AIM Consulting Provides AWS Cost Savings and Trusted Advisory for National Not-for-Profit Health System
OVERVIEW
A national not-for-profit health system had a specific situation needing resolution around their AWS account. The account was discontinued and required deactivation to save the organization from additional monthly spending in the 10’s of thousands.
The internal team, already extended with projects, was unable to take the time necessary to “clean up” this particular account. Due to the nature of the project, it was imperative that the team assigned had advanced skills in AWS networking [for DNS migration]. With a long work history at the organization, AIM had the system engineers with AWS and networking skills for this project.
CHALLENGES
The organization’s existing staff did not have the knowledge around the resources and configurations of the applications in this evacuated AWS Account. The project also required strict change control and communication protocols for successful work in this decommissioning and evacuation process.
SOLUTION
AIM Consulting, using an agile methodology approach, worked directly with the client to define phases for the deactivation of the account. The initial discovery phase provided specific insights into what resources required migration or be decommissioned and documented in Confluence along with AWS tools assessment.
Next, the AIM team created a roadmap for all migration and decommissioning efforts. Using the Kanban method for project tracking, AIM created a backlog of tasks and progress reports reviewed during sprint planning, standup, and sprint retros. A system of change tickets associated with sprint work items kept the team on track and provided insights to the organization’s stakeholders on the progress.
PROJECT EXECUTION
DNS Migration:
AIM audited and documented all hosted zone, DNS entries, and registered domains in the target AWS account. All documentation was collected in Confluence and SharePoint. Walking through all resources and deleted unused abandoned hosted zones and DNS entries. AIM coordinated migration efforts of 26 production website DNS endpoints, without service disruptions, with development teams and department leadership.
Planned and Documented Account Decommissioning Project Roadmap:
AIM reviewed all unused or abandon AWS resources from the target account and documented these items in Confluence and SharePoint. AIM worked with the management and development teams on resource deletion priority and paths forward.
Implemented decommissioning strategy:
AIM leveraged the organization’s change control process to communicate AWS resource decommissioning tasks providing communications and documentation on all resource deletion.
Migrated and Archival of S3 storage object artifacts:
AIM created CloudFormation templates to both add bucket permissions and bucket lifecycle policies to archive S3 bucket data once it was moved out of the evacuated account and over to a newer shared services account. AIM owned and executed on the data migration process communicating changes to the organization, documenting the processes completed, and the final data lifecycle configurations.
RESULTS
AIM was able to migrate DNS out of the evacuated account successfully and redirected the organization’s staff to deploy resources into other accounts. The project concluded with 90% of AWS resources migrated and archived, providing over $10k a month in savings.
After the project concluded, AIM took on the security automation implementation, leveraging AWS Managed services for security, monitoring, and compliance, deployed across 16 AWS accounts. AIM became trusted technical advisors to the organization regarding AWS best practices and security within the AWS environment.
ABOUT AIM CONSULTING
AIM Consulting, an Addison Group company, is an award-winning industry leader in technology consulting and solutions delivery. AIM’s differentiation is our collaborative engagement model that provides cross-functional results. We work with clients, shoulder to shoulder, for one goal – their success. Founded in 2006, with offices in Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Houston, and Chicago, we are ranked among the fastest-growing private companies and best companies to work for due to a long track record of success with our partners and consultants. Our long-term relationships with the best technology consulting talent allow us to deliver on expectations, execute on roadmaps and drive modern technology initiatives.
