Pharmacy benefit manager — From one overloaded machine to two tiers, with 60% savings

The challenge

The application and the database shared a machine with 64 cores and 256 GB, competing for the same resources.

The solution

Each tier moved to its own machine, sized by function. With Azure Hybrid Benefit and reserved instances, cost dropped 60% compared with the pay-as-you-go rate.

Why can separating the application from the database reduce costs?

When an application and its database share the same machine, both compete for the same cores and the same memory. That competition often leads to oversizing the infrastructure to handle peaks, which increases spending without necessarily improving performance.

By giving each tier its own machine, sized according to its function, the capacity of each component can be matched to its real needs. This allows the application and the database to work without interfering with each other and makes the compute investment reflect what each one requires.

In the case of this pharmaceutical distributor, that separation, together with the use of Azure Hybrid Benefit and reserved instances, produced a 60% reduction compared with the pay-as-you-go rate. You can evaluate a similar approach by contacting our team to review your operation's architecture.

Technologies used

• Microsoft Azure
• Azure Hybrid Benefit
• Instancias reservadas

Results

• 60% Lower cost — Compared with the pay-as-you-go rate