TSG has recently been working with multiple clients who are considering whether to deploy their Content Management platform in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud instead of on premise. The discussion typically boils down to “how much would it cost for me to deploy this in the cloud vs procuring hardware and software licenses?” This post will provide a reference architecture and sizing estimate to help understand the various components and their relative costs to procure, support, and maintain an ECM on AWS.
TSG’s OpenContent Management Suite now supports Amazon DynamoDB as a NoSQL database, and recommends it along with S3 storage for clients looking to move their documents to AWS. Below is a reference architecture diagram for the individual pieces of TSG’s OpenContent Management Suite on DynamoDB solution and how they map to the AWS offerings.
DynamoDB satisfies three critical features our clients seek. It is low cost compared to traditional databases, it has the ability to scale quickly, and requires little maintenance since it is a fully managed service from AWS. Some of TSG’s clients are now approaching document counts in the billions and they need a newer type of database that can scale with their data. NoSQL databases are incredibly elastic and TSG has recently performed a 11 billion document benchmark in AWS using DynamoDB to prove out how quickly it can scale. DynamoDB scaling and clustering is handled by Amazon and does not need to be setup by an administrator.
In our 11 billion document benchmark we used Amazon Elasticsearch as a search index, however in the reference architecture above, we choose to use SOLR as the search index. This keeps the environment as close as possible to our recommended Azure and Google Cloud reference architectures to make comparisons easier.
Using AWS can significantly reduce IT maintenance costs month to month by relying on AWS to handle most of the hidden costs of maintaining your own servers and databases. Staff and physical space for servers, backup and recovery, and scaling servers or databases are all real costs that clients incur when managing their own servers. Amazon EC2 instances and DynamoDB databases are all managed in AWS and many of the previously mentioned manual operations are handled either automatically by AWS (like scaling and backups) or with a few simple clicks in the Admin console.
Please click below to download the costing estimate or to contact us for more information:
