Modernizing GelyxHR’s HRMS Infrastructure with AWS and Multi-Region Disaster Recovery

GelyxHR LLP provides a cloud-based Strategic Human Capital Management (HCM) and Human Resource Management System platform designed to manage the complete employee lifecycle.

The platform supports key HR functions including payroll, attendance, recruitment, and performance management through web and mobile applications across Android and iOS.

To support its growing HRMS platform, GelyxHR required a secure and scalable AWS infrastructure with a primary environment in Mumbai and a disaster recovery environment in Hyderabad.

Business Challenge

• GelyxHR required a reliable cloud infrastructure capable of hosting its HRMS application and database while maintaining secure access, monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities.
• The organization needed separate application and database server environments, secure administrative access through OpenVPN, database migration and backup capabilities, external load balancing, SSL implementation, web application protection, DNS management, and centralized monitoring.
• A key requirement was also to establish a disaster recovery environment in Hyderabad that could continuously replicate workloads from the primary Mumbai environment and support business continuity during a disruption.

Goals & Objectives

• The primary objective was to establish a secure and production-ready HRMS environment on AWS with Mumbai as the primary region and Hyderabad as the disaster recovery region.
• The solution also aimed to provide secure server access, application and database isolation, automated backup and retention, SSL-secured application access, web application protection, DNS-based traffic management, centralized monitoring, and continuous disaster recovery replication.

Solution Approach

• Pentagon System & Services designed and implemented a multi-region AWS architecture with the primary HRMS environment hosted in Mumbai and the disaster recovery environment established in Hyderabad.
• The Mumbai environment included the required VPC, private subnets, Internet Gateway, route configurations, NAT Gateway, OpenVPN access, application server, database server, Application Load Balancer, SSL certificate integration, AWS WAF, Route 53, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and backup configurations.
• The Linux GUI-based application server and Linux-based MSSQL database server were deployed within the AWS environment. OpenVPN was configured to provide secure server access.
• Pentagon also assisted with moving the database to Amazon S3 and subsequently migrating it to the database server. Backup and retention policies were configured according to the customer's requirements.

Implementation Approach

• An external Application Load Balancer was deployed to provide controlled access to the HRMS application. SSL was configured using AWS Certificate Manager, while AWS WAF provided an additional layer of protection against web-based threats.
• Amazon Route 53 was configured with the required hosted zone and DNS records to support application traffic routing.
• For disaster recovery, a separate VPC and private subnets were established in the Hyderabad region. VPC Peering was configured between Mumbai and Hyderabad to support connectivity between the primary and DR environments.
• AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery was implemented with AWS DRS Agents installed on the source servers in Mumbai. Continuous block-level replication was configured to replicate workloads to the Hyderabad DR environment.
• A DR Application Load Balancer with SSL and WAF was also configured, while Route 53 was prepared to support the required active-passive architecture during disaster scenarios.
• Operational controls included IAM dashboard management, AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager for patching, resource tagging, billing alerts, initial deployment support, troubleshooting, and project handover.