Lack of performance & security were affecting Shephertz
Shephertz was hosting Redis Cache on Linux VMs which was a challenge as it was causing performance issues. Their environment was vulnerable to the hackers which kept their IT team busy always finding a way to detect and prevent the attacks on their environment. Their basket of problems just went higher and higher including
- Lack of the PaaS support in the AWS was a problem as they were using VMs for hosting all kind of applications resulting high cost
- Deployment of environment manually resulting in more time consumption to bring their setup up and running
- The environment was hosted on Linux VMs having complex components of Big Data analytics, HA and BCP, Application and Infrastructure Level Security setting, Redis cache and performance accelerators on AWS
As they had 40 million customers across the globe, the challenge of environment migration without any downtime and with huge Cassandra DB (10TB), MongoDB (appx. 4 TB) & MySQL Database (2TB) required hybrid cloud setup between Azure and AWS so that their business remain unaffected and their customers on AWS intact.
We overhauled IT systems
We have been working with ShepHertz’s App42 environment focused on making App developer’s life easy and augment their business. ShepHertz App42 Platform consists of App42 Cloud API – BaaS, AppWarp Multiplayer Gaming Cloud Engine, AppWarpS2, Backend PaaS and App42 Gaming PaaS.
To satisfy all the requirements, we created a complex hybrid cloud setup between two public clouds via Site to Site connectivity between Azure and AWS using Windows 2012 R2 RRAS Server. We created replicated environment on Azure behind the Traffic Manager to connect these cross-cloud platform (Failover mechanism) for Application Servers and started pulling all the data from AWS to Azure and kept both the sites up and running until 6 months before complete migration.
- After the successful data transfer to Azure we pointed the DNS on Traffic Manager to Azure.
- We created the fresh and secure environment as it was on AWS using various security features like Application Gateway, NSGs.
- We migrated their existing Application Servers to Azure App Services with VNET integration so that the application can directly communicate to the MySQL Cluster using private IP through proxy.
Few of the low-end database servers were in HA on AWS thus increasing expenses and required more time in management. We moved them to Azure Premium Storage (SSD) Supported VMs for the better database performance and High SLA.
On AWS ShepHertz’s Redis Cache was hosted on VMs for session management, but that was not efficient and was causing performance issues. We proposed to use Azure Redis Cache PaaS offering and migrated their Redis Service to the same which reduced their VM management time and is more efficient and scalable. We also automated the whole deployment process by creating Azure CLI script which deploys the environment with all the components needed for the setup like MySQL, Tomcat, Jenkins, Git, Apache PostGres SQL etc. which reduced the time and the efforts of the IT Team of ours. Major challenge induced while migration of Cassandra Database Cluster as the database size was huge & it took a lot of time for complete migration. During the process of data sync between the Hybrid Setup, we configured the Application Servers which were on Azure to use Clusters on both the Public Clouds (AWS & Azure) to write & read the data from AWS only until full data sync was achieved.
However, we solved this issue by pointing the application servers to Azure for all read & write operations after the synchronisation was fully done.
Creating a highly resilient hybrid business infrastructure
- The hybrid setup we created between AWS and Azure kept their customers intact from any issues and after the migration to Azure their experience on cloud got better.
- ShepHertz acquired more customers and their customer base increased to 300% in the last couple of quarter and is growing at the same rate which is phenomenal.
- Before migration ShepHertz was using about 85 Servers on AWS and due to the hybrid setup, the migration to Azure was smooth without any business impact. After the implementation, it increased to 400 Servers in previous couple of quarters on Azure running and growing at the same rate.
- We automated the deployment process using Azure CLI which deploys the environment on Azure with all the necessary components like MySQL, Apache, Git, Jenkins, Tomcat etc. preinstalled in the same. It tremendously decreased the time of the deployment and resulted in less efforts for ShepHertz’s IT Team.
A happy customer put us on the highway of innovation
CloudGarage, with its years of experience as a trusted cloud services provider, offered them a hybrid cloud setup that grew their customer base to 300% in the last couple of quarter & growing at the same rate.
Siddhartha Chandurkar (Founder & CEO, ShepHertz Technologies Pvt Ltd.) says: “The support from Microsoft has been phenomenal. From a business perspective, when any attention was required, we had a response in a day’s time. The right people are always deployed for a task. Microsoft sells through partners who have been very supportive.” He cites the example of Microsoft partners CloudGarage & Crayon who delivered the services and provided support.
Encouraged by this Azure win, we have used the same solution for other clients as well including
- WizIQ
- GenPact
- ExtraMarks and many more POCs are ongoing
