Migration of IT systems to the cloud and infrastructure modernization for Searchmetrics

About the project

Client:

Searchmetrics is a leading company in the SEO industry, offering an advanced platform for online marketing. The core of the company’s operations lies in services based on Search and Content Marketing. The goal of the project was to support Searchmetrics’ main product – the SEO platform – by modernizing and migrating system microservices to the cloud, upgrading IT infrastructure, and improving the performance and reliability of the application environment.

Project goal:

Migrate the IT environment to the cloud to reduce costs and improve application management.

Optimize the infrastructure and enhance service responsiveness to meet growing user demands.

Modernize legacy services and align them with modern technological standards.

Customer experience

Experienced developers with wide competencies and excellent communication skills and culture supported us in reaching our goals.

Carsten Neuendorf

VP Engineering, Searchmetrics GmbH

From challenge

Key Challenges

Modernizing legacy PHP services to improve responsiveness, scalability, and enable deployment within AWS ECS clusters.

Integrating modern cloud tools with the existing infrastructure using CloudFormation and Ansible.

Migrating large databases to AWS while ensuring uninterrupted service availability.

Implementing new microservices using Java technology.

Key functional and non-functional requirements:

Scalable infrastructure to quickly adapt resources to changing workloads.

Implementation of mechanisms to separate user-generated traffic from internal application traffic.

Deployment of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) configurations to improve environment management and scalability.

Through the solution

Infrastructure analysis and reorganization

A thorough analysis of the existing infrastructure was carried out to identify gaps and opportunities for optimization.
Infrastructure code was implemented using AWS CloudFormation for better manageability and consistency.

Modernization of legacy services

Legacy services written in PHP and Java were adapted to modern technological standards.
The services were containerized using Docker, which provided flexibility in application management.
Health-check mechanisms were introduced to monitor application status and ensure stable deployment within AWS ECS clusters.

Cloud mechanism implementation

Services were deployed on AWS ECS clusters, enabling easier management and scaling.
Load balancing mechanisms were added using Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), increasing application reliability and ensuring smooth performance even during high traffic periods.
Data from the original databases was migrated to Amazon RDS using AWS Database Migration Service.

Reverse engineering and automation

Reverse engineering of the infrastructure was conducted to recreate its configuration as code, in line with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles.
New infrastructure configurations were created to enable more effective environment management and facilitate future development.

Adaptation to AWS ECS

Legacy services were adapted for the AWS ECS environment, which included code refactoring and integration of new features.
The issues related to compatibility have been resolved, and additional functionalities improving performance and reliability have been implemented.

Optimization of operational processes

Implementing infrastructure as code streamlined operational workflows and significantly accelerated the system migration process.
The adopted solutions ensured scalability, performance, and ease of environment management, while also eliminating issues related to application availability.

Use of modern technologies

Docker: Enabled efficient application management through containerization.
AWS ECS: Provided a robust platform for managing and scaling services.
Elastic Load Balancer: Enhanced application reliability by distributing traffic evenly.
CloudFormation: Used to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
Infrastructure as Code: Introduced consistency and automation in infrastructure management.
AWS Database Migration Service, Amazon RDS: Supported the seamless migration and hosting of databases in the cloud.