Project Overview
Cerbo, a healthcare technology provider, sought to move its patient portal infrastructure from legacy virtual machines to a more scalable, secure, and cost-effective environment on AWS. Avahi leveraged Amazon EKS, Amazon RDS, and other AWS services to migrate hundreds of clinics efficiently while ensuring high availability and data integrity. This migration streamlined Cerbo’s operations, improved performance, and delivered significant cost savings over the previous hosting model.
About the Customer
Cerbo serves healthcare organizations by providing a robust patient portal and electronic medical records system. Operating in the health tech industry, it offers clinics and practitioners a modern, customizable platform for managing patient information, appointments, and medical records, all with an emphasis on data security and regulatory compliance.
The Problem
Cerbo’s existing hosting arrangement relied on virtual machines at Atlantic.net, creating challenges with scalability, manual processes, and limited cost optimization. As the number of clinics grew to over 800, the environment’s complexity and overhead increased. Continuing on the same path risked frequent downtime, security vulnerabilities, and ballooning operational costs. Cerbo needed a flexible, reliable solution to handle the growing data volumes, ensure compliance, and support seamless patient experiences.
Why AWS
Cerbo selected AWS for its unmatched portfolio of services, global footprint, and proven track record in healthcare data security. Amazon EKS offered the scalability and container orchestration Cerbo required, while Amazon RDS addressed performance and availability needs for its critical patient data. AWS also provides built-in cost-optimization features, robust security services, and HIPAA-eligible offerings, making it the ideal choice for Cerbo’s modernization strategy.
Why Cerbo Chose Avahi
Avahi brought deep expertise in AWS migrations and healthcare compliance requirements, which proved essential for handling sensitive patient data. Its team demonstrated a clear, methodical approach to re-architecting Cerbo’s environment, focusing on automation and reliability. With a strong history of successful AWS projects, Avahi was well-positioned to minimize downtime, optimize costs, and meet Cerbo’s stringent security and compliance standards.
Solution
Avahi devised a multi-phased migration plan, beginning with the assessment of Cerbo’s virtual machines and custom migration scripts. The solution included upgrading Cerbo’s container orchestration to Amazon EKS, where each clinic was isolated by namespace for security. Amazon RDS replaced in-container databases, significantly improving performance and enabling better data backup and recovery.
To enhance reliability, Avahi leveraged AWS Backup, Amazon GuardDuty, and Amazon Inspector for monitoring and threat detection. Storage was optimized by moving from EFS to Amazon S3 for configuration and data files, reducing operational overhead and improving cost efficiency. The team also introduced Karpenter to optimize resource utilization and lower EC2 costs. Finally, Avahi provided detailed runbooks, documentation, and a knowledge transfer session to ensure Cerbo could seamlessly manage its new AWS environment.
Key Deliverables
- Migration plan and cutover schedule for 800+ clinics
- EKS cluster with namespace isolation and automated scaling
- RDS migration to replace container-based databases
- S3-based storage solution and cost-optimization strategies
- Security enhancements (GuardDuty, AWS Backup, Inspector)
- Runbooks, documentation, and knowledge transfer
Metrics
- Reduced monthly hosting costs by up to 30% compared to Atlantic.net
- Successfully migrated 800+ clinics without significant downtime
- Achieved near 99.99% uptime SLA on the new environment
- Eliminated the need for manual file storage management by using Amazon S3
