Moving a Laboratory’s 2008-Era Server Without Losing a Thing

A specialist chemistry company relied on an in-house system for its compound database, quotes, certificates of analysis and lab records. It ran on a server installed around 2008, on an operating system that had been out of support for over a decade, and that same server was quietly acting as the office file server.

The challenge

Nobody could patch it, back it up properly or replace it without putting the business’s core records at risk. The application depended on a Java-based chemical structure engine, an old PHP framework and years of files, and modern computers couldn’t even connect to the old server securely, because it only offered encryption methods that current software has retired.

What we did

• A modern home: A new, supported AlmaLinux virtual machine on the company’s own Proxmox server
• The application rebuilt: The chemical structure engine, database connections and image generation rebuilt around the legacy code, fixing long-standing bugs along the way
• Data copied safely: Custom tooling to copy 11 GB and 83,000 files from the old server without changing it, then keep them in sync
• Loose ends tied up: System email moved to Microsoft 365 securely, and the label and office printers set up
• Nothing thrown away: Everything the old server held that was no longer used was archived rather than deleted