Facing escalating AWS costs and complex infrastructure, the client decided to migrate to AH’s fully managed private cloud. They required a scalable, flexible platform capable of mirroring core cloud functionalities and delivering superior performance. Below is the tech stack utilized on the project.
Technologies:
OpenStack (cloud platform), Ceph (storage), Severalnines (managed database)
Industry
iGaming
The Client operates in the iGaming and betting sector, managing regulated platforms across multiple jurisdictions. Their operations require stable, compliant infrastructure, particularly as the company plans to expand into strictly regulated markets.
Originally hosted on AWS, the business grew rapidly during the pandemic. Monthly OPEX rose from $35,000 to over $90,000 within a year, making costs unpredictable and long-term planning difficult. As their engineering team grew, legacy infrastructure spread across environments, reducing visibility and control.
The Client had used Advanced Hosting’s services previously for cost-effective archival storage on bare metal, but kept core production in the hyperscaler. When AWS costs surged, this hybrid proved its value.
Then, the client’s technical team developed an infrastructure optimization strategy for 2023. They approached AH to expand that model into a fully managed OpenStack-based private cloud.
Project Goals
The Client defined the following primary goals for the migration:
- Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Avoid CapEx investment by consuming infrastructure as OpEx.
- Retain infrastructure scalability and elasticity across geographies.
- Delegate infrastructure management to a trusted vendor, enabling internal teams to focus on product development.
The project was not solely cost-driven. The CTO had used OpenStack in a previous role, but the Client’s current team lacked the operational capacity and expertise to deploy and manage a production-grade OpenStack environment. They needed a partner who could take full ownership of cluster deployment, monitoring, and tuning — without adding strain to internal resources.
Solution Architecture Description
The solution replicated core AWS services on AH’s MHPC stack, using OpenStack managed services, including Advanced Managed Databases powered by our official partner — Severalnines. The table below illustrates service equivalency:
| AWS Stack | AH Private Cloud Stack |
| EC2 Instances | OpenStack Nova |
| RDS (MSSQL, PostgreSQL) | Severalnines, Cluster Control |
| Elastic Load Balancer | Openstack Octavia + |
| ECS for Kubernetes with Container Registry (ECR) | OpenStack Magnum |
| ElastiCache | Severalnines, Cluster Control |
| OpenSearch | Severalnines, Cluster Control |
| S3 | Ceph Object Gateway (s3) |
| Elastic File System (EFS) | OpenStack Manila |
| VPC | Openstack Neutron |
| CloudWatch | Prometheus + Victoria Metrics + Alertmanager + Grafana |
| Global Accelerator | CDN + AntiDDoS + Anycast IP |
The architecture included dedicated hardware for control, storage, compute, and production workloads. Full isolation was provided at the tenant level, with integration into AH’s distributed monitoring and alerting stack.
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Network and Hardware Layout
Hardware Footprint:
- 3x OpenStack control nodes
- 6x Ceph storage nodes
- 9x OpenStack compute nodes
- 3 x 1G Ethernet switches (BMC)
- 6 x 10/25G Ethernet switches
This design enables regional clusters to be independently deployed while integrated into a centralized monitoring and management fabric.
The project execution stages:
The Client opted for a managed approach with optional co-management of observability.
Migration Consulting and 40% Cost Reduction
The client initially scoped the migration internally and estimated a budget of $500,000. Following a technical consultation with Advanced Hosting engineers, many redundant tasks were eliminated:
- Native OpenStack features replaced custom workarounds.
- Shared components (e.g., monitoring, backups) were reused.
- Non-critical migration paths were deferred or deprioritized.
After implementing our suggestions – AH’s lead engineers helped plan out the migration and remained in contact throughout the procedure – the client was able to perform the migration for $300,000, cutting costs by 40%.
Key Migration Activities:
- Identified all workloads, dependencies, and AWS services in use (EC2, RDS, S3, etc.).
- Designed equivalent OpenStack services (e.g., EC2 → Nova, S3 → Swift, VPC → Neutron) and network topology.
- Estimated the required compute, storage, and network capacity based on current usage in AWS; plan and deploy physical servers and OpenStack components accordingly (controllers, compute nodes, Ceph storage, etc.).
- Deployed a designed OpenStack architecture to Private Cloud using IaaC tools (Ansible, Terraform)
- Smoothly migrated data and workload from AWS to OpenStack
- Set up logging and monitoring; tuned resources for performance.
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Cost-Benefit Analysis
A five-year TCO comparison showed a dramatic reduction in cumulative infrastructure spend.
| Provider | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Total |
| AWS | 1,669,221 | 1,669,221 | 1,669,221 | 1,669,221 | 1,669,221 | 8,346,105 |
| AH Private Cloud | 1,146,168* | 732,804 | 732,804 | 732,804 | 732,804 | 4,077,384 |
* $846 168 + $300 000 (investments in team for the migration during 6 months)
5-Year TCO Comparison: AWS vs AH Manages Hosted Private Cloud
Summary
The Client confirmed that transitioning from public cloud to a private OpenStack-based environment was a practical way to cut long-term infrastructure costs. The move has enabled them to address the mounting legacy cost pressures and expansion needs.
By partnering with Advanced Hosting the client has:
- Reduced 5-year projected infrastructure costs by over 50%
- Avoided large upfront investments through a predictable OPEX model
- Preserved environment flexibility while offloading platform management complexity
The project serves as a blueprint for similar enterprises looking to optimize cost without compromising performance or operational control.