The Tailor Case Study

Alyssa Dunn
6 days ago
3 min read

Overview

As a luxury Australian travel agency, The Tailor, is an award-winning business that creates unique and tailored experiences for the discerning traveller. As a Habitat3 customer, they presented a unique challenge, with their brand overarching multiple different websites, all under their management. They needed a web server environment that would reliably and efficiently host their 18 sites, without compromising on performance and security.

The Challenge

Under their previous cloud provider, The Tailor’s web server hosting, while promoted as ‘fully-managed’ still left the destination management company feeling as though they couldn’t easily and efficiently take command of the various sites under their management. Even something as basic as file-handling and back-ups weren’t possible, and while hosting and managing 18 websites presents specific challenges, even with some expertise in-house, the team at The Tailor knew their current cloud provider’s limitations were holding them back.

Updating plug-ins or accessing files for simple site maintenance was not possible with the restrictive server hosting solution as it was. It was imperative for The Tailor to look for a solution where they could be more hands-on and have more direct access when managing the hosting of their multiple sites.

When their incumbent provider announced cost increases to their subscription, The Tailor decided the time had come to explore a more flexible solution from market leading cloud provider, Amazon Web Service (AWS) via certified AWS Partner and web-server specialist – Habitat3.

The Solution

Habitat3 completed a free audit of The Tailor’s environment and then proposed a solution that would allow the destination management company to migrate their 18 sites to a fully flexible Linux web-server environment at AWS. This environment would provide much more direct control over the sites making maintenance and management simpler and more efficient.

“In spite of the fact it wasn’t an off-the-shelf solution, the pricing was extremely competitive. There were no alternatives for our very specific situation and no one we would have felt more confident working with.”

— LUCAS GONZALEZ, Digital Marketing Manager, The Tailor.

As well as ensuring the migration of all the sites ran smoothly, Habitat3 was happy to also pass on plenty of knowledge and new capabilities to the client, enabling and empowering them into the future.

While I do have expertise in managing the sites, there are limitations to what I know but Habitat3 provided us with a step-by step guide that was tailored to my level of expertise – this enabled me to use the new hosting platform ongoing, and with relative ease. It was completely invaluable to have that kind of knowledge sharing.”

— LUCAS GONZALEZ, Digital Marketing Manager, The Tailor.

The Process

After analysing The Tailor’s pre-existing hosting environment, Habitat3 was able to implement their migration plan.

The process involved the following steps:

Deploy a secure AWS Landing Zone including multi-account organisation.
Deploy multiple Linux based EC2 instances
Implement a Load Balancer to split traffic between the web servers
Set up and configured MySQL Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) database running in high availability mode
Established secure shared data storage in Amazon’s Elastic File System (EFS).
Copy each website (data) across to the new environment individually for all 18 sites
Test and remediate each site’s functionality before going live.
Deploy Habitat3’s Managed Services for ongoing monitoring, remediation and support.

The final site was particularly challenging as it was the largest and oldest site in the group. This meant more in-depth work was required to resolve errors encountered post-migration. Habitat3 collaborated closely with the team from The Tailor to ensure a shared understanding of the implemented solutions.

Outcomes & Benefits

Over 3 months, Habitat3 setup a new AWS environment, migrated 18 websites over to AWS and gave The Tailor the capability to efficiently manage their sites through a new fully flexible and accessible web-server setup. All this at small business prices. Now with Habitat3’s ongoing Managed Services subscription in place, The Tailor has the peace of mind that they are in great hands and that any issues will be resolved quickly.

“The hands-on care and support we have received from Habitat3 is second to none. With other businesses my ticket might wait days in a queue, but with them I know there will be minimum response time: my query is normally answered in minutes not days, and that makes such a difference.”

— LUCAS GONZALEZ, Digital Marketing Manager, The Tailor.

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