A leading fitness technology provider sought a secure, scalable AWS landing zone to migrate critical workloads and enhance data protection. By leveraging AWS services—particularly AWS Storage solutions such as Amazon EFS and AWS Backup—the company modernized operations and enabled future-ready cloud capabilities.
The Challenge
A rapidly expanding health and fitness technology organization was relying on a legacy, on-premises VMware infrastructure that posed significant challenges around scalability, operational agility, and cost efficiency. The on-prem environment used a mix of SAN and NAS storage, which led to capacity planning difficulties and inefficient data management. To accommodate rapid growth and deliver an optimal customer experience, the organization needed a more flexible, resilient, and cost-effective IT environment that would address the complexities of backup, disaster recovery (DR), and ongoing storage expansion.
Recognizing that its existing infrastructure could no longer effectively support evolving business requirements, the company sought to migrate its on-prem workloads to AWS. Key objectives included embracing native AWS services to modernize their IT environment, enhance performance, streamline operations, and reduce total cost of ownership.They aimed to replace a costly third-party backup vendor and improve disaster recovery capabilities through AWS-native storage services.
The Solution
This migration was approached as a Greenfield deployment, focusing on establishing a robust AWS foundation and modernizing the organization’s applications. Priority was given to leveraging AWS storage offerings to ensure scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
- Control Tower Landing Zone
- A multi-account AWS environment was established using AWS Control Tower, ensuring a secure, centrally governed landing zone with guardrails, account management, and logging.
- Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)
- A fully managed, highly scalable file system replaced on-prem file shares. Amazon EFS scales automatically with workload demands, ensuring the organization has flexible and efficient file storage.
- Amazon Aurora
- Legacy MySQL databases were modernized by migrating them to Amazon Aurora, delivering enhanced performance, automatic scaling, and replication. This shift significantly improved throughput and availability.
- AWS Backup & Cross-Account Replication
- Integrated AWS Backup automated data protection with cross-account replication for an added layer of security. This design safeguarded backups in an isolated AWS account, bolstering disaster recovery and compliance.
- AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DR)
- High-priority workloads were protected using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, ensuring minimal downtime and data loss. This setup replicated critical services across AWS regions.
- Security & Compliance
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) best practices were implemented, including role-based access control and MFA, to protect workloads and meet security standards.
- Optimization
- AWS Trusted Advisor was enabled to offer continuous cost-optimization and performance recommendations.
- Operations
- Integration with AWS Systems Manager provided unified operational visibility and automation. Patching, instance management, and compliance reporting were streamlined through automated runbooks and patch management.
The Results
By establishing a robust AWS foundation, the organization achieved significant benefits across performance, disaster recovery, and cost optimization. High-priority workloads are now protected by AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, ensuring seamless business continuity, while migrating legacy MySQL databases to Amazon Aurora elevated throughput and operational efficiency. Additionally, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis demonstrated that moving 40 on-prem virtual machines to AWS could markedly reduce both capital and operational expenditures. This newly modernized environment provides the scalability needed to support future growth, and automated processes via AWS Systems Manager and AWS Backup have streamlined ongoing maintenance. Together, these outcomes underscore a sustainable, cloud-first strategy that aligns technology investments with evolving business demands.
Outcomes & Success Metrics
- Future-Ready Cloud Foundation: The established AWS environment now supports both current workloads and future migrations from on-premises to the cloud.
- Enhanced Disaster Recovery: Critical workloads gained a robust DR solution that did not exist on-prem, ensuring business continuity.
- Improved Database Performance: Migrating MySQL databases to Amazon Aurora significantly increased throughput and reduced administrative overhead.
Benefits & Lessons Learned
Throughout this engagement, the team gained critical insights into optimizing and operating cloud-native workloads within AWS. By closely monitoring performance, automating routine processes, and reviewing cost-saving opportunities, the organization successfully transformed its IT environment. These discoveries illuminate best practices for any enterprise aiming to maintain a secure, efficient, and scalable infrastructure in the cloud.
- Leverage AWS Systems Manager: Regularly patching systems and performing routine operational tasks enhances security and compliance.
- Review and Act on Trusted Advisor Recommendations: Periodic cost and performance optimizations drive ongoing efficiency.
- Right-Size Databases: Evaluating and adjusting database instance sizes in Amazon Aurora can prevent unnecessary costs and optimize performance.
Main AWS Services Used
- AWS Control Tower
- Amazon EC2
- Amazon EFS
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- AWS Backup
- AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
- Amazon Aurora
- Amazon VPC
