
- Alignment with broader AWS migration objectives is also being considered
Background
The customer has previously attempted migration activities using VMware and Hyper-V conversion approaches.
Previous migration activities included:
- Conversion of virtual disks from VHD to VMDK
- Successful server boot in Safe Mode
- Removal of Xen drivers
- Installation of VMware drivers
- Subsequent operating system failure during normal boot
The customer believes these issues may be related to compatibility challenges between the legacy Xen platform and modern virtualisation environments, but a detailed technical assessment has not yet been undertaken.
Key Responsibilities
The consultant will lead the technical discovery and assessment engagement, including:
- Reviewing the existing Xen architecture and environment
- Assessing legacy Xen virtual machine configurations
- Analysing previous migration failures and technical blockers
- Evaluating Windows operating system compatibility and remediation requirements
- Identifying Xen-specific drivers, services, and hardware dependencies
- Assessing migration options across VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, AWS, and alternative platforms
- Recommending the most appropriate migration strategy
- Developing proof-of-concept migration approaches where required
- Identifying risks, constraints, and remediation activities
- Producing high-level effort estimates and migration recommendations
- Leading customer discovery workshops and technical discussions
- Creating documentation and recommendations suitable for conversion into a future Statement of Work (SOW)
Deliverables
The successful consultant will provide:
- Current-state assessment of the Xen environment
- Technical findings report
- Root-cause analysis of previous migration failures
- Migration options assessment
- Recommended migration approach
- High-level migration roadmap
- Risk and remediation register
- Proof-of-concept recommendations (where applicable)
- Inputs to a future migration SOW
Required Skills & Experience
Essential
- Strong experience with Citrix XenServer / Xen virtualisation platforms
- Proven experience migrating legacy Xen workloads
- Experience working with unsupported or end-of-life virtualisation technologies
- Strong Windows Server troubleshooting and remediation skills
- VMware ESXi migration and platform expertise
- Hyper-V migration experience
- Experience conducting migration assessments and discovery engagements
- Ability to perform root-cause analysis of operating system boot and driver issues
- Strong stakeholder engagement and workshop facilitation skills
- Experience producing technical assessment reports and migration recommendations
Desirable
- AWS migration and modernisation experience
- Experience with workload conversion and migration tooling such as:
- StarWind V2V Converter
- PlateSpin
- VMware Converter
- Similar third-party migration solutions
- Data centre exit and infrastructure transformation experience
- Enterprise application migration experience
- Experience building migration Statements of Work (SOWs)
Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal consultant will be a hands-on virtualisation specialist with deep technical expertise in legacy Xen environments and Windows server remediation. They will be comfortable engaging directly with customers, leading technical discovery workshops, diagnosing complex migration failures, and translating findings into practical migration recommendations and future delivery plans.
Engagement Outcome
The primary objective is to determine whether the affected workloads should be migrated through:
- Direct conversion and remediation
- Staged intermediary migration
- Platform re-hosting
- Application rebuild or replacement
The consultant's recommendations will form the basis of a future migration project and associated Statement of Work.
To Apply: Please provide a summary of relevant Xen/XenServer migration experience, including examples of legacy virtualisation remediation, Windows migration troubleshooting, and VMware or Hyper-V migration projects.
Pay: From £200.00 per day
Work Location: Remote
