CASE STUDY:
Migrating to Google Cloud for autoscalability, efficiency and cost reduction
Key achievements:
99.99%
system availability
Compliance
with ISO 27001 and GDPR
37 TB
of Cloud Storage space utilized
THE GOAL:
Providing Apilo with a scalable, fully managed Google Cloud infrastructure, driving automation, time savings, and improved resource efficiency.
THE STORY
When infrastructure constraints hinder growth
The success and dynamic growth of Apilo meant that the platform, already supporting over 1000 databases and a constantly growing application, naturally approached the performance limits of its existing infrastructure. The company faced a strategic choice: react with short-term solutions or think about the future. To ensure long-term stability and even higher performance for its clients, a key decision was made to transition to a new-generation architecture that is fully scalable and ready for further growth.
Challenges and risks that needed to be addressed:
- Operational challenges – The lack of full control over the hosting environment and a shortage of in-house administrators required a fully managed solution. Remaining with the existing architecture would have led to accumulating technological limitations that would slow down the platform’s development and curb the team’s creative potential.
- Performance and scalability – During peak load times, Apilo users experienced increased latency due to simultaneous traffic surges and a large number of cyclical tasks. For Apilo, the absolute priority is to ensure the highest quality customer experience, regardless of the platform’s growing load. Therefore, implementing a more flexible architecture became crucial to proactively guarantee future stability and reliability.
- Data security – To proactively protect customer data from the effects of unforeseen external events, a need emerged to implement an advanced geo-redundancy mechanism. This approach increases the level of data security and guarantees the platform’s stability in any situation.
To meet these challenges, the Apilo team made the strategic decision to migrate to Google Cloud and entrusted FOTC with the task. The goal was to create a new environment that would provide Apilo with the necessary scalability, flexibility, and reliability, as well as enable more frequent and seamless deployments of new application versions with continuous availability.
THE SOLUTIONS
Full IT architecture modernization with Google Cloud
In response to Apilo’s key challenges, the FOTC team designed and implemented a comprehensive solution based on Google Cloud. The modernization process, which took several months, included a series of workshops and consultations to ensure an optimal, future-proof environment.
The modernization was carried out in stages, allowing for a smooth transition with no interruptions to the platform’s daily operations.
Stage 1 – dockerization and GKE deployment
FOTC specialists began by preparing the development environment, basing it on key Google Cloud services like Cloud Storage and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Using an Infrastructure as Code (IaaC) approach with Terraform, the entire infrastructure was defined in code, ensuring consistency and repeatability. A crucial step was the Dockerization of the Apilo application, which enabled containerization and increased resource utilization efficiency.
Stage 2 – partial data migration and optimization
The next stage focused on migrating 500 GB of data to Google Cloud. FOTC engineers utilized Google libraries, splitting the data into several buckets in Cloud Storage with appropriate lifecycle policies to optimize costs.
Stage 3 – CI/CD automation and cron separation
The team then implemented an automated CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) process using Cloud Build. They introduced a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer, Kubernetes CronJobs, and caching tools (Mcrouter and Memcached). To optimize network costs, Cloud NAT was implemented, and for greater stability and performance, the application’s front end was separated from cyclical tasks (crons).
Stage 4 – full client migration
The final stage was the migration of over 1,000 application databases to separate machines. The database isolation allowed for precise resource limits (requests and limits) to be set for the front end and crons, which solved the issue of performance and I/O resource consumption. The team also addressed challenges like the long PHP image build time in Cloud Build and optimizing log costs.
THE RESULTS
Accelerated deployments and cost savings
Through the partnership with FOTC, Apilo gained a fully modernized environment based on Google Cloud’s best practices. This solution not only eliminated performance and scalability issues but also provided a foundation for the company’s continued dynamic growth.
The key results of the implementation include:
- Increased scalability and performance – The new infrastructure, supported by Horizontal Pod Autoscaler, provides automatic scaling, allowing the Apilo system to handle sudden traffic spikes with ease. Additionally, the Pub/Sub integration enabled scalable and reliable asynchronous communication between system components.
- Time and cost savings – The migration brought a significant reduction in infrastructure costs and allowed for savings in the development environment. Deployments are now faster thanks to automation with Terraform and Cloud Build, which translates into time savings for the Apilo DevOps team.
- Security and reliability – The new environment guarantees 99.99% availability and is fully compliant with ISO 27001 and GDPR standards. What’s more, thanks to automated updates, the infrastructure is always up-to-date, minimizing risks associated with outdated software.
A solid foundation, built on 10 managed services such as Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, Cloud NAT, Cloud Storage, Cloud Build, Redis, and Cloud Load Balancing, provides Apilo with a truly scalable and resilient platform, prepared for growth and future challenges.
SERVICES PROVIDED
CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE
ARCHITECTURE
ENVIRONMENT SETUP
FOR DEVELOPERS
DATABASE MIGRATION
TO GOOGLE CLOUD
IT TRAINING
AND CONSULTING
About Apilo
Area: An e-commerce platform for multichannel sales automation and management
Based: Kraków, Poland
More:
Apilo is a Polish, comprehensive platform for managing multichannel sales. Offering over 600 ready-to-use integrations, it helps companies automate order processing, stock and price synchronization, and logistics. The quality of Apilo’s solutions is confirmed by its status as an official technology partner of market leaders, including Allegro, Amazon, Shoper, cyber_Folks, and Google Cloud.
Moving to Google Cloud unlocked a world of new opportunities, giving us everything from scalability to greater control over our infrastructure. This was a pivotal step in improving our environment, and we received important support from FOTC during this process.
Grzegorz Waligórski, CTO ApiloAutomate and Optimize Your Company's Processes
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