Landauer
HealthcareHow Landauer migrated to OpenSearch and achieved Millisecond Latency with AntStack!
About Landauer
LANDAUER is the leading global provider of technical and analytical services to determine occupational and environmental radiation exposure and the leading domestic provider of outsourced medical physics services.
The company provides dosimetry services to about 1.8 million individuals globally and is used by 78% of United States hospitals. The company offers tools and support for organizations with potential exposure to ionizing radiation, helping them achieve their radiation safety goals.
LANDAUER’s innovations in radiation safety continue to shape the industry in dosimetry and medical physics.
The Challenge
Landauer faced several challenges that needed to be addressed during the process of migrating their data from a proprietary RDBMS solution to AWS OpenSearch.
The biggest challenge was migrating a huge number of records, in just a couple of days, they were able to migrate approximately 32 million records with minimal downtime.
Additionally, the previous system involved AWS EC2 instances running proprietary RDBMS solutions. The setup incurred a recurring proprietary licensing fee, resulting in a considerable expense.
Moreover, the system required the maintenance of several data indexes to enable filtering and search functionalities, leading to a high latency on their website. The fact that AWS EC2 is not a managed service also meant that the system required manual upkeep from time to time, posing another challenge for Landauer.
That’s when AntStack came in to ensure that the migration was seamless, with no downtime and negligible disruptions to Landauer’s operations.
Our Goals
Landauer sought to migrate their existing database to a low-latency solution while exploring the possibilities of an open-source solution.
The project aimed to accomplish the following goals:
- Migrating a huge number of records - close to 32 million records from a proprietary RDBMS to AWS OpenSearch.
- Keeping the production system live during the migration with no to negligible downtime.
- Implementing a new system that can handle high volumes of data, enable filtering and search capabilities, and reduce latency.
- Saving costs and improving scalability by adopting a serverless architecture. Adding additional features as and when the requirements arise.
Each request from the front end reaches the dotNet server. To fetch the data from OpenSearch Domain, the server invokes a lambda function, which is deployed in private subnets to enhance data security.
The setup and deployment of multiple environments were automated using AWS CDK and deployed through Github Action pipelines, eliminating any manual deployments from the process. This approach streamlined the deployment process and reduced the potential for errors.
Impact
Migration To OpenSearch
When Landauer expected to reduce the latency of their report filtering system and avoid proprietary licenses, Antstack suggested migrating to AWS OpenSearch, a managed offering, with Lambda functions and analytics capabilities.
With this move, they were able to eliminate the need for proprietary RDBMS solutions and the associated licensing fees, resulting in significant cost savings. OpenSearch also offered them improved search capabilities and millisecond latency, leading to a better user experience for their customers. Furthermore, with OpenSearch being a managed service, they were able to reduce the amount of manual upkeep required, freeing up resources for other tasks.
Data Migration with Minimal Downtime
After migrating to AWS OpenSearch, AntStack took a data dump from couchbase and injected the data in elastic search cluster using Logstash.
They created a table to track all the record changes post data dump and kept the proprietary DB system alive while injecting records from the changeset table and live logs.
After the data migration, both the systems were synced. After that we decided a cut-off time and old systems was removed.
Cost Effective Scalability
Landauer’s previous system came with a recurring proprietary licensing fee and a lot of manual upkeep, which was a significant expense.
However, after migrating to AWS OpenSearch with AntStack, they were able to eliminate the associated licensing fee, resulting in substantial cost savings. Additionally, AWS OpenSearch, being a managed service, relieved Landauer of the tedious and time-consuming manual upkeep and enabled them to scale more efficiently and effectively. Landauer was now able to quickly adapt to changing consumer needs and add features.
A startup within the organisation
With their expertise and willingness to step in when needed, AntStack Team helped Landauer progress their systems when they lacked the bandwidth and serverless expertise. Their fresh ideas and resolutions exceeded the client’s expectations, leaving them highly impressed with the serverless journey. Having already worked together previously, Landauer is also seeking the migration of their Talend data pipelines to AWS, with AntStack at their side.
The partnership between Landauer and AntStack has been invaluable and we can’t wait to see the remarkable achievements we will unlock together in the future.
Results that speak volumes
Landauer’s new system achieved millisecond latency, reduced expenses by eliminating licensing costs and saved time and money in development and testing.
- Landauer was able to reduce latency on their report-filtering system, resulting in a better user experience for their customers.
- With the move to OpenSearch, Landauer was able to eliminate the need for proprietary RDBMS solutions and associated licensing fees, resulting in significant cost savings.
- Within minutes, both the old and new systems were in sync, and in just a couple of days, they were able to migrate approximately 32 million records with minimal downtime.
- With AWS OpenSearch, Landauer was able to save costs and scale better while providing better search capabilities and achieving millisecond latency on their website.
In their words
Landauer
Team
