Cloud InfrastructureProduction Recovery / Cloud ResilienceReal Estate System / Cloud Infrastructure

Case study · 01March 2026 - Present

Keeping a Core Business Platform Online During Regional Cloud Instability

Stabilising a core business platform during regional cloud instability by moving critical infrastructure to Frankfurt, migrating large asset storage with AWS DataSync, and reducing response times from minutes to milliseconds.

By Rusty Lopez

3 min read687 viewsAbu Dhabi, UAE

01Role

Production Recovery / Cloud Resilience

Design · Build · Ship

02Timeframe

March 2026 - Present

03Domain

Real Estate System / Cloud Infrastructure

04Category

Cloud Infrastructure

Context

The core business platform was running during a period of regional cloud instability, which created risk around system availability, storage access, and daily business operations. Because the platform supports listings, sales, leads, call center activity, operational workflows, and internal business processes, even short periods of slowness or broken asset access could affect multiple teams. The priority was to keep the system usable while moving critical services away from the affected region. This was not a cosmetic infrastructure change. The platform is part of the company’s daily operating layer, so latency, broken file access, or unstable routing could directly affect listings, lead handling, agent productivity, and management visibility. The work focused on stabilising production access, validating AWS infrastructure, restoring reliable access to uploaded assets, and making sure teams could continue using the system with minimal disruption.

The Problem

The challenge was not only performance. The platform had to remain usable while regional cloud infrastructure was unstable, and the migration had to be handled without breaking production workflows. The system depended on multiple AWS services working together: EC2 for the application layer, RDS MySQL for the production database, S3 for uploaded files and listing images, AWS DataSync for large asset movement, VPC networking for secure connectivity, Route 53 for DNS routing, Cloudflare for external access protection, and Nginx for application traffic handling. A single broken dependency could affect agents, listings, images, records, and daily business operations. The goal was to recover performance, preserve access to uploaded assets, reduce exposure to the affected region, and validate the full production path before teams resumed normal work.

System design

I supported the recovery of the core business platform by moving key services to Frankfurt and validating the full production path across application, database, storage, networking, and routing layers. The setup involved EC2 for the application/API layer, RDS MySQL for the production database, S3 buckets for uploaded platform assets, AWS DataSync for moving large existing asset data, VPC configuration for secure service connectivity, Route 53 for DNS routing, Cloudflare for external access protection, and Nginx for application traffic handling. After the migration, I validated platform workflows, checked asset paths, reviewed latency behaviour, confirmed production access, and supported fixes around storage migration. This helped ensure the system was not only moved, but actually usable for real business operations after the cutover.

Fig. 01 · Cross-region CRM recovery pipelineAWS migration + DataSync asset transfer

Full stack

AWS EC2
AWS RDS
Amazon S3
S3 Cross-Region Replication
VPC
Apache
AWS DataSync
MySQL
Cloudflare
Laravel

Core stack

AWS
EC2
RDS
S3
Route 53
VPC
DataSync

Outcome

The recovery work restored core business platform usability and reduced severe latency from around 3 minutes to approximately 300ms on key operations. Production users were able to continue normal system work, including editing records, accessing listings, and using core modules. Critical infrastructure was stabilised in Frankfurt, while AWS DataSync helped migrate large platform asset storage and preserve access to uploaded files. The work improved resilience by reducing dependency on the affected region and creating a clearer path for future disaster recovery planning.

Key results

Regional failover completedLarge S3 assets migrated with DataSyncProduction CRM/ERP stabilisedLatency reduced from 3m to 100ms

Reflection

What I'd improve next

I would prepare a formal disaster recovery runbook earlier, including multi-AZ checks, cross-region backup validation, DataSync task planning, DNS cutover steps, rollback plans, and post-migration testing. This would make future regional incidents easier to handle, reduce pressure during active disruptions, and make infrastructure recovery safer to repeat.

Projects shipped

Industries served

Years building

10+

Tech specialties

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