Client Overview
Production Management Software is a leading digital solutions provider focused on transforming the apparel manufacturing industry. The company delivers end-to-end, cloud-based platforms that digitize production workflows, optimize factory operations, and provide real-time analytics for manufacturers.
As their customer base and factory footprint expanded, Production Management Software required a more scalable, secure, and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure to support business growth.
Business Challenge
Production Management Software was hosting its platform on DigitalOcean, which had served well during early growth stages but began showing limitations as scale increased.
Key Challenges
- Limited Scalability
- Infrastructure scaling was largely manual.
- Difficult to support growing factories and production lines efficiently.
- Infrastructure scaling was largely manual.
- Cost Inefficiencies
- Droplets were over-provisioned to handle peak loads.
- Idle resources resulted in higher operational costs.
- Droplets were over-provisioned to handle peak loads.
- Operational Visibility
- Limited centralized monitoring and alerting.
- Troubleshooting production issues was time-consuming.
- Limited centralized monitoring and alerting.
- Availability & Reliability Risks
- Single-region dependency.
- No native load balancing or enterprise-grade HA model.
- Single-region dependency.
Objectives
- Migrate workloads from DigitalOcean to AWS with minimal downtime
- Improve scalability and reliability
- Strengthen security posture
- Introduce centralized monitoring and observability
- Achieve ~40% infrastructure cost savings
Solution Architecture
A highly available, secure AWS architecture was designed to replace the existing DigitalOcean setup.
Key Components
- Amazon VPC with public and private subnets
- EC2-based application layer running PHP + NGINX
- Application Load Balancer (ALB) for traffic distribution
- Amazon RDS (MySQL) with replication for near-zero downtime migration
- AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for SSL/TLS
- CloudWatch for monitoring, logging, and alerting
- IAM & Security Groups for access control and network security
The architecture was designed to support future modernization, including containerization and auto-scaling.
Migration Approach
The migration was executed in five controlled phases to reduce risk and ensure business continuity.
Phase 1: Discovery & Planning
- Audited DigitalOcean droplets, databases, storage, and networking
- Mapped application dependencies
- Designed AWS target architecture and migration runbook
Phase 2: AWS Foundation Setup
- Built VPC, subnets, route tables, IGW, and NAT Gateway
- Provisioned EC2 instances for PHP & NGINX
- Established baseline security and monitoring
Phase 3: Application & Database Migration
- Set up database replication from DigitalOcean to AWS
- Performed bulk data synchronization
- Migrated application code and static assets
Phase 4: Cutover & Validation
- Configured ALB and SSL via ACM
- Performed performance tuning
- Executed DNS cutover with rollback readiness
Phase 5: Post-Migration Optimization
- Implemented centralized logging and alerts
- Right-sized compute resources
- Performed security and cost optimization review
Results & Impact
Cost Optimization
- Achieved approximately 40% reduction in infrastructure costs
- Eliminated over-provisioned resources
- Improved resource utilization
Performance & Reliability
- Load-balanced architecture improved uptime
- Faster response times during peak loads
- Reduced risk of single-point failures
Operational Efficiency
- Centralized monitoring improved incident response
- Simplified deployment and maintenance workflows
- Improved visibility into system health
Security Improvements
- Enforced least-privilege access using IAM
- Isolated application layers in private subnets
- SSL termination at the load balancer
Key Takeaways
- DigitalOcean is suitable for early-stage workloads, but AWS provides better scalability and governance at scale
- Structured migration with replication enables near-zero downtime
- Cost optimization is achievable through right-sizing and AWS-native services
- Cloud migrations should prepare platforms for future modernization, not just lift-and-shift
Technology Stack
- Cloud Provider: AWS
- Compute: EC2
- Load Balancing: Application Load Balancer
- Database: Amazon RDS (MySQL)
- Security: IAM, Security Groups, ACM
- Monitoring: Amazon CloudWatch
Final Outcome
Production Management Software successfully migrated its platform from DigitalOcean to AWS, improving scalability, reliability, and security while achieving ~40% cost savings—positioning the platform for long-term growth and innovation.