Eduardo Gulias – Stories from the trenches: Migrating our cloud provider

Migrating a complex cloud infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform while minimizing downtime and ensuring consistency, Packlink's team shares their story of overcoming challenges and achieving a 81% cost reduction.

Key takeaways
  • Packlink’s cloud infrastructure consisted of over 200 machines, with diverse configurations and manual changes.
  • Moving to a new cloud provider required choosing a tool to manage infrastructure, ultimately selecting Terraform.
  • The project involved migrating databases, data, and microservices, with a focus on minimizing downtime and ensuring consistency.
  • Google Cloud Platform was chosen due to its multiple availability zones, network text, and provisioned machine roles.
  • The team needed to overcome limitations, such as a mid-size provider’s lack of managed services and the need for a programmable API.
  • Automation was a crucial aspect, with the goal of having 98 Ansible roles and 14 Terraform modules.
  • The project took about five months to complete, resulting in a cost reduction of 81% for BI infrastructure.
  • Google Cloud Platform’s benefits include scalable infrastructure, clarity, and pricing, which helped Packlink achieve greater efficiency.
  • The company is planning to continue evolving its infrastructure, considering tools like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm.
  • The experience has taught the team the importance of planning and setting clear objectives, as well as embracing change and learning from failures.