Automative Industry Platform Development Journey on AWS with kloia

Solution

Key Challenges in Automative Customer Platform Development

Automative Customer faced several challenges during the development of the platform, including limited internal expertise in cloud technologies, the need for scalable infrastructure, and strict security and compliance requirements. Additionally, the complexity of building a comprehensive platform within tight deadlines posed significant hurdles.

Kloia's consultancy services played a pivotal role in helping team navigate the complexities of platform development. The collaboration with Kloia encompassed three key phases: initial assessment and planning, architecture design and development, and continuous integration and deployment.

Initial Assessment and Planning

Kloia conducted a thorough analysis of Automative Customer’s requirements, existing infrastructure, and business objectives. This assessment helped identify the optimal cloud strategy, define architectural patterns, and outline a roadmap for implementation with AWS Well-Arcitected framework compliance.

Operational Excellence

Architecture Design

Kloia collaborated closely with TOGG's Trumore engineering teams to design a scalable and resilient architecture for the Trumore platform. They determined the appropriate infrastructure components, such as AWS services and containerization technologies, to meet TOGG's requirements for scalability, availability, and security.

Platform Development

Once the architecture was defined, Kloia's platform development team worked alongside TOGG to implement the Trumore platform. They utilized industry best practices and followed agile development methodologies to ensure the timely delivery of high-quality software components with AWS best practices.

Continuous Integration and Deployment with GitOps

To streamline the development and deployment process, Kloia implemented GitOps practices for the Trumore platform. GitOps is a DevOps methodology that utilizes Git as the source of truth for declarative infrastructure and application definitions. It enables a more automated and auditable approach to continuous integration and deployment.

Security

AWS Shield Advanced and WAF

To protect the Trumore platform from sophisticated DDoS attacks, TOGG implemented AWS Shield Advanced. This service provided comprehensive DDoS protection, including advanced threat intelligence and real-time mitigation. Additionally, AWS WAF was implemented to provide an additional layer of protection for the Trumore platform, filtering and blocking malicious traffic and protecting against common web application vulnerabilities and attacks.

Reliability

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

EKS provided TOGG with a fully managed Kubernetes service, allowing them to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications. Kloia utilized EKS to simplify the deployment and management of microservices within the Trumore platform, ensuring high availability and scalability.

Amazon Aurora

Kloia recommended Amazon Aurora, a PostgreSQL-compatible relational database service, to meet Trumore’s requirements for a highly available and scalable database. Aurora offered enhanced performance, automated backups, and multi-region replication for data durability and availability.

Performance Efficiency

Event-Driven Communication and API Gateway

To facilitate communication and data exchange between microservices, an event-driven architecture was implemented. AWS messaging services such as Amazon MSK (Kafka) and Amazon MQ were leveraged for reliable and decoupled event-based communication. Kloia also implemented an API Gateway to provide a unified entry point for external clients to access the Trumore platform's functionalities.

Cost Optimization

AWS Managed Services

By leveraging AWS-managed services such as EKS and Aurora, TOGG achieved cost optimization through reduced infrastructure management overhead and efficient resource utilization. The pay-as-you-go model of AWS services helped TOGG align costs with actual usage.

AWS Technologies Utilized

Kloia leveraged various AWS services to meet requirements for the platform. These services included AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) for container orchestration, Amazon Aurora for highly available and scalable relational databases, AWS Shield Advanced for advanced DDoS protection, and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) for application-layer security.

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS):

EKS provided Automative Customer with a fully managed Kubernetes service, allowing them to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications. Kloia utilized EKS to simplify the deployment and management of microservices within the platform, ensuring high availability and scalability.

Amazon Aurora

Kloia recommended Amazon Aurora, a PostgreSQL-compatible relational database service, to meet project’s requirements for a highly available and scalable database. Aurora offered project enhanced performance, automated backups, and multi-region replication for data durability and availability.

AWS Shield Advanced

To protect the platform from sophisticated DDoS attacks, Automative Customer implemented AWS Shield Advanced. This service provided comprehensive DDoS protection, including advanced threat intelligence and real-time mitigation, ensuring the platform's availability and performance during cyber attacks.

