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Improving the time to market and lowering TCO with Kubernetes+AWS

A large EdTech startup utilized Cloud Orbit to transition their app to Kubernetes clusters running on AWS infrastructure and enjoy one-click Kubernetes deployment.
A large EdTech startup utilized Cloud Orbit to transition their app to Kubernetes clusters running on AWS infrastructure and enjoy one-click Kubernetes deployment.

Project overview

A large EdTech startup harnessed the power of our Cloud Orbit platform to facilitate a seamless transition of their freshly developed application onto an AWS-hosted Kubernetes cluster and introduce the convenience of one-click Kubernetes deployment for all future updates.

SRE as a managed service

Additionally, the company leveraged our managed SRE services to improve the resilience of running Kubernetes, ensure stable ongoing releases of existing applications, optimize operations efficiency, and access Cloud Orbit’s built-in tools, including a dashboard for improved observability, alert system automation, and logs management features.

Project goals

  • Adopt containerized applications and Kubernetes on AWS.
  • Reduce dependency on DevOps teams with automation of Kubernetes environments.
  • Optimize the cloud performance by improving software scalability and resilience.
  • Achieve full observability, enhance logging capabilities, and improve audit trail for governance and compliance purposes.
  • Improve operations security while empowering existing teams by implementing privileged access management.

Challenges we faced

  • Short deadline: Caused by the urgent need to migrate to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
  • Scattered code: With no Git repository in place, the code existed only on developers’ desktop computers.
  • Conflicting visions: Different stakeholders proposed different approaches to deployments.
  • No DevOps: Lack of a dedicated in-house DevOps team.
  • Limited budget: Significant operational expenses were allocated to create a DevOps team.

Our approach and results

We proposed a low-touch approach to AWS cloud adoption, introduced deployment process automation, and utilized tools included in our Cloud Orbit platform to configure and facilitate scalable environments.

We established an automated CI/CD pipeline with compliance features and onboarded our client’s adaptive learning and career development app within the agreed-upon timeframe. 

We continue to manage containerized applications by providing managed SRE services that facilitate continuous application maintenance and allow the client to focus on core business without worrying about virtual machines, compute resources, and AWS infrastructure.

Client’s benefits

  • Fully automated GitOps: Cloud Orbit enables subsequent software releases, improves observability and governance, and reduces dependence on I&O teams.
  • Zero-downtime updates: Our platform provides seamless, secure, and reliable Client Portal and infrastructure updates without downtime.
  • High availability: The application runs across multiple AWS regions and availability zones to ensure reliable access for users and simplify disaster recovery (DR).
  • Resource optimization and simple management: No additional resources, tools, or external services are needed to support our comprehensive managed Kubernetes solution.
  • Improved observability: The Cloud Orbit Dashboard provides a complete overview of the application environment.
  • Proactive monitoring: An automated alerting system analyzes custom metrics to identify, prioritize, and escalate irregularities before they become issues.
  • Provider-agnostic solution: Our platform allows for uncomplicated and swift migration to other cloud providers whenever necessary.

Project highlights

Timeframe

  • The app was launched in the AWS production environment within 10 weeks.
  • The complete lifecycle from the planning stage to the production parallel was ready in 4 months.

Kubernetes clusters and VPC environments

  • The app was deployed on 2 AWS regions across 4 Amazon EKS clusters and 1 MicroK8s cluster (2 production and 3 non-production Kubernetes clusters).
  • A separate virtual private cloud (VPC) was created for DEV, QA, Pre-PROD, and PROD environments.
  • Cloud Orbit’s standard out-of-the-box stacks were used for NodeJS, PHP, Laravel, MariaDB, DynamoDB, and RDS so that the developer team could use the same toolset as before.

Security and compliance

  • The app is hosted behind Load Balancers (LBs) and secured with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall).
  • Security was further enhanced with Vault’s centralized secrets management.
  • The app passed the penetration test and a GDPR compliance audit on the first attempt.