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INSIGHTS HUB

AWS Architecture Case Study: Scaling for Growth Without Sacrificing Security

#aws #cloud services

Background

A fast-growing Greek SaaS company approached Spacerok with a familiar challenge:

Their platform had outgrown its original single-region AWS setup. They needed to onboard several large B2B clients within months—clients that demanded strong security, compliance (GDPR), and uninterrupted uptime. Their in-house team was lean and focused on product, not infrastructure.

    Key Objectives
  • Seamless onboarding of new (often demanding) enterprise clients
  • Resilience to both traffic surges and system failures
  • Strong, provable security controls for client and regulatory confidence
  • Predictable, optimized costs—no runaway cloud bills

Step 1: Assessing the Legacy Stack

    Their AWS environment had served them well at first:
  • Single VPC in one region
  • All workloads on a handful of EC2 servers
  • Basic S3 usage, manual backups
  • No automation or standardized deployments
  • Minimal IAM segmentation—devs had broad access
    Risks Identified:
  • A single region meant a service outage could take down the entire platform
  • Manual scaling couldn't handle sudden onboarding spikes
  • Limited logging and access controls—raising GDPR and audit concerns
  • Difficulty tracing cost drivers, risking overruns as usage grew

Step 2: Designing for Scale and Security

We proposed a phased refactor, focusing first on resilience and security foundations, then automation and cost efficiency.

Key Decisions and Tradeoffs

    A) Multi-AZ & Disaster Recovery
  • Shifted workloads to run across multiple Availability Zones for high availability
  • Designed automated cross-region backups for critical data
  • Decision: Multi-region active-active was overkill for this stage—phased for future growth
    B) Identity and Access Management (IAM) Overhaul
  • Migrated to least-privilege IAM roles
  • Enforced MFA for all privileged users
  • Segmented dev, test, and prod environments to reduce blast radius
  • Decision: Some legacy scripts needed to be reworked—tradeoff for better access hygiene
    C) Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
  • Defined all resources as code for repeatability and rapid recovery
  • Automated deployments, reducing human error
  • Decision: Required upskilling their ops team, but long-term gains outweighed initial learning curve
    D) Centralized Logging & Monitoring
  • Integrated CloudTrail, GuardDuty, and CloudWatch for unified logging, alerting, and threat detection
  • Set up monthly security reviews and automated compliance checks
    E) Cost Management
  • Implemented budget alerts, reserved instances where justified, and auto-shutdown of idle dev environments
  • Provided monthly spend reports mapped to business activities

Step 3: Implementation and Onboarding

  • Rolled out new architecture in parallel to production, validated with non-critical clients first
  • Staff training: IAM practices, incident response, and cost monitoring
  • Conducted disaster recovery simulations, tuning RTO/RPO targets to client SLAs
  • Documented architecture and policies for both auditors and internal handover

Outcomes

    Resilience
  • Handled unexpected AWS networking issues and scheduled maintenance with minimal user disruption—multi-AZ failover and backups ensured operations continued smoothly.
    Security & Compliance
  • Passed first GDPR/data protection audit with minimal findings
  • New client onboarding checklists made demonstrating controls to enterprise clients straightforward
    Scalability
  • Onboarded three major B2B clients in six weeks, with load-testing and auto-scaling absorbing peak usage.
    Cost Control
  • Cloud spend increased (expected, due to higher usage), but predictably and within budget—thanks to rightsizing and automation.

Lessons Learned

  • Security is a multiplier: Not just a checkbox, but a real enabler for sales and client trust
  • Automate everything you ca: Manual deployments don't scale with growth
  • Documentation matters: Both for audits and for your own sanity as environments evolve
  • Phased improvement beats "big bang" migrations: Business continuity is never optional

Ready to Scale Your Infrastructure?

Considering a cloud architecture refresh or facing similar scaling pains? Spacerok can help you design, implement, and optimize AWS environments that grow with your business—without sacrificing security or losing control over costs.