AWS for increasing the resource performance

AgiliWay, a software development outsourcing company (https://agiliway.com/), in partnership with a software distributor, Softprom (https://softprom.com/), has supplied to ROI4CIO and implemented AWS, which has improved website performance by 8 times. Implementation project timelines: 28.09.2017 – 18.10.2017: optimal server set-up chosen, optimal AWS services selected, complete transition to AWS performed, including the domain name. Issue: Services used by the website prior to AWS implementation did not support operations with “heavy” functionality, such as processing large volumes of data. For this reason when the number of website users reached a certain figure, CPU and RAM indicators of the server used to rise to 100% and the website crashed. Solution: Thanks to AWS server and services the number of concurrent users of the site has increased several times, whereas the workload on the site and database is half as much as before. The website performance has improved by 8 times, however its cost of ownership has grown only twofold. ROI - 800% Issue:

• "The team has come up against the problem of insufficient website performance. When during testing the number of concurrent users reached a certain figure, the response time delay exceeded 10 seconds. As workload increased, the database failed to support it and the service “refused” to work,” - Oleg Pitsyk, IT Systems’ Architect with ROI4CIO, Agiliway.

Solution: Before the decision was taken to implement AWS for the ROI4CIO project, it was tested whether another cloud-based solution can potentially be used. Comparison of the testing results has conclusively proven superiority of AWS. Softprom in cooperation with Agiliway has developed the optimal solution enabling to enhance the site performance. Representatives of Agiliway, acting as developers and architects of ROI4CIO systems, were in charge of application server and database set-up. Softprom, a supplier of AWS platforms, acted as a consultant with regards to deploying AWS functionality. On top of that Softprom employees have configured the services of monitoring, notifications and AWS Lambda. The website domain was hosted in Amazon Route 53, highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System service (DNS). Anti DDoS AWS Shield wall was deployed to ensure comprehensive protection from all known infrastructure attacks (levels 3 and 4). A virtual EC2 (C4 type) server was used to optimize workloads, which required high computing capacity, to configure automated scaling of resources and inbound loadbalancing. At website peak load times computing resources are automatically scaled, which allows to support virtually any workload. Amazon Relational Database Service was selected to enhance reliability and fail-safety, as well as to reduce administration spend. It performs the functions of hardware provisioning, database setup, patching and backups. ElastiCashe was also used to increase website throughput - it is a web service which simplifies rolling out and scaling functions in a cloud or in-memory store, as well as their management. AWS CloudWatch was used for extensive monitoring of applications and database. Provided relevant rules are in place, an administrator will be immediately notified by text or e-mail in case of any unexpected emergency. AWS SNS (simple notification service) was integrated in CloudWatch for messaging functions. Besides messaging in some circumstances serverless computations of AWS Lambda are triggered to fulfill automation functions. AWS S3 cloud storage automatically backs up the database and application server as scheduled.

• "Our efforts were mainly aimed at enhancing performance. However, a lot of attention was paid to fail-safety and backups. Quantitatively, we can probably also highlight Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) of storage drive. We have used a high performance drive - Provisioned IOPS. Up to 40,000 IOPS can be provisioned for each DB instance", - Vlad Gavrilenko, CIO of Softprom.

• "The server was migrated very quickly, in two days literally. After that we were configuring the services, which has taken about a week," -  Vlad Gavrilenko, CIO Softprom.

Outcome: By implementing AWS the team has made it possible to increase the resource performance by eight times and at the same time to automate labour-intensive administration tasks. And it should be noted that cost of ownership has risen only twofold. After the query code was patched and all services have been implemented the site maintains stable and uninterrupted performance even at high load levels.