Whop — Database Infrastructure Migration

From Constraints to Expansion: Whop’s Database Infrastructure Migration to AWS with Stormatics

Whop serves as an online marketplace for creators, influencers, and businesses to sell subscriptions, communities, software, and other digital products. The USA-based platform provides an easy way for creators to monetize their business, brand, knowledge, or community with a recurring subscription model. 

After raising $17 million in a Series A round, Whop is now focused on scaling its business model with one goal: "Empowering everyone to be an internet entrepreneur."

A Migration Need

Whop was operating their PostgreSQL database on a Heroku cloud instance but needed to migrate their applications to AWS for mainly two reasons:

1. Heroku is falling behind the PostgreSQL community; while the current PostgreSQL version is 16.2, Heroku supports only version 15.
2. It offers limited support for extensions and other ecosystem tools for PostgreSQL

The migration task involved setting up a new replica outside the Heroku environment—a challenge, given Heroku's lack of support for external replication. Considering this predicament, they reached out to Stormatics for a migration solution to an AWS EC2 PostgreSQL instance with a scalable architecture and high availability with disaster management.

The Stormatics Solutions

The Stormatics team designed and implemented a resilient solution tailored to Whop's needs, including:

• PostgreSQL Migration from Heroku to EC2

Heroku does not support built-in logical replication so the Stormatics team explored the method of deploying replication using the log shipping approach. Heroku utilizes the WAL-E tool for backups, storing them in an AWS S3 repository. The Stormatics team gained access to this repository and enabled the deployment of PostgreSQL as a read-only standby on EC2. The migration was completed in under 10 minutes after verifying the database status and configuring parameters according to hardware requirements.

• High Availability

A 3-node cluster with manual failover was implemented using repmgr tool due to its robust and user-friendly streaming replication topology. The deployment included procedures for manual failover, failback, and the capability to follow a new primary for standby purposes.

• Backup and Recovery

To handle backups, Stormatics deployed Barman to provide Whop with not only physical backups but also automated management of retention policies, compression, near-zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR).

• Connection pooling

pgbouncer tool was implemented for connection pooling, utilizing transaction pooling mode that resulted in reduction of the total active connections from 150 to 50 leading to enhanced resource utilization efficiency. 

Way forward

With the successful migration from Heroku to AWS EC2, Whop is poised for exponential growth and scalability in the dynamic digital marketplace.

"Stormatics found a creative solution to our complex Heroku to AWS migration. They have proven to be a reliable partner and the expertise of their team greatly contributed to the seamless execution of a project tailored to our specific requirements. We enjoyed working with Stormatics and would not hesitate to recommend their services to anyone who needs help with PostgreSQL."

Jack Sharkey 

Co-Founder and CTO at Whop

Stormatics’ strategic partnership has not only enabled a smooth transition for Whop but also established a foundation for high availability and effective disaster management. This strategic switch positions Whop for sustained growth and scalability within the dynamic digital marketplace, all while being supported by a significantly enhanced and reliable infrastructure.

Why Stormatics?

Planning on enhancing your database performance? Our team of vendor-agnostic experts is ready to help. We provide bespoke performance-tuning services that are in line with your business requirements. Our packaged service includes:

- Detailed analysis of the system
- Optimization recommendations based on usage patterns
- Time-limited engagement with quick-win implementation

We are your trusted PostgreSQL experts

Book a call with us today!