From zero to MVP in AWS China in 10 days
Contract · Oct 2025 · 10 days
The client ran a global product as docker compose services on one VM on GCP. It needed the same product live inside China, on AWS China. The plan was to move first and split into smaller services later, so the services had to stay on docker compose.
I designed and built the AWS China setup, the load balancing, and the infrastructure as code, and I traced the network problems. The client team handled the China website license paperwork.
Measured results
Network hops
2
from more than 10
Page load in China
Loads
from never: the route left China and was blocked
Delivery
10 days
GCP VM to AWS China, full infrastructure
What I built
Load balancing that keeps docker compose
- The China website license (ICP) accepts only a fixed IP, and an application load balancer has none.
- I put a network load balancer with a fixed IP in front of the application load balancer, which routes to a reverse proxy on the docker compose VM.
Finding the slow network
- Pages loaded slowly, then not at all. I traced the route hop by hop with network inspection tools.
- Calls between services left the VPC through public IPs and came back in, and DNS lookups went to servers outside China, where China policy blocked them.
- The team changed the routes from my findings: more than 10 hops became 2, and the page loads.
Infrastructure as code
- The whole setup is CloudFormation templates, deployed with the Serverless Framework.
- The team changes the infrastructure with a template edit and one deploy command, not by hand in the console.
The system
- docker compose services
- Network load balancer (fixed IP)
- Application load balancer
- Reverse proxy
- Infrastructure as code
AWS China (Beijing region), moved from a VM on GCP
10 days, contract, October 2025.
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