University College London - Hosting

The ask

With over 600 microsites under one roof, University College London (UCL) ran one of the largest multisite Drupal 7 platforms we've come across. When they approached us, their hosting setup was entirely on-premise and had started to show its limitations in terms of performance, scalability, and long-term sustainability.

UCL needed to move its entire Drupal 7 multisite estate into a scalable cloud hosting solution that could handle hundreds of microsites. We needed a migration plan that wouldn’t interrupt existing services, maintain controlled access while syncing data and provide a cost effective, long term infrastructure strategy.
 

The approach

We tackled this in phases, starting with infrastructure design and working right through to migration and tooling.

Routing & legacy compatibility

Key challenges during this migration included specific issues with routing, as UCL required a lot of traffic to continue to pass through their on-premise solution for legacy services. This meant that we were unable to simply switch traffic to the new AWS infrastructure. Using Cloudflare CDN, we were able to establish a routing solution that diverted the necessary traffic to either the on-premises or AWS infrastructure. 

Security & data syncing

Security was another challenge. We couldn’t freely transfer files and databases due to UCL’s own internal security processes. This was resolved through collaboratively creating a custom VPN that allowed us to progress with the sync to AWS.

Scaling deployments

Due to the mass of sites that needed to be migrated, our DevOps team created custom Jenkins deployments in order to facilitate running Drush commands in parallel over hundreds of sites. This allowed us to reduce the effort involved by several hours for each deployment, as well as reducing the amount of manual work to be majority covered by automation.

Platform management

In order to provide UCL with the capability to manage hundreds of platforms, Zoocha created a custom dashboard that operated as a command centre for managing hundreds of microsites. This resulted in easier deployments and enhanced control over the creation and editing of new multi sites.

Infrastructure evolution

The initial AWS setup was based on a high-availability environment using AWS OpsWorks, which suited UCL’s needs at the time. Since launch, we’ve continued to evolve this into a leaner, more efficient version as part of the Zoocha Hosting Platform (ZHP), helping UCL stay ahead of the curve.
 

The results

The bulk of delivery was completed against an 8 week timeline, with ongoing phases of delivery to ensure all 600+ microsites would be migrated across. Our team worked extensively to keep hosting infrastructure costs low, sharing resources and offering condensed databases wherever possible. This has resulted in significant cost savings for the University, as well as a more sustainable approach to hosting infrastructure. 
This was a massive step forward for UCL’s digital infrastructure and a great example of what smart DevOps and collaborative problem solving can achieve.
 

Visit website

www.ucl.ac.uk