ITSB into the Cloud

Technical Project and Planning notes

Sunday night steps

Key assumption: All apps are already up and running
www.itskillbuilderassessment.com/itsb
dev.itskillbuilderassessment.com/trial
dev.itskillbuilderassessment.com/dev
dev.itskillbuilderassessment.com/staging

1. Switch LB to maintenance mode
2. Export DB
3. Create DB
4. Import data
5. Name DNS changes
6. Test
7. Report out to team for testing

Timeline

• Co-Lo contract expires Feb-2016 (60 day notice must be given so December-2015 deadline). Planning a letter sent for 90 days (Nov 28th).

• Would like to go live at least 30 days ahead of this: Jan 1,2016 latest possible; give ourselves about a month to test in parallel; perhaps migrate some early customer (trial customers?

1. Database and Tomcat servers (Proof of concept) Oct 30th
2. Networking and Tools (Code, Apache hosted sites, Code repo and traffic management) Nov
3. Create dev environment Dec
4. Migrate Prod TBD

Requirements

• One production web-app servers (Linux, Java, Tomcat) 2 cpu/8GB level

• One test/staging web server as above, but single cpu level

• RDBMS server (in same network location); 2 to 4 cpu and around 8-10 GB RAM

• Use backup of instance image for redundancy

• Backup storage & automated backup of database

• Load balancing with Elastic Cloud; amazon security rules for firewall. Any IP/DNS services needed?

• Auto-scaling (do we need?) Elastic Cloud

Questions & ToDo �s

• Are all current & upcoming customers OK with a cloud based solution (Boeing?)

• Any reason to look at cloud providers other than AWS?

• Cost breakdown:

  • 1 web server + 1 RDBMS server for production, to start

  • development server

  • development database (or share production machine?)

  • redundant in another geo site (?)

  • other infrastructure needed?

• OK with free linux or Red Hat?

• Other platform upgrades (for security, stability)

  • java version upgrade to v7 or v8
  • struts 1.2 (EOL) to struts 2 (current version)
  • hibernate platform (database layer) upgrade
  • tomcat web server upgrade to current version (v8)
• resolve (and test!) ability to send emails from the app when hosted under AWS

• IBM database license for the cloud?

  • found out (4/16/15) we can use our existing workgroup server license

  • there are some notable advantages, still, in considering a switch to MySQL:
    • no license cost
    • use Amazon RDS instance: very simple to manage, replicate, backup

• Data security for the cloud - what changes to our app? Database? (eg encryption)

  • encrypt or hash user passwords in database
  • encrypt other user-identifying info: email addresses?
  • security scan tool?

Plan

• build small cloud instance to try out OS, Java, Tomcat, DB setup �proof of concept�

• Answer open questions on cost, setup, logistics

• Build schedule for deploy and migration

Scott Maxson - 2015-01-27

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