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Migration of RDS Instances to Graviton Architecture

Discover how migrating RDS MySQL instances to AWS Graviton processors can enhance performance and cut costs. This approach ensures seamless transitions with minimal downtime, optimising your cloud infrastructure for modern workloads.

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Client Overview

Humanoo (Acquired by Telus) operating in the healthcare industry, has developed an innovative platform that caters to employee retention and corporate wellness. The platform is designed to provide comprehensive wellness solutions to insurance companies and employers.

By implementing these wellness programs, companies can improve employee satisfaction, reduce absenteeism, and enhance productivity. By leveraging cutting-edge technology and customised wellness programs, the start-up helps companies create a healthier and more supportive work environment that benefits both employees and employers.

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Challenge

The client’s microservices architecture was deployed on AWS ECS Fargate, utilising RDS MySQL instances for each microservice. However, they faced significant challenges:

Performance Optimisation

The client needed to enhance the performance of their RDS instances, particularly focusing on improving the efficiency of MySQL query operations.

Cost Efficiency

The client aimed to reduce the operational costs associated with running multiple RDS instances.

Solution

  • In order to use Graviton for RDS MySQL instances, running MySQL version should be at least version 8. Therefore, our team upgraded the MySQL version of the instances from 5 to 8 first.
  • In order to operate the migration with minimum downtime, our team got the advantage of the RDS Blue/Green Deployments feature.

With RDS Blue/Green deployments,

  • We first created a Green environment from the existing RDS instances, including read replicas.
  • Then, we changed the RDS instance type to Graviton equivalent in the Green environment.
  • And we completed the switch operation with minimum downtime, which is less than 1 minute!
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Results

The transition to Graviton-based RDS instances has resulted in significant advantages.

Migration to Graviton

All RDS instances have been successfully migrated to the AWS Graviton processor family. This shift has enhanced the overall performance of the client’s database workloads, leveraging Graviton's energy efficiency and processing power.


Improved Resource Utilisation

Post-migration metrics indicate better performance with reduced resource utilization. The RDS instances now consume fewer CPU and memory resources while delivering the same or improved performance, leading to more efficient operation.

Cost Savings

The client's improved efficiency allows them to consider downgrading to smaller RDS instance types, resulting in significant cost savings. This adjustment ensures optimal performance while reducing operational costs, leading to an annual saving of $36,000 on AWS!

Technology Stack

To successfully migrate the microservice workloads to the Graviton architecture, the following technologies were utilised:
  • Database Service: AWS RDS on Graviton
  • Monitoring and Performance Tracking: AWS CloudWatch
By utilising this strong technology stack, the transition to the Graviton architecture was smooth, leading to enhanced performance and decreased operational costs for the client's microservice workloads.
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