AWS Migration and Application Modernization for a Leading Financial Institution

Introduction

A prominent financial institution, referred to as the client, collaborated with 1CloudHub, a certified AWS Migration Competency Partner, to accelerate their digital transformation journey. As part of this initiative, the client aimed to migrate their Collections application, a critical component of their financial services infrastructure, from on-premises infrastructure to the AWS Cloud. Leveraging 1CloudHub's expertise in AWS services and migration capabilities, the client sought to modernize their application, improve scalability, and enhance operational efficiency.

Collections Application

The Collections application played a pivotal role in the client's financial services operations. It enabled the institution to effectively manage and track customer payments, streamline debt recovery processes, and ensure regulatory compliance. Given the application's significance, the client recognized the need for a secure, scalable, and modernized infrastructure to support its growing demands.

Current Tech Stack: The Collections application's current tech stack comprised:

Front end: The user interface was built using Angular, a popular front-end framework, and hosted on Nginx, a high-performance web server. The application ran on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) virtual machine (VM).

Application/API Layer: The business logic and API endpoints were developed using Node.js, a runtime environment for server-side JavaScript. Similar to the front end, this layer also ran on a RHEL VM.

DB Layer: The application relied on MongoDB, to store and manage collections-related data. The MongoDB database ran on a RHEL VM.

Migration Strategy: The migration strategy devised by 1CloudHub involved modernizing the front end and app layers by transitioning them to containerized environments, enhancing scalability, agility, and ease of management. The DB layer, MongoDB, was migrated to MongoDB Atlas on AWS, a fully managed database service offering high availability, automated backups, and advanced security features.

Phase 1: Migration to Modern Infrastructure on AWS

Account Setup by Landing Zone Team:

• 1CloudHub collaborated with the AWS Landing Zone team to establish a well-architected AWS account structure, ensuring robust governance, security, and cost management practices.

Designed & Data Migration Strategy:

• 1CloudHub worked closely with the client to design a comprehensive migration strategy, including assessing application dependencies, defining data migration approaches, and minimizing downtime during the migration process.

Security Hub Setup:

• Leveraging AWS Security Hub, 1CloudHub implemented centralized security management and compliance monitoring, enabling continuous security assessments and streamlined incident response.

VPC & Subnets - UAT & PROD:

• 1CloudHub designed and implemented a secure Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) architecture, creating isolated network environments for UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and PROD (Production), ensuring data privacy and network segmentation.

UAT Environment Setup for Each Application:

• 1CloudHub provisioned and configured AWS EKS Fargate instances, load balancers, and auto-scaling groups, establishing dedicated UAT environments for each application.

APP Deployment in UAT - Deployment Manifests for EKS:

• Leveraging Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), 1CloudHub facilitated the containerization of the front end and app layers, creating Docker containers and defining deployment manifests for seamless deployment and management.

APP Team Testing and Bug Fixing:

• 1CloudHub collaborated with the application team to conduct thorough testing in the UAT environment, identifying and resolving any bugs or performance issues, ensuring a smooth transition to the new infrastructure.

PROD Setup:

• 1CloudHub replicated the UAT environment setup in the PROD environment, ensuring a consistent and reliable infrastructure setup for production workloads.

Data Migration:

• 1CloudHub executed a seamless migration of collections-related data from the on-premises MongoDB to MongoDB Atlas on AWS, ensuring data integrity, security, and minimal downtime.

MS On-boarding - Prometheus Setup, Fluent Bit Setup:

• 1CloudHub onboarded the Collections application to AWS monitoring and observability tools, configuring Prometheus for metrics collection and Fluent Bit for log aggregation, facilitating proactive monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities.

Cutover and Go-Live:

• 1CloudHub orchestrated a seamless cutover from the legacy infrastructure to the new AWS environment, ensuring minimal disruption to operations. The Collections application successfully went live on the AWS Cloud.

Conclusion

By partnering with 1CloudHub, a certified AWS Migration Competency Partner, the client successfully migrated their Collections application to the AWS Cloud, leveraging a robust set of AWS services. The collaboration between the client and 1CloudHub ensured a secure, scalable, and modern infrastructure, driving operational efficiency and enabling the financial institution to focus on delivering superior customer experiences and driving business growth.