Amazon AWS DevOps

Springlane – a fast-growing start-up – is an online shopping and blogging platform for all topics related to cooking. “We fuel people’s passion for cooking” is Springlane’s vision. At Springlane, people with a passion for cooking can find everything they need to let off steam in the kitchen and put themselves out there – from the best products to inspiring recipes. Springlane’s online platform is currently visited by tens of thousands of people a day.

Challenges of our customer

As part of a complete overhaul of its IT infrastructure, coupled with the desire for a DevOps-based organization, a new, highly available, scalable infrastructure is to be built.
The new infrastructure must enable continual deployment. As much automation as possible is desirable – both in setting up the infrastructure and in documenting the systems, which has been neglected to date. The current security approach should also be expanded. Data protection must therefore be one of the focal points of a redesign in order to take into account all country-specific regulations.

Solution for our customer

Building a highly available, scalable target system based on the AWS cloud, taking into account DevOps best practices and with a very high level of automation involving Chef. As part of the set-up, all necessary security and auditing features were considered.

Disaster recovery scenarios are mapped via autoscaling using CodeDeploy and Chef so that instances can be restored at any time. Particular emphasis was placed on scale-out as part of the design of the target environment, as the web servers have been a bottleneck to date.

The technologies used include AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, and the Chef server managed by tecRacer. In addition to redesigning the infrastructure for high availability and scalability, monitoring and operations were outsourced to tecRacer as part of a managed service. To promote the DevOps mindset, tecRacer provided intensive, vendor-neutral training to employees and encouraged the new, open and agile mindset in cross-departmental communities of practice.

Customer benefits

Scalability and high availability – The new infrastructure is infinitely scalable and can therefore easily handle the ever-growing number of users. The redundant set-up ensures uninterrupted operation.

Disaster recovery – In the event of an emergency, the instances can be restored at any time and at the push of a button via the Chef Cookbooks.

Continuous improvement process – New requirements or deviations from the planned architecture are regularly reviewed and the resulting actions are managed and implemented via ITIL-based processes.

Focus on its core competencies – To allow the customer to concentrate fully on software development and not have to worry about managing the infrastructure, operations were outsourced to tecRacer.

Increased security – Existing security gaps were closed with the new system.

Today, the globally leading specialist for photovoltaic system technology SMA (www.sma.de) creates the conditions for the decentralized, digital and renewable energy supply of tomorrow with 3,000 employees in 20 countries. For over 35 years, SMA has been setting technological trends and driving the development of renewable energies with groundbreaking inverter technologies. With innovative solutions for all photovoltaic applications, SMA enables people and companies worldwide to be more independent in their use of energy. Its award-winning technology is protected by around 1,000 patents and registered utility models. SMA is currently the only company in the solar industry listed on the TecDAX.

Challenges of our customer

In the past, IT infrastructures at SMA were mainly set up manually and also not always sufficiently documented.
Data protection, above-average security and high availability are essential prerequisites for the success of SMA’s business and are therefore also the focus of the necessary re-design of the IT infrastructure, in particular to take into account the various country-specific regulations.
Due to a planned expansion to North America, the new IT infrastructure must also be adaptable to multiple regions.

Since further expansion into areas such as APAC (Asia Pacific Countries) is likely, the entire IT infrastructure must also be regionally adaptable at all times, for which the highest possible degree of automation is also desirable.

Solution for our customer

Build a multi regionally adaptable, highly available and scalable AWS target system, taking into account DevOps best practices and with a very high level of automation.
Consideration of security and auditing features that comply with both SMA internal and the latest external security guidelines in IT.
Scale-out of web servers, which were previously a bottleneck.
Design and implementation of disaster recovery backup strategies.

Complete documentation of the system setup.
Setup of the new AWS instances and migration to them.
Provision of 24 x 7 managed services.
Definition and continuous monitoring of SLAs.

Customer Benefits

Scalable and multi-regionally adaptable – The newly deployed, highly available, arbitrarily scalable and multi-regionally adaptable AWS infrastructures form the basis for SMA AG’s further expansion.

Increased agility – Due to the implementation of the DevOps model in the direction of a service center structure, agility in the collaboration between departments was significantly increased.

Continuous improvement process – New requirements or deviations from the planned architecture are regularly reviewed and the resulting actions are managed and implemented via ITIL-based processes.

Design and implementation of a DevOps Docker environment on AWS

Conducted a three-day AWS workshop to design and implement an automated deployment process.

DevOps-Consulting and Training

Skillbet Ltd, based in Malta, offers BetSnap, an interactive online sports betting game. BetSnap offers participants the opportunity to demonstrate their sports knowledge in an entertaining way and compete against each other in betting tournaments. BetSnap embodies absolute fairness and is intended as a sustainable, innovative and entertaining product in the gaming and betting sector.

Challenges of our client

Players need to be able to see results on BetSnap dynamically and in real time, communicate with each other and share their results on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter

Data privacy, security, scalability and high availability were therefore the main focus areas for the redesign, also to comply with all license-specific regulations of the MSA (Malta Gaming Association).

Solution for our customer

Building a highly available, scalable target system based on the AWS cloud, taking into account DevOps best practices and with the highest possible level of automation.

As part of the setup, the completely automated environment was created based on AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, as well as AWS OpsWorks with various Chef Cookbooks.

In the process, tecRacer was responsible for both the conceptual design of the new environment and its technical implementation – including the selection of operating systems and standard web applications such as Apache and PHP.

To promote the DevOps idea, tecRacer provided intensive, vendor-neutral training for the employees and encouraged the new, open and agile mindset.

Customer benefits

Scalability and high availability – The new infrastructure is arbitrarily scalable and can thus easily cope with the constantly growing number of users. The redundant set-up enables uninterrupted operation.

Increased agility – Due to the implementation of the DevOps model, agility in collaboration between departments has been significantly increased.
Continuous improvement process – New requirements and/or deviations from the planned architecture are regularly reviewed and the resulting actions are managed and implemented via ITIL-based processes.

Cost benefits – As BetSnap did not want to build up its own staff for monitoring the new AWS platform, the responsibility for ensuring 24 x 7 availability was handed over to tecRacer’s AWS Managed Services team after successful implementation of the project.