Introduction
During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a major online testing platform faced significant challenges in handling exponential user growth. The platform, which facilitated appointment scheduling and test result management, experienced massive spikes in traffic, reaching up to 25,000–30,000 daily users. The existing infrastructure, hosted on a small-scale provider, could not handle the sudden surge in demand, leading to frequent downtimes and performance issues. Additionally, the platform suffered recurring Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, further destabilizing its services and impacting user experience.
Challenges and Solutions
To address these critical challenges, ITGix undertook a full-scale migration of the platform’s infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS), implementing a robust and scalable cloud-native solution. The transition of services from the legacy hosting provider to AWS allowed the integration of Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) for a microservices-based architecture. Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC) was implemented using Terraform, automating deployment and management processes. To enhance deployment efficiency, end-to-end CI/CD pipelines were developed using GitLab, ensuring fast, reliable, and automated rollouts.
Security and Performance Enhancements
Security was another key focus, with Cloudflare being deployed to mitigate large-scale DDoS attacks, ensuring uninterrupted service availability. Additionally, automated scalability strategies were integrated to dynamically adjust infrastructure resources based on real-time traffic fluctuations, preventing resource wastage while maintaining high performance. The improvements resulted in a significant enhancement in stability, allowing the new infrastructure to handle traffic spikes 10–20 times higher than the initial implementation. Furthermore, the security measures successfully mitigated multiple DDoS attacks, preserving service reliability and user trust.
Cost Optimization and Support
Beyond operational stability, ITGix’s solutions brought notable cost optimizations by continuously monitoring and automating resource management. These efforts resulted in reduced infrastructure costs while maintaining peak efficiency. Throughout the critical demand period, ITGix also provided round-the-clock operational support, ensuring reliability and performance at all times.
Technology Stack
The technology stack implemented for this transformation included AWS services such as EKS, RDS with MySQL and PostgreSQL, CloudFront, and Application Load Balancers. Infrastructure as Code was managed with Terraform, while Cloudflare played a crucial role in security and DDoS protection. GitLab CI/CD pipelines facilitated streamlined development and deployment processes. On the application side, Nginx and PHP powered the backend, while JavaScript was utilized for front-end applications.
Conclusion
By implementing a cloud-native, scalable, and secure solution, ITGix empowered the testing platform to efficiently serve millions of users during one of the most critical healthcare crises in modern history. The infrastructure overhaul ensured operational continuity, security, and cost efficiency, establishing a robust foundation for handling large-scale public health initiatives.