About the project
In the ongoing effort to solidify and scale the smart home automation solution by Hunter Douglas, we took the opportunity to create an AWS Cloud Infrastructure that complies with the standards and best practices for quality, reliability and resilience.
Our approach centered around creating an AWS Cloud environment that could automatically adjust to real-time needs, eliminating unnecessary complexity and costs. With automation at the core, we sought to enable scalability, optimize resources, and ensure security without compromising on performance.
The goal
Hunter Douglas needed more than just a cloud environment, they required a solution that could support growth, maintain uptime, and adapt without constant manual intervention. Key objectives included:
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High degree of automation
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Scalability and reliability
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Zero downtime
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Backup and recovery
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Cost optimization
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Observability
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Change management
The challenge
Rebuilding the entire AWS cloud infrastructure was no small feat. Since our goal was to completely reconfigure the AWS Cloud Infrastructure and meet the highest standards that Hunter Douglas was expecting from us, we first had to evaluate what we currently have and then plan a new architecture that would serve all of the tenants - the different brands using the application.
We found out that the old setup lacked flexibility and it was expensive to maintain, with each tenant requiring its own environment, which introduced redundancy and high costs. Additionally, the lack of monitoring tools left the team reacting to issues instead of preventing them, leading to downtime fears during critical updates or system changes and slow resolution times.
But most importantly these changes had to be done in a graceful manner without any disruptions or downtime for the end users.
The team
- DevOps
The technology
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AWS
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Terraform IaC (Infrastructure as Code)
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Elasticsearch & Kibana
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Azure Devops CI/CD Pipelines
The solution
We built a future-proof cloud environment that allowed Hunter Douglas to scale with confidence. By leveraging AWS and tools like Terraform for IaC and Azure DevOps for CI/CD, we developed a solution that automated critical processes, optimized costs, and introduced proactive monitoring.
Autoscaling
We introduced auto-scaling capabilities using AWS auto scaling groups and application load balancer to automatically adjust resources based on current demand, ensuring both optimal performance and cost-efficiency. This allowed the infrastructure to handle varying loads seamlessly, maintaining high availability and responsiveness while controlling operational costs. Through this, we removed the burden of manual scaling and resource allocation, freeing up the team to focus on more strategic tasks.
Scripted infrastructure
We set up the infrastructure using Terraform scripts, ensuring a consistent and repeatable setup. This approach enhanced deployment efficiency and reduced the risk of human error, while providing disaster recovery capabilities, easier maintenance and upgrades. The whole infrastructure is versioned in Git following a change management process.
CI/CD
All of the pipelines are now fully automated using Azure DevOps, building and testing new versions and deployment and release management of those versions, ensuring high quality and a repeatable process with no room for errors.
Monitoring and alerting
We deployed monitoring and alerting tools like Elastic cluster and Kibana, integrated with AWS Cloud Watch. These tools provided the team with real-time insights into the health of the infrastructure, allowing them to detect and resolve issues early, avoiding costly downtimes.
Disaster recovery
We applied best practices for environment management, including disaster recovery, high availability, and security. This ensured that our infrastructure was resilient and capable of handling unexpected disruptions. The implementation of automated backup and recovery solutions using AWS RDS and S3 provided an automated and monitored process ensuring that we are safe and compliant with the highest standards.
The result
The new AWS cloud infrastructure delivered tangible improvements across the board. With autoscaling in place, we can now handle fluctuating demand with ease, ensuring optimal performance while keeping costs under control. By automating infrastructure management and embedding best practices into the deployment process, we empowered Hunter Douglas to confidently scale their operations without worrying about technical bottlenecks.
The introduction of advanced monitoring tools enabled our team to always take proactive approach, identifying potential issues before they became critical and ensuring that performance remained consistent even under pressure.
By focusing on automation, scalability, and proactive monitoring, we transformed Hunter Douglas’s AWS infrastructure into a future-ready solution well-prepared to support the organization's growth and future needs and the team behind it all.
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