Case Studies | Healthcare & Life Sciences

A healthcare estate, moved server by server

GCP to AWS Infrastructure Migration

About

A Healthcare & Life Sciences business working with Cloud Combinator on AWS. The client is anonymised at their request.

Challenge

The challenge had three focus areas.

Migrating a heterogeneous fleet without breaking anything

The servers ran different operating systems, versions, and software stacks, from Django and Laravel on Linux to Windows Server with MSSQL and a national healthcare system. Each application had to keep working exactly as before, which meant treating every server as its own careful migration rather than a bulk lift.

Protecting healthcare data and a national healthcare system integrations

With medical databases and a national healthcare system third-party integrations in scope, the move demanded appropriate permissions, role-based access, encryption, and minimal disruption, so sensitive systems stayed secure and available throughout.

Improving cost and performance in the move

Rather than replicate the old sizing, the client wanted the migration to leave them on more efficient instances and storage, so the AWS estate cost less to run and performed better than the GCP setup.

Solution

We structured the migration so each server was understood and costed before it moved, replicated safely with GCP left running until cutover, and then optimised once stable on AWS.

9

Application servers migrated from Google Cloud to AWS

~30%

Expected cost-performance efficiency gain from newer T3 instances

50%

Expected boost in baseline vCPU performance moving T2 to T3

By the numbers:

  • 9 - Application servers migrated from Google Cloud to AWS
  • ~30% - Expected cost-performance efficiency gain from newer T3 instances
  • 50% - Expected boost in baseline vCPU performance moving T2 to T3
Changes

The engagement delivered the client a functional AWS environment with the agreed permissions and security, with its application servers migrated from GCP and validated against the success criteria, ready for the team to host and run their applications.

  • Safe, staged cutover — Each independent application was replicated and cut over on its own with GCP kept running until ready, keeping migration risk low.
  • Secure by specification — Role-based access, encryption, and firewall rules were configured to the client's requirements, appropriate for healthcare and NHS-connected systems.
  • More efficient than before — Moving to T3 instances and gp3 volumes targeted lower running costs and better performance, with expected savings of around 10% monthly on compute and up to 20% per GB on storage.
  • Decision-ready planning — A costed estimate, architecture diagram, and execution plan let the client commit to the migration with confidence.
  • Handover — Included the environment documentation and knowledge transfer, with a Well-Architected Review recommended as a follow-on activity.

With its estate consolidated on AWS and running on more efficient infrastructure, the client is positioned to build on a secure, well-architected foundation and to take up a Well-Architected Review as a next step, no longer spread across clouds but ready to support whatever the business takes on next.

AWS Stack

AWS Application Migration Service

(MGN) for block-level replication and controlled per-server cutover.

Amazon Machine Images

For capturing and moving existing server configurations.

AWS IAM

For role-based access control and least-privilege permissions.

Amazon S3

For replication staging and migration artifacts.

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