AWS Workload Solution for a Server-based environment in West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree)

West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree) is a scholarship initiative by the West Bengal Government, aimed at providing financial assistance to minority students pursuing higher education. The project seeks to empower students from minority communities by offering scholarships for various education levels, covering tuition fees and living expenses. Through this program, the government aims to promote equal access to education, alleviate financial barriers, and support the educational aspirations of minority students in West Bengal, fostering their academic growth and future contributions to society.

Customer Challenges

The primary focus was to create a new architecture to host West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree) application and website in AWS Cloud infrastructure with apache2 or PostgreSQL based application, which was earlier deployed on an on premise or Tata Cloud infrastructure. The challenges faced on this infrastructure were:

• Multiple Single Points of failure in terms of Networking and Scalability.
• Increased cost of maintenance due added cost of Hardware and Tata Cloud.
• Website performance issue.
• There was no scope to handle to too much of load.
• Remote users had issue with server bandwidth.
• No scope for maintaining backups of the database and other application files.

To address these requirements, West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree) engaged with Cogenerate Technologies to implement the application infrastructure on the AWS Cloud and also make it compliant with secure, high performing, resilient, and have an efficient infrastructure for their applications.

Solution Approach

The West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree) Project is based on 5 pillars of AWS Well- Architected frame work- Operational excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency and Cost Optimization

• Cogenerate Technologies prepared an AWS account to create all the infra in Mumbai Region
• All the web-servers were placed in the public subnet and database servers were placed in private and they will have non-routable IPs over the internet attached to it.
• Servers can be accessed only SSH from selected IP addresses as mentioned by West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree) IT Department. Provided secure keys for SSH for accessing the servers.
• All the Web-servers are bound with SSL certificate.
• For handle too much of load implemented autos calling for the web application
• PostgreSQL server was deployed on the virtual machine for the database Layer.
• Cogenerate enabled phpPgAdmin web interface Server management studio on the server for each user to connect to the database. This allowed the database administrators to work on database through management studio.
• Apache2 server has been installed for web-application hosting.
• The application is built on PHP with database as PostgreSQL- Server.
• Each authenticated users use the SSH to access the EC2 (Development Server) and perform their daily activities.
• Ubuntu OS is periodically updated via Patch Manager during Systems Manager maintenance windows.
• All monitoring is made available using AWS Enterprise tool CloudWatch and Site24x7.
• Infra backup has been implemented with AMI & Snapshots for code backups and for database use shell script for taking backup on daily basis in zip format on S3 bucket.
• All the infra and DB backup is stored on S3 storage service with 4 days retention and can be accessible at any point of time. We have automated all the backup and recovery with AWS backup system and power-shell script for windows.
• CloudTrail for recording changes in AWS infra maintain 90 days logs without any additional cost.

Key Services

Security Considerations

• AWS IAM role-based access control to restrict users to only the required resources.
• Access to the EC2 server access is restricted to certain roles and IAM user and is accessible inside the VPC network only.
• All EC2 are hosted within public & private networks thereby avoiding direct exposure.
• Deep visibility into API calls is maintained through AWS Cloud Trail, including who, what, and from where calls were made. All user related activities are tracked and logged.
• For any Administrative task Remote user have to provide IP address of their workstation for accessing the servers.
• All the SSH port are bound with Security-Groups, also default ports will be changed to the custom port.
• SSL Certificate installed onto published Web-Server hosted.
• Encryption enabled both in rest and transit using ACM

Results and Benefits

• We have been able to provision a highly available and secured environment. After moving to AWS customer had achieved 100% Uptime. All provisioned infra running with maximum efficiency without any down time.
• Users are able to connect from only approved terminals.
• All users in West Bengal Minority Commission (Aikyashree) have satisfactorily been using their workstations from AWS Cloud.
• Users have consistently given positive feedback since migration to AWS Cloud Infrastructure.

About Cogenerate Technologies

Cogenerate Technologies, an ISO/IEC 2000-1:2018 certified Company, one of the most trusted Cloud Service provider in Eastern India. The company focuses on Cloud infrastructure migration, Managed services, Container services and has workloads including SAP, Windows, eCommerce, AI etc. The organization is delivering services to both Public sector and Private sector in India and abroad. The company has also developed Cloud based software applications like document management system, hospital management system which has transformed many businesses.

Cogenerate is presently an AWS Select tier PSP and is committed towards providing cost effective quality services to its customers.