mx51’s Journey with PurePlay Cloud and Amazon Aurora

One of the common modernisation pathways is to move to a fully managed, purpose-built database service such as Amazon Aurora.

A recent IDC study found that businesses which adopt Amazon Aurora reported 45% more efficient IT infrastructure teams and 19% more productive application development teams.

PurePlay Cloud recently worked with mx51, a Sydney-based end-to-end payment platform provider, to undergo a detailed database modernisation assessment.

We received the following testimonial:

"PurePlay was engaged to conduct a detailed evaluation of Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL as a potential replacement for our existing database infrastructure. The scope of work included:

• Performance benchmarking across multiple configurations

• High availability and failover testing

• Cost analysis and optimisation recommendations

• Migration pathway assessment

• Feature compatibility evaluation

PurePlay's methodical approach to testing was particularly impressive. They developed custom scripts to simulate our production workloads and conducted extensive benchmarking across various scenarios, including standard operations, failover events, and scaling situations. Their attention to detail in documenting test conditions ensures that their findings are both reproducible and reliable.

Quality of Analysis

The depth of PurePlay's analysis exceeded our expectations. Their work included:

• Detailed performance benchmarks with clear metrics and methodologies

• Comprehensive comparison between RDS and Aurora across multiple dimensions

• Nuanced cost analysis that went beyond simple pricing to include operational considerations

• Practical migration strategies with consideration for our specific constraints

• Thorough documentation of Aurora's limitations and potential workarounds

The pgbench results were particularly valuable, providing quantitative evidence of performance differences between configurations. Their analysis didn't simply present raw numbers but contextualised the findings with explanations of the underlying architectural differences that account for the performance variations.

Relevance and Applicability

What sets PurePlay's work apart is its direct applicability to our business context. Rather than providing generic recommendations, they:

• Tailored their analysis to our specific workload patterns

• Provided clear decision frameworks for different application types

• Included case studies of similar organisations that had undergone similar migrations

• Offered practical guidance on when Aurora makes financial sense versus when other RDS solutions might be more appropriate

• Documented configuration recommendations to optimise performance and reliability

Their findings on Aurora Serverless's cost-effectiveness for workloads with idle time and the performance advantages of Aurora's storage architecture for I/O-intensive applications were particularly relevant to our planned database consolidation initiative.

Thoroughness and Documentation

The documentation provided by PurePlay is exceptional in its completeness and clarity. Their deliverables included:

• Detailed test logs capturing raw performance data

• Clear explanatory notes on Aurora's features and limitations

• Comparative pricing analysis across different instance types and configurations

• Practical migration scripts and procedures

• Best practice recommendations for high availability configurations

The organisation of their findings into logical categories (performance, high availability, cost, etc.) makes the information accessible and actionable for different stakeholders within our organisation.

Conclusion

PurePlay's consulting work has provided us with a solid foundation for making informed decisions about our database infrastructure. Their analysis was thorough, their methodology sound, and their recommendations practical and tailored to our specific needs.

The value of their work extends beyond the immediate migration decision. The performance data, configuration recommendations, and best practices they've documented will serve as reference material for our database team for years to come.

I would not hesitate to engage PurePlay for future database consulting work and strongly recommend their services to any organisation considering modernisation projects."

Mathieu Lohier

Head Of Cloud Infrastructure

mx51 Pty Ltd