Manufacturing enterprises running critical supplier and production systems cannot afford downtime, inconsistent deployments, or weak disaster recovery strategies.
When multiple business applications operate on traditional on-prem infrastructure, common challenges emerge:
- Slow, manual deployments
- No standardized CI/CD
- Limited scalability during production peaks
- Weak audit controls
- No structured disaster recovery strategy
In this post, I'll Walk through how we modernized a multi-application platform on AWS for a high-precision manufacturing enterprise by implementing:
- Standardized CI/CD across three business-critical applications
- Auto Scaling EC2 architecture
- Amazon RDS with automated backups
- Cross-region Disaster Recovery using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)
- IAM, WAF, KMS-based security controls
- Centralized monitoring and audit logging
The transformation improved release velocity, resilience, and compliance while reducing infrastructure costs by ~35%.
The Technical Challenges
The enterprise operated three core applications:
- Supplier Portal
- Tool Pulse
- Gauge Caliber
The limitations of the existing environment included:
1. Manual Deployment Model
- No CI/CD
- Human intervention required for releases
- High rollback risk
- Long release cycles
2. Limited Scalability
- Static infrastructure
- No auto-scaling
- Performance degradation during peak usage
3. Security & Compliance Gaps
- No fine-grained IAM controls
- Limited audit visibility
- No structured encryption controls
4. Disaster Recovery Risks
- No automated failover
- Manual backup processes
- High RTO and RPO exposure
5. Operational Overhead
- Physical server management
- Maintenance complexity
- High infrastructure cost
The objective was not just migration — it was to design a resilient, scalable, DevOps-driven, multi-application platform.
Architecture Overview
All three applications were deployed using a standardized pattern:
Compute Layer
- Amazon EC2 instances
- Auto Scaling Groups
- Private subnets
- Application Load Balancers (ALB) for high availability
Database Layer
- Amazon RDS (MySQL)
- Automated backups enabled
- Multi-AZ deployment for availability
CI/CD Stack
- GitHub (source control)
- AWS CodePipeline
- AWS CodeBuild
- AWS CodeDeploy
Security Controls
- AWS IAM for role-based access
- AWS WAF for web protection
- Amazon CloudFront for secure content delivery
- AWS KMS for encryption
- AWS CloudTrail for audit logging
Monitoring & Alerting
- Amazon CloudWatch
- Amazon SNS for alert notifications
Disaster Recovery
- AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)
- Secondary region replication (Hyderabad)
- Defined RPO/RTO alignment
Standardized CI/CD for All Applications
One of the most impactful design decisions was implementing a centralized CI/CD pipeline across all three applications.
Deployment Flow
- Code committed to GitHub
- CodePipeline triggers automatically
- CodeBuild:
- Compiles application
- Executes unit tests
- CodeDeploy:
- Deploys to staging
- Promotes to production EC2 Auto Scaling Group
This standardization ensured:
- Repeatable deployments
- Reduced human error
- Faster release cycles
- Controlled promotion across Dev → QA → Prod
Release velocity improved by ~60%.
Compute Architecture: EC2 + Auto Scaling
Instead of static instances, we deployed:
- EC2 instances in private subnets
- Application Load Balancer in public subnets
- Auto Scaling Groups for dynamic scaling
Why EC2 over Fargate in this case?
- Existing application dependencies required OS-level customization
- Tight integration with legacy libraries
- Gradual modernization strategy
Auto Scaling allowed:
- Dynamic scaling during supplier portal peaks
- ~40% improvement in application availability
- Cost-efficient compute during non-peak hours
Database Layer: Managed Resilience with Amazon RDS
All three applications used:
- Amazon RDS for MySQL
- Automated backups
- Multi-AZ failover
- Encryption at rest
Why RDS?
- Managed patching
- Built-in failover
- Reduced DBA overhead
- Consistent performance monitoring
This eliminated manual backup complexity and improved reliability.
Security by Design
Security controls were embedded across layers:
Identity & Access
- IAM role-based policies
- Least privilege access
Edge Security
- AWS WAF in front of ALB
- CloudFront for content delivery and protection
Encryption
- AWS KMS for data encryption
- Encrypted RDS storage
Audit & Compliance
CloudTrail logging for:
- Deployment activities
- IAM changes
- Infrastructure updates
This strengthened ISO compliance readiness and audit traceability.
Disaster Recovery with AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)
One of the most critical upgrades was implementing structured DR.
Previous State:
- Manual recovery
- Hours of downtime
- No cross-region failover
New Design:
- Continuous block-level replication to secondary region (Hyderabad)
- Automated recovery orchestration
- Defined RPO/RTO thresholds
Results:
- Failover time reduced from hours → <15 minutes
- Controlled recovery testing
- Minimal business disruption
This aligned strongly with AWS Well-Architected reliability principles.
Monitoring & Operational Visibility
Amazon CloudWatch
- EC2 metrics
- Auto Scaling activity
- RDS performance
- Application logs
Amazon SNS
- Alert notifications
- Incident escalation triggers
Combined with CloudTrail, the platform delivered proactive alerting, faster MTTR, and audit-ready logging.
Quantitative Outcomes
| Area | Result |
|---|---|
| Deployment Speed | ~60% faster releases |
| Scalability | ~40% improved availability at peak |
| Disaster Recovery | Failover <15 minutes |
| Cost Optimization | ~35% infra cost reduction |
| Security | ISO-aligned IAM & encryption |
The biggest transformation was not technical alone — it was operational maturity.
Key Architectural Lessons
1. Standardized CI/CD Across Apps Increases Reliability
Consistency across applications reduces deployment variability.
2. Auto Scaling Is Essential for Manufacturing Workloads
Peak production cycles require elastic compute.
3. DR Must Be Designed, Not Assumed
AWS DRS provides structured, testable failover.
4. Security Must Span Identity, Network, and Data
IAM + WAF + KMS + CloudTrail create layered defense.
5. Managed Services Reduce Operational Burden
RDS and DRS significantly lowered infrastructure complexity.
Final Thoughts
Modernizing manufacturing applications is not about lifting servers into the cloud — it is about:
- Standardizing deployments
- Embedding security controls
- Designing for resilience
- Automating disaster recovery
- Scaling predictably
By implementing CI/CD pipelines, Auto Scaling EC2 architecture, RDS, and cross-region disaster recovery, we transformed a fragmented on-prem setup into a secure, resilient multi-application cloud platform.
For AWS practitioners, this case demonstrates how:
DevOps standardization + Managed Services + Structured DR = Enterprise-grade operational maturity.
Author
Rajat Jindal
VP – Presales
AeonX Digital Technology Limited