Fitness and Wellness Application - Windows IIS and AWS Hybrid Deployment

Business Problem

The application needed a reliable Windows/IIS hosting model with clear deployment, monitoring, backup, validation, and rollback steps that could be followed consistently during support activities.

Architecture

flowchart LR
  Users[Users] --> DNS[DNS]
  DNS --> IIS[IIS on Windows Server]
  IIS --> DotNet[.NET Application]
  IIS --> WP[WordPress Site]
  DotNet --> DB[(Database)]
  WP --> DB
  Server[Windows EC2 or Server] --> Agent[CloudWatch Agent]
  Agent --> CW[CloudWatch Dashboard]
  Backup[Backup Process] --> S3[S3 or Backup Storage]
  Ops[DevOps Operations] --> PS[PowerShell Runbook]
  PS --> IIS
  PS --> Backup

My Responsibilities

• Documented Windows Server, IIS site, application pool, .NET hosting, and WordPress hosting setup.
• Prepared CloudWatch dashboard and monitoring documentation for server-level visibility.
• Documented database backup, data transfer estimation, and deployment validation steps.
• Created PowerShell-oriented operational notes and rollback guidance.

Implementation

• Separated IIS configuration, application deployment, and operational validation steps.
• Defined backup and rollback checkpoints before production changes.
• Captured monitoring signals for CPU, memory, disk, service status, and application availability.
• Documented reusable deployment flow for support and KT.

Challenges

• Windows/IIS operations required clear step-by-step validation.
• Application and website hosting had to be documented without exposing private infrastructure details.
• Rollback steps needed to be simple enough for production support.

Solution

The solution combined automation, clear infrastructure boundaries, operational validation, and documentation-first handover. The design focuses on traceable releases, least-privilege access, predictable runtime behavior, and observable production systems.

Code Snippet

Representative public-safe snippet showing the type of implementation pattern used.

Get-Service W3SVC
Test-NetConnection -ComputerName localhost -Port 80
Restart-WebAppPool -Name "ApplicationPoolName"
Get-EventLog -LogName Application -Newest 20

Deployment Flow

1. 1

   Server setup review

2. 2

   IIS and application hosting

3. 3

   Monitoring setup

4. 4

   Backup planning

5. 5

   Deployment runbook

Validation

• Verified deployment health before routing user traffic.
• Reviewed logs, metrics, events, and runtime configuration.
• Documented rollback and post-deployment checks for support teams.

Monitoring and Security

• Monitoring focused on logs, runtime status, health checks, alarms, and deployment evidence.
• Security guidance covered IAM roles, security groups, secrets handling, and private network boundaries where applicable.
• Operational notes included backup, restore, rollback, and incident response expectations.

Outcome and Impact

• Improved deployment consistency for Windows/IIS workloads.
• Improved monitoring and backup readiness.
• Reduced support dependency on informal server knowledge.

Lessons Learned

• Reliable DevOps delivery depends on validation, not only deployment automation.
• Runbooks and handover notes reduce operational risk during production support.
• Health checks, logs, access boundaries, and rollback steps should be designed before go-live.

Related Incident Experience

• Kubernetes deployment issue
• Storage lifecycle recovery
• Service startup failure
• Pipeline rollback

Pipeline Screenshots Placeholder