MySQL database upgrade on Amazon RDS for YPurchasing
Who is YPurchasing?
YPurchasing is a YMCA group purchasing cooperative that provides savings programs for every YMCA in the United States.
YPurchasing integrates with external suppliers to support group purchasing for YMCAs, ensuring the best possible pricing, quality products, and services to make an impact on the YMCA’s advancement of youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility.
The company offers an online shopping portal for YMCAs called YPGMarketplace. YMCAs use the YPGMarketplace to streamline the purchasing process, all while taking advantage of lower pricing arising from economies of scale.
YPurchasing provides contract negotiation, procurement, and other services exclusively for its members. The savings members receive are similar to unrealised donations that accumulate throughout the year.
Why Lambert Labs?
YPurchasing chose to collaborate with Lambert Labs because of our skills and experience in managing databases on Amazon RDS.
Specifically, our familiarity with MySQL and adherence to robust processes when it comes to upgrading database versions meant we were well placed to outline the risks and estimated downtime of such an operation, and execute the operation in a safe, efficient, and timely manner.
What we did
- Liaised with YPurchasing to determine how and by who the database was being used
- Minimised risk by first performing the operation in a test environment
- Created a snapshot of the production database
- Restored the snapshot to a test instance
- Performed the upgrade in place on the test instance
- Tested connectivity and functionality on the test instance post-upgrade
- Liaised with YPurchasing to set a time window for the upgrade to take place during which the database would not be in use
- Performed the upgrade by repeating the steps in the test environment
- Liaised with YPurchasing to verify the upgrade was successful with no adverse impact both from a technical and business perspective
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