Cloud Migration of the Life Science Research Portal

The Insight Research Portal (IRP)l is a web-based healthcare application supporting over 10,000 current users in researching new cures. Developed for the research community (including investigators, departmental research managers, unit chiefs, and administrators), such users review, monitor and manage their research portfolios. 

Originally IRP was deployed on physical servers. In the Partners Healthcare Data Center. Portal was utilizing Windows infrastructure, and applications were based on .NET technology, using MS SQL Server and MS SQL Data Warehouse.

Migration Objective:

1. Productize the solution to make it available to other companies researching new cures. 
2. Eliminate the company’s massive in-house data centers that were too difficult to provision and maintain
3. Decrease the cost associated with multiple support teams (internal DBA, DBA contractors, infrastructure team, hardware technicians)
4. Minimize the time required for maintenance and capacity increases

Cloud Solution:

1. Web Applications and Services

   Web application and business services were migrated to Azure App Service. All background jobs were integrated with Azure WebJobs (part of Azure App Service). ELK Stack applications(Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) were replaced by Azure App Insights. It reduces the number of resources required for log monitoring and analysis.

2. Databases

   MS SQL databases were moved as is into Azure SQL, MS SQL Data Warehouse – Azure Synapse Analytics. SSIS ETL processes were moved to Azure Data Factory.

3. Files

   Tapes File Storage was moved into Azure Storage Accounts. Storage costs and file access time were decreased significantly.

4. Network and Security

   Azure Front Door was added on top of Azure App Service to increase the overall security of public internet applications. Azure Virtual Network was created to increase security between all components. As a temporary solution, Azure VPN Gateway was added to a couple of cloud applications with legacy On-Premise systems. Isolated App Service Environments were used to enhance web applications and services internal security.

5. Single Sign-on

   Windows Active Directory was moved into Azure Active Directory, minimizing the time for user management across all applications.

6. Development Tools

   A variety of tools, previously used for developing and deploying software, were replaced by Azure DevOps toolchain.

Tools: