UORDERIT: AWS Platform, CICD and Application Migration

DNX is all about helping our customers to leverage effective scalability, security and zero downtime deployments.

About Uorderit

UORDERIT is an Australian B2B platform for customers to source, rate and review Technology Companies.

The platform enables customers to browse and choose from a comprehensive list of Australian and Global Technology firms.

The platform is based on two primary users.

Businesses that are looking for a specialist, digital and IT professional which suits clients’ needs. From app and software development to blockchain, SEO, and cybersecurity; UORDERIT has certified and verified professionals for projects of all sizes.

Providers: Its a part of the platform where a professional can register their skills sets and interests. The platform matches this information to the right project.

The Business Challenge

UORDERIT was struggling to achieve a reliable, secure, and future prove cloud platform that supports the MVP launch, keep cloud costs under control, and simultaneously move new features to production quickly. Adopting Serverless in AWS, UORDERIT intended to effectively launch new features to the market and get Continuous Integration across on-shore and off-shore teams.

With the suggested development pipeline UORDERIT expected to release code to production twice a month on the end of each sprint.

DNX Solutions was engaged by UORDERIT to implement an AWS Well-Architected platform in 4 phases:

• AWS Well-Architect Foundations

• CICD Implementation

• Application Deployment

• Path to Serverless

The Solution

Before start running the project, DNX’s team evaluated the organisation’s requirements also plunged into the processes through DNX’s DevOps approach which drives the team over the DevOps journey while building a perfect foundation, standardising and automating processes, and use the technologies to deliver applications quickly and reliably.

As lift-and-shift was not the right approach for this scenario, firstly we moved the current application to AWS utilising the DNX open source, infrastructure-as-code software Terraform to provide a solid, secure, and cost-efficient AWS platform to enable UORDERIT to deploy their workloads. After the AWS foundation phase, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform were introduced to deploy AWS infrastructure and application changes. Lastly, the UORDERIT applications and databases were migrated to the new platform using Containers, CICD and ECS with blue/green deployment concepts relying on DNX best practices.

Application Transformation Phase

DNX was engaged as a trusted advisor to design, implement and deploy UORDERIT’s cloud platform and application stacks.

By using DNX One — our all-in-one AWS platform based on open source Terraform modules — UORDERIT could promptly start planning the deployment phase into the AWS platform. The following features were implemented:

• AWS Design and Documentation

• Infrastructure-as-code using Terraform and DNX open source modules

• CI/CD Pipelines for Terraform Projects

• Application Container Strategy

• Application Blue/Green Deployment

• AWS ECS Cluster Configuration

• AWS RDS Setup and Configuration

The diagram below illustrates the high-level design used for UORDERIT:

After this first approach, DNX built from ground up the path to serverless where UORDERIT benefits from faster time to market and rapid continuous integration between teams. Leveraging AWS Amplify and API Gateway with Lambdas.

With the serverless approach UORDERIT could move reduced infrastructure operation and use their time to think about the business and new features to the market.

Serverless Approach

AWS service utilized:

• Lambda Functions
• CloudFormation
• API Gateway
• Cognito
• AWS Amplify

Conclusion

The project for UORDERIT was delivered in less than one (1) month, and the velocity was due to automation and CI/CD pipelines — both core DNX principles.

With the project completed, UORDERIT can now deploy workloads in an automated way with on-shore and off-shore teams, promoting continuous integration for both and full control. With the full automation of cloud platforms to enable UORDERIT to approve and release code twice a month as intended originally. As adopting a serverless approach, the bill is under control as you pay per usage, avoiding over-provisioning by using Lambda functions, the infrastructure grows with the company.

As security was a key concern, DNX has built a secure AWS foundation to host the current data-base, enable to scale and grow the application. Adding CICD pipelines, the team could focus on delivering features instead of infrastructure. UORDERIT is set on the path to the success, which can turn its MVP into a product without any rebuild.

“As a Start-Up company, there are many challenges that can potentially derail your project. These usually revolve around the governance of the project, or the lack thereof. Most of our web-development was outsourced overseas, therefore it was vital for us to partner with DNX Solutions, to future proof our development pipeline. DNX Solutions architected our environments in a way where it would scale and more importantly be secure. This solution means we can work with a developer anywhere in the world and be assured that we remain in control of our development.”

Jon Altringer Founder & Managing Director”