Optimizing Nextcloud Deployment with EC2 & Ansible

Our client hosts multiple services under one roof, specializing in helping individuals, communities, and societies to implement a sustainable change. There is no doubt that their charity-oriented mission requires robust technical support. In this regard, the
Matoffo team, a reliable and trustworthy cloud development provider, contributed to the organization’s humanitarian activities by optimizing Nextcloud deployment with EC2 and Ansible technologies. Eventually, our cooperation resulted in a functional AWS-powered solution that boosted operational efficiency and enhanced user satisfaction rate.

As an international humanitarian organization, the company brings healthcare and educational networks to the new edge by delivering relief and development programs to people in over 130 countries around the globe. Aimed at boosting sustainable change in local communities, companies, and organizations, their team initiates significant improvements in terms of health, economic growth, and education sectors. The unique mesh of their on-the-ground approach and life-saving mission enables the organization to deliver immediate assistance in times of crisis while handling multifaceted solutions in order to build true partnerships with the communities they serve.

When the global humanitarian mission is at stake, a robust technology foundation is not a whim but a necessity. Unfortunately, our client faced several challenges with their existing Nextcloud setup deployed in Kubernetes, which affected their overall
performance.

First, the organization experienced a severe lack of application stability. The PHP application within Kubernetes frequently crashed because of volume size issues, causing disruptions.

Second, they prioritized volume handling since the existing container version was not optimized for large volumes, which was essential for managing the file operations of over 1,000 employees.

Last but not least, scalability issues posed a block for the company’s growth and development. The free version of Nextcloud could not effectively handle the large user base, causing problems with file management.

The above mentioned challenges led to frequent downtimes, so the organization faced issues with file management while overall productivity and user satisfaction decreased at a rapid pace. Without addressing these challenges, the organization could not
maintain operational efficiency at a satisfactory level.

AWS provides a comprehensive, scalable, and reliable infrastructure that perfectly meets all the project’s technical and operational requirements. While EC2 instances ensure scalable compute capacity, crucial for handling varying loads, AWS’s ability to scale up or down based on demand provides stable and responsive performance, even during peak times.
At the same time, Amazon S3 is an excellent technology for managing large volumes of data, especially critical for the client’s extensive file operations. Ensuring next-gen data durability, availability, and security, Amazon S3 helps to establish reliable persistent storage, while Terragrunt automates the provisioning of EC2 instances, turning the deployment process into a streamlined journey.

Since our client handles tons of relevant data and resources that can eventually save someone’s life, they do not have the right to tempt fate by implementing inefficient solutions. Bearing this crucial fact in mind, they contacted several top-rated cloud development providers to choose the one they are ready to entrust their mission to. Luckily, Matoffo proved itself as a trusted partner that quickly gets to the core of the established issue and comes up with a functional solution that meets and exceeds the client’s expectations. With our client-focused approach and dedication to excellence, we delivered a solution that contributed to the client’s growth in the long term perspective.

The Matoffo team implemented a comprehensive solution to address the client’s challenges by migrating Nextcloud to an EC2 instance using Terragrunt for provisioning and Ansible for configuration management. The solution could be spread into several key phases.

1. Proof of Concept (PoC)

First and foremost, our developers started with Terragrunt. Hence, we deployed an EC2 instance to establish the new environment for Nextcloud, which, in turn, ensured scalability and stability. This is where the Ansible configuration came into play. Our engineers configured the EC2 instance with Ansible, automating the setup process and ensuring consistent environment settings. Finally, it was time for database and package migration. By completing a copy of the existing database and package to the new instance, we verified compatibility between the Kubernetes and EC2 environments.

2. Migration & Optimization

Speaking of persistent storage, the Matoffo team ensured it was correctly set up to handle large volumes of data. Over and above that, our developers put an emphasis on optimizing configuration. We conducted several post-migration sessions to fine-tune the configurations, addressing issues where user operations exceeded the pre-configured limits for PHP and Nextcloud.

The development team included three Senior DevOps engineers responsible for different processes. In general, it took us about a month to deliver a ready-to-use AWS solution. To complete this project, our team used the following tech stack: Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Terragrunt, Ansible, PHP, and Nextcloud.

Although this comprehensive solution may be described as a thorough development process that resulted in vast functionality, the Matoffo team also perceived this project as a meaningful contribution to the client’s global humanitarian mission. Thus, our fruitful cooperation brought value in the following aspects:

● Improved Stability
We eliminated frequent crashes experienced in the Kubernetes environment thanks to reduced application downtime.

● Enhanced Performance
By optimizing configurations, our development team enhanced file upload and download speeds.

● Scalability
The new setup successfully managed an increase in user base without performance degradation.

● User Satisfaction
Employee surveys reported an increase in satisfaction with the file management system.

Since this is not the first collaboration with the client, our development team managed to earn their trust. Over the span of this project, we not only succeeded in creating an on-budget and on-time turnkey AWS solution but also paid extra attention to each function so that everything works according to the customer’s requirements. After all, the client is delighted with the result, so we will be glad to continue cooperation with this incredible humanitarian organization in the future.