AWS and Kubernetes implementation for Exact x Forestall

Exact x Forestall, a leader in quality control services for industry, has decided to move its IT infrastructure to the cloud to improve the performance and scalability of its product, the xExtranet platform. This platform is an advanced database where the results of all work performed for the company's customers are placed.

Challenges

• migrating infrastructure from on-premise to Amazon Web Services,
• separation of application infrastructure from the rest of the systems,
• ongoing administrative support, taking care of the IT infrastructure and planning its further development,
• ensuring business continuity of the IT environment.

Why Hostersi?

Exact x Forestall decided to migrate the xExtranet to the Amazon Web Services cloud because it was on their product development roadmap. An additional motivator for the migration was the expiring Cluster Control license, so the whole process had to be done very quickly. Exact x Forestall managers chose Hostersi on recommendation. In the eyes of the client, we had a very good reputation in the Polish market, he perceived us as leading experts in administrative support and the cloud, which suggested the delivery of the service at the highest possible level.

The solution - migration to AWS

After a detailed analysis of the customer's existing infrastructure, Hostersi designed and deployed the infrastructure on AWS in just three weeks using best-practice Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodologies to automate and standardize processes. The approach used Terraform (for infrastructure management) and Packer and Ansible (for building AMI images) tools. The infrastructure was split into two environments under separate AWS accounts: STAGE and PROD. The application running within AWS is stateless (stateless - user session information is not stored). In addition, to streamline the process of releasing future versions of the application and new functionality, we implemented CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) processes - implemented in AWS Bitbucket Pipelines and AWS CodeDeploy.

Deploying a Kubernetes cluster

Completion of the work related to migration of services to AWS does not mean the end of the project, and the xExtranet infrastructure is being dynamically developed and optimized all the time. Work is currently underway to launch the Kubernetes cluster for new services, but also for the migration of existing services (the first version is already running in the STAGE environment). It will be used to create new microservices, which in the long term will allow better management of the application.

Next step

At the moment, work is also underway to implement Disaster Recovery - standardizing the backup and restoration process, which will provide the customer with much greater security in the event of a major failure.

Results

In just three weeks, Hostersi rapidly migrated xExtranet to AWS using the IaC approach. Hostersi is also supporting Exact x Forestall in the area of DevOps and providing administrative support, with an average response time to failures of just 25 minutes since the beginning of 2024.

Exact x Forestall has gained a modern, scalable and efficient IT environment, allowing them to focus on growing their business, leaving infrastructure management in the hands of experts.

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