GOStack migrated Latvian real estate leader Rent In Riga from a local data center to AWS, refactoring their application to run on AWS ECS and implementing modern DevOps practices that enabled them to operate independently on a scalable and cost-effective cloud platform.
OVERVIEW
Information
- Client: Rent In Riga
- Industry: Real Estate
- Project Type: Cloud Migration, Application Modernisation, DevOps Transformation
- Services: AWS ECS, AWS RDS, S3, CloudFront, WAF, Infrastructure as Code, EC2 Graviton, Lambda, AWS API Gateway, AWS EFS, Modern DevOps Practises
Intro
Rent In Riga is a leading real estate company in Latvia, offering a comprehensive online portal for renting, selling and managing properties across the country. With a database of thousands of listings, their website is a critical tool for both property seekers and owners. As their business grew, the limitations of their hosting environment in a local data center became a significant bottleneck.
Performance issues, manual operational tasks and a lack of scalability were hindering their ability to innovate and serve their customers effectively. GOStack partnered with Rent In Riga to execute a full migration to AWS, modernising their application and infrastructure to create a platform that was not only stable and scalable but also simple enough for their team to manage independently.
The Challenge
Rent In Riga’s platform was hosted in a traditional local data center, an environment that presented several key challenges for a growing digital business.
- Manual Operations: The infrastructure was not defined as code, meaning every server update, configuration change or new environment setup was a manual, time-consuming and error-prone process.
- Performance Bottlenecks: The monolithic application architecture and the physical limitations of the data center led to performance issues during peak traffic, resulting in a slow experience for users.
- Lack of Developer Autonomy: The development team lacked the autonomy to provision and manage resources independently, creating dependencies on operations staff and hindering their ability to experiment, innovate and take ownership of their services.
- Lack of Scalability: The platform could not automatically scale to meet demand. Preparing for traffic spikes required manual provisioning of hardware, a slow and inefficient process.
- High Operational Overhead: The team was spending a significant amount of time on basic infrastructure maintenance and firefighting, diverting focus from improving the Rent In Riga application itself.
Our Solution
GOStack designed and executed a migration and modernisation project focused on simplicity, scalability and self-sufficiency.
Application Modernisation: The first step was to refactor the monolithic application. We dockerized the application, breaking it down into logical components that could be managed and scaled independently. This prepared the application to run effectively in a modern cloud environment.
Migration to AWS ECS: We chose AWS ECS on EC2 Graviton instances as the core platform for the containerized application. ECS provides a powerful yet simple container orchestration service, while Graviton instances deliver significant price-performance benefits. This combination offered a scalable, cost-effective and easy-to-manage foundation.
Infrastructure as Code: The entire AWS environment was built using Terraform. This Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach ensures that the platform is reproducible, auditable and easy to manage. The Rent In Riga team can now spin up new environments or make changes to production with a simple code commit.
Managed Services for Efficiency: We leveraged a suite of AWS managed services to reduce operational burden. AWS RDS provides a fully managed relational database, Amazon S3 offers scalable object storage and Amazon EFS provides shared file storage. AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway are used for serverless components, further reducing infrastructure management tasks.
Performance and Security: To ensure a fast and secure experience for users, we implemented Amazon CloudFront as a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) and AWS WAF to protect the application from common web exploits.
DevOps Transformation: Established modern CI/CD pipelines with automated testing and deployment processes, significantly improving development velocity and code quality.
Results and Benefits
The project successfully transformed Rent In Riga’s platform and the way their team operates.
- Independent Operation: The simplified architecture and extensive automation empowered the Rent In Riga team to manage their AWS environment independently, without needing a dedicated team of infrastructure specialists.
- Improved Performance and Stability: The modernised application running on AWS ECS delivered a faster, more reliable experience for users, even during peak traffic periods.
- Enhanced Scalability: The platform can now automatically scale resources up or down based on demand, ensuring a consistent user experience while optimising costs.
- Increased Developer Productivity: With the operational burden removed and the deployment process automated, the development team can now focus entirely on delivering value to their customers.
Transformation Impact
For Rent In Riga, the migration to AWS was more than a technical upgrade; it was a fundamental shift in how they operate their digital business. By moving to a modern, automated and scalable cloud platform, they have laid a solid foundation for future growth. They are no longer constrained by their infrastructure and have the freedom and flexibility to innovate and respond to the needs of the dynamic real estate market. The partnership with GOStack has enabled them to become a more agile, efficient and self-sufficient technology-driven company.
About GOStack
GOStack is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner specialising in platform modernisation, DevOps, GitOps and data analytics on AWS. We help technology companies replace legacy infrastructure with modern, scalable and cost-efficient cloud platforms. We also embed the engineering practices that make those platforms sustainable long-term.
Why Partner with Us for Cloud Migration and Modernisation?
Migrating from a local data center to a hyperscale cloud like AWS is an opportunity to modernise your applications, automate your operations and align your technology with your business strategy. We have guided many companies through this journey, ensuring the new platform is not only scalable and secure but also simple enough for your team to manage independently. If your current infrastructure is limiting your growth, let’s talk. Contact us to start your cloud journey.
