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Case Study - Transforming Database Resilience for Diglossia with Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

Diglossia, an EdTech startup, is dedicated to transforming the education landscape in the Middle East. The company focuses on empowering underprivileged children by providing educators and government agencies with insightful tools to assess Arabic language literacy levels. Diglossia's automated tests, incorporating written, spoken, and visual methodologies, enable educators to gain a comprehensive understanding of literacy levels at a population scale. This information helps formulate effective policies and strategies to enhance lives and build a brighter future for the region's youth.

Diglossia faced a critical challenge with its on-premise hosting solution managed by a third-party provider. During testing seasons, where hundreds of thousands of students took exams on the platform, the database experienced unpredictable and massive loads. The peak hours witnessed millions of transactions, making it nearly impossible to manage the database load effectively. This led to frequent instances of downtime throughout the month, causing significant concerns about business losses. Given the central role of the database in Diglossia's application, addressing this challenge was of utmost importance.

In response to Diglossia's challenge, our team proposed and executed a migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS), specifically leveraging Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ (Availability Zones), a choice guided by several key differentiators that addressed the limitations of traditional on-premise hosting and offered a transformative solution:

  • Scalability:
    Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL provides exceptional scalability, enabling Diglossia to adapt to varying workloads seamlessly. The platform's ability to handle a dynamic number of read replicas ensures efficient distribution of read traffic, optimizing performance even during peak seasons when the platform experiences a surge in user activity.
    Performance:
    In rigorous benchmark tests, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL showcased superior performance compared to traditional on-premise PostgreSQL setups. The platform demonstrated query execution speeds up to 2 times faster, significantly enhancing efficiency, particularly during peak transaction periods. This accelerated performance extends to result retrieval, ensuring that users on the Diglossia platform experience response times that are up to 2 times quicker. These enhancements contribute to a seamless and responsive user experience, addressing the critical need for efficiency during testing seasons.
    High Availability:
    Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL's architecture incorporates built-in high availability features by replicating data across multiple Availability Zones (Multi-AZ). This strategic approach mitigates the risk of downtime, ensuring continuous operations even in the face of unforeseen disruptions. Diglossia's concerns about business losses due to database outages have been effectively addressed through this robust high-availability strategy.
    Managed Service Benefits:
    The adoption of Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL introduces a paradigm shift in database management for Diglossia. As a fully managed database service, Amazon RDS offloads the operational complexities of day-to-day database management. This transition empowers Diglossia's team to redirect their focus toward optimizing their application's functionality and performance, rather than being burdened by routine maintenance tasks.
    Cost-Effectiveness:
    Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL aligns with Diglossia's budget considerations while delivering enterprise-grade features. The platform's pay-as-you-go model allows for resource scaling based on actual usage, optimizing costs without compromising on performance and reliability. This cost-effectiveness is a key factor in Diglossia's ability to allocate resources efficiently, ensuring a sustainable and economically viable solution.

 

The implementation of Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL brought about a transformative change for Diglossia. The shift from multiple downtimes during peak periods to virtually no downtime has significantly enhanced the reliability and performance of their education platform. The adaptability of read replicas to handle varying workloads during testing seasons has ensured a seamless experience for students and schools. With automated backups and PITR, Diglossia has achieved data resilience and recovery capabilities, further safeguarding their valuable educational resources.
In summary, the adoption of Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL has not only resolved Diglossia's immediate challenges but has also positioned them for sustained growth, scalability, and a seamless educational experience for all stakeholders.

AWS COMPONENTS USED

Amazon RDS

Amazon S3

AWS WAF

Amazon EC2

Amazon ALB

Lambda

AWS ACM Lambda@Edge AWS ElasticCache

 

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