Scalable Search & Analytics on OpenSearch
**Background** Invia Travel Germany GmbH collaborated with us to enhance their search and analytics framework by utilizing Amazon OpenSearch Service. We provided a scalable, cost-effective, and fully managed architecture that supports real-time insights, automates index lifecycle management, and ensures long-term log retention, thereby lowering operational overhead and boosting platform performance.
**The Challenge** Invia Travel sought to upgrade an outdated, self-managed Elasticsearch system that was failing to scale effectively. They faced issues related to scalability and maintenance due to escalating data volumes, which complicated cluster management. Additionally, they experienced high storage expenses and a lack of real-time metrics, leading to increased infrastructure costs. There was a pressing need for modernization through a fully managed AWS solution that offered automation and robust storage.
**Our Solution** We crafted a powerful OpenSearch architecture tailored for scalability, automation, and cost-effectiveness. This included a tiered setup with Kinesis and Firehose for data ingestion, hot nodes for active data management, and UltraWarm and S3 cold tiers for long-term log storage. We implemented automated lifecycle management using ISM for functions like rollover, replica tuning, merging, snapshots, and cleanup. Performance and cost were optimized through the use of Graviton3 nodes, adaptive shard sizing, adjusted refresh intervals, and compression techniques. We also ensured observability and resilience with CloudWatch for monitoring, dashboards, alerts, multi-AZ deployments, and automated snapshots.
**The Result** The modernization of OpenSearch led to significant advancements in performance, automation, and cost efficiency. Long-term storage costs dropped by 90% due to the warm/cold tier approach, while query performance on active data improved by 45%. Indexing throughput increased by 30%, and the full automation of ISM contributed to improved system resilience and compliance through cross-region snapshots and enforceable retention policies.