Loggi migrates database within the cloud to Microsoft Azure

Challenge

After an advisory project on PostgreSQL in 2017, Loggi decided to keep working with Horus and to rely on the compa' experience in a great challenge: to carry out data migration between clouds from RDS (Amazon) to Azure ( Microsoft). For Marcio Ribeiro, vice president of engineering at Loggi, “the strategy presented by Horus on how to carry out the migration was also fundamental for the choice. We considered two other consultancy firms and opted for Horus because we felt more reassured with the professionals who ran the project, from the budgeting to the execution”.

“We listened to our client to understand their needs beyond the main objective which was the migration. In this step, we found that as important as performing the migration, was the downtime - which should be as little as possible - and the possibility of fallback, in the case the new structure is not able to support the company's operation. Knowing this, we designed a strategy to accommodate all these factors” says Vinicius Feltrin, commercial and operations director at Horus Solutions. The original platform, where Loggi’ database resided with its PostgreSQL, was an Amazon SaaS known as RDS (Relational Database Service). "This service limited settings and accesses, one of the limitations being the lack of replication by streaming wal", says Feltrin.

Solution

Aware of this problem, Horus developed a two-step migration strategy: first was a temporary move, within Amazon itself, to exit the RDS for EC2 cloud server. The second step consisted of replicating via streaming wal between Clouds (Amazon for Azure). According to Feltrin, “with this replication process we would guarantee the ability to switch databases in 10 minutes and, mainly, to undo the process at the same time. This would ensure a minimum downtime on the customer's platform”.

“Horus Solutions made the level of use of resources remain between the two clouds, which in itself is already a success, as it did not cause any negative impact on Loggi's business”, says Ribeiro. Feltrin states that “the observed benefits are the safety to undo all the processes if needed during the migration process; the downtime of only 0.5% of the operation time and the safety of migrating while the integrity of the information is guaranteed”.

“Migrating infrastructure always involves risks. Therefore, without the model implemented by Horus we wouldn’t have the flexibility to move from a Cloud provider to another, with a downtime of 10 minutes. This guarantees safety and minimal unavailability of the operations”, concludes Ribeiro. After the migration, both companies reached an agreement in which Horus takes over Loggi’s database preventive management and monitoring.