Information Technology | Database Performance Consulting Services

FYI Docs boosts PostgreSQL performance and slashes cloud spend

FYI Docs, a leading Australian accounting solutions company, experienced rapid growth, leading to intermittent slowdowns and outages in their PostgreSQL database on AWS Aurora. Despite internal efforts, the core performance issues persisted, impacting critical operations like customer onboarding and support.

Seeking expert assistance, FYI Docs turned to Pythian, an AWS-recommended partner. Pythian's comprehensive database health check identified key optimization areas. By implementing data table partitioning and other recommendations, Pythian significantly improved database performance and reduced cloud spend. This not only resolved FYI Docs' immediate challenges but also empowered their internal teams with valuable knowledge, ensuring future scalability and freeing them to focus on core product development.

FYI Docs overcame database performance issues and high costs with Pythian's support. Discover how database optimization led to enhanced performance stability.

950

Accounting practices enjoy a more secure experience

Pythian enabled the PostgreSQL database to run efficiently with a new partition meaning it no longer suffers from query slowdowns or unnecessary security exposures.

250M+

Documents made more easily accessible

Pythian’s database performance tuning and optimization service ensured smooth operations for over 250 million documents in the cloud.

15,000+

Platform users benefit from the performance improvement

FYI Docs has over 15K accountants and users that leverage their automation platform that now benefit from a more streamlined and smooth experience, due to the optimized performance of their database.

Customer
Overview
The challenge
The solution
Technologies used
Key outcomes

Customer

Rising data volumes, decreased cloud database performance, and increased cloud costs

As FYI Docs experienced rapid growth, their large PostgreSQL database on AWS Aurora expanded exponentially, leading to significant challenges. This expansion resulted in poor database performance, causing slow response times, crashes, and errors for internal teams. These issues threatened the customer experience and hindered the effectiveness of their sales, support, and training departments. Despite implementing temporary fixes, FYI Docs recognized they needed a proactive and lasting solution to prevent future disruptions.

The rapid database growth also led to disproportionately increased cloud costs for their Aurora environment, with no clear explanation for the surge in spending. FYI Docs understood these performance and cost issues were diverting valuable internal resources from core product development. Consequently, they sought an expert partner to conduct thorough performance reviews, identify the root causes of these problems, and provide effective solutions for their AWS PostgreSQL environment. They needed a trusted database advisor to help them manage their growing data while simultaneously optimizing performance and controlling expenses.

Rapid growth putting a strain on databases

FYI Docs’ rapid growth, paired with the expansion of their PostgreSQL database on AWS Aurora, precipitated significant challenges that threatened to impact customer experience through database query slowdowns.

Increased and unpredictable cloud costs

FYI Docs saw their AWS Aurora PostgreSQL cloud costs rise disproportionately, despite forecasting their growth.

Poor database performance

At over three terabytes, the database caused slow response times, crashes, and errors for internal teams, threatening customer experience and hindering sales, support, and training.

Lack of a proactive solution

Existing temporary fixes were insufficient, and a lasting database performance solution was needed to prevent future disruptions.

Pythian provided a comprehensive database performance optimization service to resolve bottlenecks and manage rising cloud costs

Pythian's AWS and PostgreSQL experts conducted a thorough database health check for FYI Docs, confirming performance issues stemming from a 3TB+ Australian database with heavy indexing, unoptimized autovacuum processes, and frequent disk checking. These problems caused slow queries, hung processes, and escalating cloud costs.

After prototyping solutions on a test server, Pythian implemented their recommendations across FYI Docs' Australian and London production databases. The key solutions included partitioning large tables, optimizing autovacuum, reducing AWS instance sizes, and implementing hash partitioning. These measures significantly improved database performance, reduced I/O costs, and effectively managed cloud spend, while also providing valuable knowledge transfer to FYI Docs' internal teams.

Conducted a database health check

The database health check identified existing performance issues and recommended optimizations across security, configuration, stability, availability, and platform monitoring.

Solution prototyping and validation

Before full deployment, Pythian developed and demonstrated their recommended solutions on a test server. This conceptual phase allowed FYI Docs to see the proposed improvements in action.

Core database optimizations

Pythian implemented critical optimizations directly on FYI Docs' Australian and London production databases. This included partitioning large tables to improve query efficiency, and optimizing auto-vacuum processes for better maintenance.

Reducing instance size to better manage cloud costs

By right-sizing FYI Docs’ AWS cloud instances, Pythian supported them in saving on cloud infrastructure costs and equipped them with the insight necessary to better forecast cloud spend.

Improved database performance and reduced cloud costs

Pythian's solutions delivered significant benefits to FYI Docs, paving the way for their continued hypergrowth. The company now enjoys greater database performance, scalability, and stability, with their PostgreSQL database running efficiently thanks to new partitioning—eliminating prior query slowdowns. This newfound reliability empowers FYI Docs to confidently prioritize growth and platform development without the fear of hanging queries or outages.

A key outcome of the partnership has been the empowerment of FYI Docs' internal teams. Through deep collaboration and knowledge transfer sessions, their proactive approach to architectural needs and future growth has been significantly enhanced. This critical support frees up their teams to focus on developing new product features and enhancements, shifting away from time-consuming database performance fixes.

Furthermore, Pythian's database performance optimization services have led to more predictable cloud costs. By reducing disk read frequency and tuning autovacuum configurations, FYI Docs' cloud spending is now more efficient and predictable. This financial clarity, coupled with enhanced system reliability, provides sales, training, and support teams with the confidence they need for their customer success activities. Ultimately, Pythian's partnership has given FYI Docs greater peace of mind, equipping them with a robust infrastructure capable of managing skyrocketing data volumes and supporting their sustained growth.

Enhanced database performance and reliability

FYI Docs now benefits from significantly improved database performance, scalability, and stability—resulting from Pythian’s database performance tuning and optimization service.

Empowered and re-focused internal teams

Through close collaboration and knowledge transfer sessions, FYI Docs’ ability to proactively address architectural needs and greatly enhance future growth.

Predictable and efficient cloud costs

Pythian's database performance optimizations led directly to more predictable and efficient cloud costs. By reducing disk read frequency and fine-tuning auto-vacuum configurations, FYI Docs' cloud spending became more controlled and transparent.

Robust infrastructure for future growth

Pythian's partnership provided FYI Docs with a robust infrastructure. Their systems are now fully equipped to manage skyrocketing data volumes and support their rapidly growing customer base.

“Pythian was invaluable in resolving our database performance challenges. It came at the right time with the right experience for the project, allowing our team to focus on innovation and platform development. Collaborating with Pythian supports FYI Docs’ ability to scale our infrastructure over the next five years.”

Alan McLeod

Chief Technology Officer (CTO), FYI Docs

What We Do

FYI Docs boosts PostgreSQL performance and slashes cloud spend

Accounting practices enjoy a more secure experience

Documents made more easily accessible

Platform users benefit from the performance improvement

Discover how FYI Docs' database optimization led to enhanced performance stability

Customer

Industry

Location

Solution

Platform

Overview

The challenge