Migration Of ET Network to AWS

Opsio were the obvious choice for ETNetwork to use as their cloud architecture partner because of our rich culture of DevOps and reputation for working with high-profile clients who depend on Opsio-built solutions for their line of business applications every day.

Being one of the more established cloud solutions organizations, Opsio understands what is important to businesses, and has the ability to shape technology solutions around business problems - not the other way around. The Opsio team are able to work with client organizations at all levels to help project manage, resource, deploy and test solutions. ETNetwork needed a partner to work with who could deliver a full solution.

The Kwick infrastructure was hosted from one datacentre, with inadequate redundancy and resilience when weighted against their growing customer base and with that the increasing demands on performance, availability and security. The nature of their business is such that they need to store millions of small files (digital receipts), and this was causing issues for their storage tier.

The business also demanded the highest standards for security, great performance, high availability, scalability and speed to market, and these goals were becoming difficult to achieve with in-house resources. It was also clear that a partner was needed to help with this digital transformation and to keep that continuous transformation. ETNetwork reached out to Opsio because of their status as an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and their unique managed services offering.

The goal had to be to secure and grow the ETNetwork business, and to use the AWS global network and their nordic presence with datacenters in Sweden to achieve this.

The Path to Transformation

Opsio have the benefit of experience working with lots of businesses of varying sizes, and are able to share our experience with each new client we work with. The result of such experience is the Opsio Transition process and the Migration Framework model: ? Requirements Gathering ? Cloud Strategy ? Proof of Concept ? Design and Build ? Data Migration ? App Migration ? Cloud transition ? Run and Optimize

Infrastructure as Code : As per Opsio’s strong culture of DevOps, everything we created for ETNetwork was deployed using CloudFormation. We achieved a flexible and complete infrastructure by developing separate CloudFormation templates for the core infrastructure, another for the continuous integration/continuous deployment pipeline for Code Commit and Code Build (covered next), and lastly a template for the tasks running in AWS’s managed Container service, ECS. As with all Infrastructure as Code deployments, the infrastructure can be versioned, and controlled with all the tools available to application developers. This results in a consistent and reliable deployment every time.

Containerized Workloads: Opsio designed a solution whereby the Kwick application would run within Docker containers, and for those containers to be managed and maintained by AWS managed Docker service, Elastic Container Service, or ECS. With this in place, developers can trigger new code to be built, tested, deployed and migrated through the various testing and staging environments, just by committing into a code repository as then normally would.

SSL Mutual Authentication: Another key deliverable for the Kwick platform was the use of SSL Mutual Authentication in specific cases, which is not supported by AWS Application Load Balancers (ALB) by default - a technical solution to this had to be found. This requirement was satisfied by deploying a separate CloudFormation stack to ECS Fargate; the AWS service which hosts docker containers without the need to provision and manage the underlying virtual servers hosting the containers. A Network Load Balancer (NLB) was placed in front of the Fargate resources, and SSL connections were routed in this way, all the way to a container which would handle the SSL traffic itself.

Migration

Static Assets: The key data assets to migrate were the Postgres database and the many millions of files which were currently hosted on a Network File System (NFS) solution. Opsio developed scripts which utilised the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and specifically the sync functionality there-of. This allowed for a large-scale copy of all files up to AWS’s Simple Storage Service (S3), with subsequent lightweight copy operations only referencing additional files which should be copied. Such low-impact file synchronisation operations were key in a smooth final migration from the old platform to the new.

Postgres Database: After discussions between ETNetwork and Opsio, it was decided that in order to maintain the highest levels of security, the new Aurora database instance inside the new AWS cloud platform should be hosted on a private subnet, and therefore not accessible from outside of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This meant that a continuous SQL logfile synchronisation from the old database to the new Relational Database Service (RDS) hosted database would not be possible. This resulted in a more traditional export and import task, with additional scripts to ensure every last bit of data was captured and copied to the new environment right at the time of migration.

Other Improvements: During the course of work to deploy the new cloud infrastructure and migration tasks, it was discovered that so-called secrets, meaning things like passwords and other data which attackers might use to compromise a part of the platform. Opsio worked with ETNetwork and their developers to migrate the secrets into the AWS parameter store, a part of the Systems Manager suite, and have these accessed as part of the CodeBuild step in the CI/CD pipeline.

Managed Support: Now that ETNetwork’s Kwick solution has been migrated into the AWS cloud, they are able to take advantage of Opsio’s talented and experienced resources as part of the managed service. ETNetwork have now access to AWS certified technicians to monitor and manage their platform 24/7, with fast response times whenever intervention is required, and as per the agreed Service Level Agreement (SLA). ETNetwork also have access to CloudOps and DevOps engineers who ensure continued use of automation and continuous optimization of the platform. And all of this is managed by a dedicated Service Delivery Manager, which works closely with the client to ensure their business flourishes as a result of a well delivered managed cloud service.

Scalability and Reliability: As mentioned, a key metric for success was a performant and reliable platform which would handle the growth that ETNetwork and their Kwick product continues to experience. Through a blend of technical solutions and a well managed cloud deployment, these benefits and business objectives have been achieved, resulting in every piece of the Kwick platform being elastic, infinitely scalable and secured according to best practices. There are no more limits, and that results in a happy client, and a great partnership.