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Kloia implemented AWS WAF to provide an additional layer of protection for the platform. WAF allowed Automative Customer to define custom rules to filter and block malicious traffic, protecting the platform from common web application vulnerabilities and attacks.

Implementation of the Platform

Platform Development Practices

Kloia, in collaboration with Automative Customer, followed modern platform development practices to implement the platform. These practices focused on building a scalable, modular, and extensible platform architecture that enables easy integration of new features and components.

Microservices Architecture

The Platform was designed as a collection of microservices, each responsible for specific business functionalities. Kloia utilized AWS EKS and containerization technologies to deploy and manage these microservices. The microservices architecture offered several advantages, including scalability, fault isolation, and independent deployment of individual services.

Event-Driven Communication

To facilitate communication and data exchange between microservices, an event-driven architecture was implemented. This approach allowed services to communicate asynchronously through events, promoting loose coupling and scalability. AWS messaging services such as Amazon MSK (Kafka) and Amazon MQ were leveraged for reliable and decoupled event-based communication.

API Gateway and Service Mesh

Kloia implemented an API Gateway to provide a unified entry point for external clients to access the platform's functionalities. The API Gateway served as a central point for authentication, authorization, and routing of requests to the appropriate microservices. Additionally, a service mesh, implemented using istio, enhanced observability and control over service-to-service communication within the platform.

Data Storage and Management

Kloia designed a data storage and management strategy that catered to the requirements of the platform. Amazon Aurora was utilized as the primary database for structured data, providing scalability, high availability, and durability. Additionally, Amazon S3 was employed for storing and managing large volumes of unstructured data, such as multimedia assets.

Observability and Monitoring

Effective observability and monitoring were key aspects of the platform's implementation. Kloia leveraged AWS services like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Cloudtrail and AWS Grafana to collect and analyze logs, metrics, and traces. This allowed for real-time monitoring of system performance, identification of bottlenecks, and troubleshooting of issues.

Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD)

To ensure a smooth and reliable development workflow, Kloia implemented robust CI/CD pipelines for the platform. The pipelines were configured to automatically build, test, and deploy new code changes using GitOps practices. This enabled the development team to iterate rapidly, ensuring the delivery of high-quality software with minimal manual intervention.

 

 

 

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as Code was adopted to define and provision the required AWS resources for the platform. Kloia utilized tools like terragrunt and terraform to codify infrastructure configurations. This approach allowed for consistent and reproducible infrastructure deployments and simplified the management of the platform's infrastructure.

By following platform development practices, Automative Customer and Kloia created a scalable, modular, and robust platform. The microservices architecture, event-driven communication, API Gateway, service mesh, and effective data storage strategies ensured the platform's flexibility, scalability, and maintainability. The implementation of observability and monitoring practices enabled proactive identification and resolution of issues, ensuring optimal performance and reliability. The adoption of CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code streamlined the development and deployment processes, resulting in faster time-to-market and efficient resource management.

Achievements and Benefits

The collaboration between Automative Customer, Kloia, and AWS resulted in numerous achievements and benefits for the platform.

Scalability and High Availability

The utilization of AWS EKS and Amazon Aurora allowed the platform to scale effortlessly to accommodate increasing user demand. EKS's auto-scaling capabilities and Aurora's replication across multiple availability zones ensured high availability and performance.

Cost Optimization

By leveraging AWS-managed services such as EKS and Aurora, Automative Customer achieved cost optimization through reduced infrastructure management overhead and efficient resource utilization. Additionally, the pay-as-you-go model of AWS services helped Automative Customer align costs with actual usage.

Security and Compliance

Automative Customer enhanced the platform’s security posture by implementing AWS Shield Advanced and AWS WAF. These services provided advanced DDoS protection and application-layer security, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of user data.

Developer Productivity

The adoption of AWS EKS and containerization techniques with GitOps practices improved developer productivity for Automative Customer's engineering teams. Containerization simplified the development, deployment, and scaling processes, enabling faster iterations and reducing time-to-market for new features.