Hidden: Dev2Dev’s Zero Downtime Cloud Migration Success Story

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Customer Profile

Founded in 2014, DevToDev provides a comprehensive analytics platform for improved mobile app and game performance which enhances user retention, boosts engagement, and increases revenues. The cloud-based platform transforms customer data into easy-to-understand dashboards with analytical reports that help organizations identify growth opportunities. Dev2Dev can be integrated into any platform and is an ideal solution for developers, analysts, and marketers across a wide variety of industries and sectors.

Partnership Goals

Recently acquired by AppsFlyer, a global leader in marketing measurement and data analytics, DevToDev sought to create synergies between the two companies while simultaneously expanding its offerings to a wider customer base with more product-led solutions that have the potential to accelerate growth.

In order to accomplish its business goals, Dev2Dev determined that it was time to migrate to the cloud. Its on-premise infrastructure, which housed its development and production environments, limited the company’s scalability, made compliance more complicated, and barred access to advanced cloud-based services.

Migration to the cloud had to be seamless with near-perfect uptime during the migration process. There could be no disruption of development workflows, nor could there be interference with DevToDev’s client-facing services. For these reasons, DevToDev chose online migration which has a greater change of keeping operational and customer downtime to a bare minimum over other migration options.

AWS Premier Tier Services partner ProfiSea was chosen by DevToDev to plan and execute the cloud migration and modernization project, alleviating the workload on their in-house DevOps teams while leveraging ProfiSea’s extensive expertise.

Why Amazon Web Services?

DevToDev’s on-premise database sizes “weighed in” at 35 TB Greenplum and 3 TB MongoDB. This database size is quite typical for organizations handling massive volumes of structured and semi-structured data, yet it requires careful optimization for performance, data distribution, and resource management, particularly when migrating to the cloud. Similarly, DevToDev’s MongoDB is considered moderately large for an on-prem system and the size itself can have implications for performance, scalability, and maintenance depending on the infrastructure.

The size of DevToDev’s on-premises databases, coupled with the need for nearly zero downtime during implementation, made the use of AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) crucial for change data capture (CDC), facilitating a smooth migration.

With its proven scalability, robust security features, and unmatched global infrastructure, other AWS suite of services enabled seamless migration, modernization, and operation including Amazon EKS, MSK, RDS, and ElastiCache, which collectively ensured high availability, fast performance, and simplified management.

AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) and AWS IAM Identity Center, ensured secure identity management before third parties access DevToDev systems. AWS Organizations and AWS CloudTrail implemented centralized governance and management across multiple AWS accounts, alongside logging systems that support robust compliance and risk auditing.

AWS services used in this project include: AWS DMS, Amazon EKS, Amazon ECR, Amazon S3, Amazon MSK, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, AWS DocumentDB, AWS Organizations, AWS IAM,  AWS IAM Identity Center

Amazon MQ (RabbitMQ), AWS MSK, EC2, AWS Control Tower, and AWS Landing Zone.

Additional tools and integrations included  Jenkins, Terraform, ArgoCD, Grafana, Prometheus, and ELK Stack.

Cloud Migration Approach

Together with DevToDev, we crafted a controlled and replicable 4-step migration strategy that minimized downtime. Figure 1 below represents the general architecture of the DevToDev system:

Figure 1: General Architecture

1. Preparation of Infrastructure and Accounts: Using AWS Control Tower, a scalable, enterprise-grade AWS Landing Zone (LZ) (see Figure 2 below) was developed that integrated DevToDev’s existing IT ecosystem. TerraformIaC management created an environment that is consistently reproducible, while reducing manual errors, and ensuring compliance with DevToDev’s security policies. Kubernetes clusters (EKS) Setup was implemented to allow for scalable containerized applications in AWS.

Figure 2: Landing Zone

2. Preparation and Testing of Development Environment over AWS: A CI/CD pipeline was established and linked to the new AWS development environment. Best practices security policies, including encryption and role-based access control, were implemented, aligning with DevToDev’s and industry-wide security and compliance policies. IaC was used to house the development environment, ensuring DevToDev’s ability to maintain a consistent and reproducible platform.
3. Dry Run Migration: The CI/CD pipeline was also used for the production environment and a data migration dry run, akin to a pilot, was conducted in order to test and validate the AWS operational environment. A robust monitoring and logging framework was implemented and automation scripts for security procedures were adjusted based on testing feedback. Disaster Recovery (DR) & Business Continuity Planning (BCP) guidelines were developed, documented, and tested.
4. Final Migration: A complete data transfer was initiated after a successful dry run and a comprehensive operations guide was prepared, detailing the management and upkeep of the AWS environments. After the migration, an AWS Well-Architected Review was conducted to ensure that systems were operating according to AWS’s best practices.

Results

From start to finish, the DevToDev cloud migration was successfully completed in 21 weeks. Implementation of the new cloud environment resulted in several mission-critical outcomes:

1. Infrastructure Scalability and Reliability: Integration of AWS services allows DevToDev’s applications to benefit from enhanced scalability and reliability.
2. Enterprise-Level Security: AWS security services safeguard DevToDev’s infrastructure and applications.
3. Operational Efficiency: Development and production environments ensure consistency and reduce operational overhead for DevToDev’s DevOps teams.
4. Cost Optimization: By leveraging Amazon Cost Explorer, AWS Billing, and ProfiSea’s Uniskai, DevToDev achieved better cost transparency and budget planning capabilities.
5. Performance Monitoring: A new monitoring system was configured using Canary deployment and a new alert system was implemented. Grafana, Prometheus, and AWS CloudWatch is used for real-time monitoring of applications and databases.
6. Operational Continuity: By adopting AWS’s highly available architecture and rollback plans, the migration journey ensured zero future downtime for DevToDev’s clients.

ProfiSea: Your Expert Partner In Cloud Migration

ProfiSea is an Israeli boutique DevOps and cloud company that provides comprehensive cloud management services. We offer various services, from customizing existing infrastructures to designing and optimizing cloud solutions.

If you’re an SMB, SME, or large enterprise looking to modernize your DevOps, ProfiSea offers personalized solutions tailored to your needs. Our experts will work with you to ensure minimal disruption to your daily operations and ensure seamless customer experience.

Explore our DevOps services and find out how we can transform your cloud migration journey.