Altmetric future-proof their Infrastructure through AWS Migration with Bytes

Overview

Altmetric, a provider of research data and tools for scholarly publishing, wanted to migrate its existing OVH infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Bytes was engaged to deliver the migration project and design a new AWS infrastructure using VPC Networking, EC2 Compute, Savings Plans, Terraform for Infrastructure as Code, Ansible for Configuration Management, and Nomad for containerisation.

Challenge

Altmetric's existing OVH infrastructure was difficult to manage and scale, leading to poor performance and reliability. The company needed a more flexible and agile infrastructure that could respond quickly to changing business requirements and customer demands, while reducing costs.

The challenge was to design and deliver an AWS infrastructure that leverages the advantages of cloud cost, efficiency, and ability to scale. The migration project also had to be completed with minimal disruption to the business.

Bytes technical and project team worked very closely with me & my team to understand in detail the requirements of the platform. The AWS funding we got from working with Bytes helped accelerate this project and reduced our total cost of the migration. We were very happy with the work carried out by the Bytes team and we’re now working on optimising the environment further to bring costs down as well as exploring the varied service and technology offerings that the AWS platform provides access to in order to further enhance our infrastructure and our business

Alex Enachioaie, Head of Infrastructure at Altmetric

The Bytes Solution

Bytes worked closely with Altmetric to design and deliver a new AWS infrastructure that could support its platform and meet its requirements. The new infrastructure was designed around VPC Networking and EC2; built using Terraform for Infrastructure as Code and Ansible for Configuration Management; while maintaining Nomad for containerisation.

VPC Networking was used to create a secure and scalable network infrastructure for Altmetric's platform. EC2 were used to host Altmetric's applications and services, while Savings Plans were implemented to optimise infrastructure costs.

Terraform was used to automate the provisioning and management of the infrastructure, allowing for rapid deployment into multiple accounts and environments, and configuration of resources. Ansible was used to manage the configuration of the infrastructure, enabling easy management of servers and applications at scale. Nomad was maintained for containerisation as used in OVH, allowing Altmetric to easily deploy and manage containerised applications in the new infrastructure.

Bytes also worked with Altmetric to implement a data recovery strategy using AWS services such as AWS Data Lifecycle Manager, to ensure business continuity in the event of a failure.

Lastly, Bytes has implemented dashboards through Cloudwatch to monitor critical metrics of the infrastructure and get ahead of issues or to assist with investigations.

Benefits

The migration to AWS has enabled Altmetric to future-proof its infrastructure and improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of its platform. The new infrastructure has allowed Altmetric to respond quickly to changing business requirements and customer demands.

The use of AWS Services together with Terraform and Ansible has provided Altmetric with a more flexible and agile infrastructure that can scale to meet changing demands.  

The use of Infrastructure as Code (IAC) and Configuration Management has allowed Altmetric to automate the provisioning and management of its infrastructure, reducing manual effort and improving reliability.

The disaster recovery strategy implemented by Bytes has enabled Altmetric to ensure data restoration in the event of a failure, providing peace of mind and reducing the risk of disruption to the business.

In summary, Bytes' migration of Altmetric's OVH infrastructure to AWS has provided Altmetric with a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure that can meet the company's growing needs as well as future-proof its infrastructure and improve its platform's performance, reliability, and security, while the data recovery strategy implemented by Bytes has ensured business continuity in the event of a failure.

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