Migrating an App from AWS Cloud to Google Cloud platform

DevOps  |     |  

Our clients are what make our job interesting. At Loves Cloud, we work with an interesting assortment of clients coming from diverse industries. One of these clients runs a popular dating site in the US. They also provide other business services through the app. Not very long ago, they approached us to help them in migrating their application and all the data from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Google cloud platform (GCP).

What made us take this challenge?

In today’s world of digital transformation, every individual is inclined towards using dating applications like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge as Artificial Intelligence-based matching services provided by these applications tend to match them up with a like-minded individuals almost every time. And not only just better match results, these apps also provide better security and reliability along with other business services. Needless to say, these multiple features make the app complex and the databases, rather heavy. After a certain point in time, maintaining data security becomes a challenge leading to uncontrolled cost escalation. Our client too was facing the same challenge. They were looking to cut down the operational cost while making the application more secure and reliable for the customers. We thought it was interesting but doable; and so, immediately got down to providing a solution!

Benefits we were jointly looking at from this migration project:

The Loves Cloud team had a detailed discussion with the VP-IT of the client company. Several SMART objectives and benefits were discussed. Finally, a set of goals were laid out which were to be achieved by us.

  1. Migrating application and database servers to GCP from AWS: Operating an application through GCP is much more cost-effective than operating through AWS. Doing that would pare down the overall cost.
  2. Migrating application data and databases to GCP servers: The client was not only running the application from AWS but was also using different value-added services from AWS such as AWS S3 for object and data storage along with Lambda services for Serverless computing. It was our duty to educate them about similar services available on GCP and implement the same for seamless running of their application. That would also help them in bringing down the operational cost.
  3. Migrating application data and other related resources to GCP (S3, Lambda, etc).
  4. Configuring all servers, services and applications to run on GCP

Project execution and value-addition:

We followed the following steps to reach the goals we had identified for the project

  1. All the application servers, database servers, load balancers and other resources were migrated to GCP from AWS. This covered the application, storage and computing services for the back-end, mobile, and web solutions. Google keeps it very simple for the back-end solution using a simple file system which can also be termed as the foundation of GCP. This makes the task of a developer significantly easy for developing, testing and deploying a production based application.
  2. The comparable services available with AWS such as S3 for data storage and Lambda service for serverless computing were configured for various computers and mobiles. We introduced Google Functions and Google Cloud Storage (GCS) to the client.
    • Google Function: Google Function or Compute Engine is a very light-weight computing engine based on cloud. Being lightweight, it offers developers the ease of creating single purpose and stand-alone functions which only respond to cloud events. This entire work can be done without one having to maintain or manage any application server or in case of any application, a runtime environment.
    • Google Cloud Storage: GCS was introduced replacing the AWS S3 service. GCS is an object storage service which is highly durable and at the same time, easily accessible. The basic objective of this whole project was to reach a solution that provides seamless user experience to the users. GCS made sure that the users could access all application data and other services from anywhere in the world without experiencing any technical glitch.

Presenting a simple application level programming interface using GCS also allowed the user to reap the benefits of a strong service level agreement.

The client was able to avail a few more advantages like:

  1. Secure and viable access
  2. Storage facility which comes with the usability of a feature-rich API- can be considered as a strong advantage for the development team.
  3. Adjustability and cost-effectiveness in terms of maintenance.

The last step was to set up real-time monitoring to keep a close watch on the cost and performance of the resources running on GCP. This was achieved using a tool named StackDriver. StackDriver would send alerts for performance improvements to the development team for better efficacy and lesser downtime.

Tools and services used:

We used the following tools, platforms and programming and scripting languages for the solution:

  • Google Cloud Platform: Public cloud platform used for migrating the application from AWS.
    • Compute Engine: to create functions for the migration and further developmental usages.
    • Cloud Storage: as a replacement for object-based storage in place of Amazon S3.
    • Google Functions: for migrating different resources and application data servers
    • StackDriver: an alarming tool for performance and cost monitoring.
  • .NET was used for programming and scripting purposes.

Fruitful implementation and achievement:

Thanks to smart planning and swift execution, we were successful in migrating the app from AWS to Google Cloud platform in no time. The pre-defined goals were reached along with below value-addition:

  • The application was up and running on Google Cloud within a very short time after migration.
  • We were able to help our client size up the application which enhanced its performance along with the usage of right types of Google Cloud services.
  • Proactive cost monitoring was added to make sure that the operational cost didn’t exceed the budget. Monitoring of all the Google Cloud resources was also streamlined.

At Loves Cloud, we are constantly leveraging the power of various public cloud computing platforms along with multiple open source software solutions to automate, optimize, and scale workloads of our customers. To learn more about our services aimed at the digital transformation of your business, please visit https://www.loves.cloud/ or write to us at biz@loves.cloud.