Objectives:

The main objectives of the evaluation are:

  • To identify potential areas of improvement in the startup's AWS infrastructure to ensure BCP DR readiness.
  • To evaluate the scalability of the infrastructure to support a global launch.
  • To optimize the infrastructure for cost-effectiveness.
  • To evaluate the security of the infrastructure and identify potential vulnerabilities.
  • To check the code complexity and data security for optimization.

Methodology:

To evaluate the BCP readiness of ABC Learning's infrastructure, we conducted a thorough analysis, including their architecture and configuration. We reviewed their disaster recovery and business continuity plans to ensure that they have the necessary processes and procedures in place to minimize downtime in the event of a disaster.

For scalability of the infrastructure, we conducted a load testing and performance analysis of their AWS resources. We simulated the expected student and school traffic and user base of a global launch and monitored the performance of their resources under heavy load. We also reviewed their scaling policies and processes to ensure that they can quickly and easily scale their resources as needed.

To optimize the infrastructure for cost-effectiveness, we analyzed their AWS resource usage and identified potential areas for optimization. We reviewed their usage of AWS services such as Elastic Beanstalk, RDS, Document DB, S3 etc. and made recommendations for alternate services to optimize their usage, reduce costs and provide multi region availability.

To evaluate the security of the infrastructure, we conducted a thorough analysis of their AWS security controls, including access controls, network security, and data security. We reviewed their AWS security groups, IAM policies, and encryption practices to identify potential vulnerabilities and made recommendations to improve their security posture.

Results:

After conducting our evaluation, we provided organization with a detailed report outlining our findings and recommendations. Our analysis found that their code was well written, clean and structured. The AWS infrastructure services were sufficient to handle a 10x load increase.

We made several recommendations to improve their BCP readiness, including

  • suggesting alternate AWS services to cater to multi region deployment.
  • testing their disaster recovery and business continuity plans regularly.
  • reviewing and updating their AWS architecture and configuration periodically.
  • training their staff on their BCP processes and procedures.

The architectural changes recommended were not only to handle global scale but also be able to handle the load spike and pattern i.e. the load will peak during school hours and then go down across regions. Ensuring the resource allocation is reduced during downtime to optimize cost.

To optimize their cost-effectiveness, we recommended that they implement a right mix of hot-cold multi region architecture optimizing on the cost and recovery downtime. The AWS cost optimization best practices such as rightsizing, scheduling, and using reserved instances, savings plans among others.

To improve their security, we recommended changes on the codebase to manage application security and logging best practices. The AWS security best practices were also recommended on security audits, IAM controls.

Conclusion:

By evaluating their AWS infrastructure for BCP readiness, scalability, cost optimization, and security, Organization ensured that their infrastructure is ready for a successful global launch. Our recommendations helped the startup to optimize their infrastructure, reduce costs, and improve their security posture for a global reach.


Company Background

A rapidly growing US-based Ed Tech company seeking for a global launch in the next 6 months and wanted to ensure that their infrastructure and architecture is scalable, resilient and secure to support the business goals.  They wanted to determine if there are currently any obstacles preventing the organization from attaining its objectives, and how to remedy them while being cost-optimized.

Offering Categories

Services
- Data Integration
- Managed Cloud Services (IaaS/PaaS)