PaaS infrastructure management via PlatformSH for 150 global Drupal websites

After a long period of successful management and collaboration with British Council Digital, following the transition of their Drupal estate, we approached the Council in collaboration with the PaaS provider - our partner, Platform.sh - to propose a migration of their estate from their original private cloud, to a more contemporary public cloud. This would allow the British Council to engage more modern features and performance, and allow them to continue to work alongside us to build for the future.

This was a significant project involving over a hundred websites, multiple invested parties, and the management of change and process updates across several key stakeholders within a time-sensitive window.

After a series of initial discovery meetings with the PaaS provider to scope out the purpose and process for the migrations, we engaged the British Council and brought them on board with the project. All requirements and concerns were met, and a fully formed migration plan, including testing from all parties and a rollback process was developed.

After a series of initial test migrations, a full schedule of migrations for the full estate was created and signed off by all parties. We then worked with all stakeholders to manage the migrations, report on successes and any complications, and co-ordinate efforts to resolve any unforeseen issues encountered during the lengthy process.

As the migrations continued, the process and deployments were running so well that it was agreed that the pace of migrations should increase. All migrations were completed successfully prior to the project's cutoff date. Every site displayed a notable increase in response time following the move, which was considered a complete success by the British Council and Platform.sh.