How we automated FUGZ Official’s AWS operations and reduced infrastructure costs by an estimated 50%

FUGZ Official is an NFT project with production frontend and backend infrastructure, along with a separate staging environment used for testing, reviews, and development work.

The project had two recurring infrastructure problems. Production SSL certificates needed ongoing monitoring and manual renewal, while the staging backend and frontend were hosted on an AWS EC2 instance that kept running even when it was not actively needed.

Avalency created a practical automation layer around the existing infrastructure, reducing manual certificate maintenance and making the staging environment easier to manage without requiring a developer on standby for small operational tasks.

The production backend and frontend depended on SSL certificates that needed to be checked and renewed before expiration. If this process was missed, the application risked losing secure HTTPS access and appearing unsafe to users.

The staging environment created a separate issue. It was useful during active development, but it stayed online even when it was not being used, creating unnecessary AWS costs.

Turning the staging server on and off also created technical friction. When the EC2 instance was stopped and started, AWS could assign a new public IP address, causing the staging domains to point to the wrong target and breaking access for the founder and team.

The solution focused on removing repeated manual work from the infrastructure process. Instead of relying on someone to remember certificate checks, manually renew SSL, or troubleshoot staging access every time the server restarted, we created a more reliable operating flow around the existing AWS setup.

For production SSL maintenance, Avalency created a Bash automation script that interacts with Certbot, checks whether renewal is required, renews certificates only when needed, and safely exits when no update is necessary.

That script was connected to a weekly Cron job on the backend server, giving FUGZ Official a scheduled SSL maintenance process that runs automatically in the background.

For the staging environment, the EC2 workflow was improved so the founder could avoid keeping the staging backend and frontend online unnecessarily. An Elastic IP was used to stabilize the EC2 target, preventing staging domains from breaking when the instance was stopped and restarted.