New AWS infrastructure for FMAdata
For First Mover Advantage, a US-based real estate data broker, makandra took on the task of rebuilding a stable, secure, and scalable AWS infrastructure.
Including:
- Introduction of Infrastructure as Code
- Migration of outdated infrastructure
- Cost reduction with AWS
- Setup with high availability according to current best practices
First Mover Advantage is a US data broker specializing in real estate data. Among other things, the company records when people change their place of residence and makes this information available to business customers, such as moving companies.
makandra took on the task of rebuilding a stable, secure, and scalable infrastructure for their product FMAdata, undertaking this completely as Infrastructure as Code for the first time. This included migrating the existing Rails applications, upgrading the database cluster, optimizing AWS costs, and introducing a highly available setup in line with current best practices.
Industry
Real estate and data marketing
Technology
AWS, OpenTofu with Terragrunt, Puppet, Datadog
Services
DevOps as a service
Key challenges
- Infrastructure in need of updating
The existing AWS infrastructure was originally set up very well; however, there has been a lack of continuous updating in recent years. Operating systems and software were running on outdated versions, and there were also some individual solutions that no longer complied with current best practices. - Operation and maintenance without a dedicated team
Since there was no dedicated DevOps team, developers themselves had to respond to infrastructure problems in emergencies. In addition, there was no regular maintenance. - Manual and inconsistent infrastructure management
Changes to the infrastructure were made manually. This resulted in a lack of uniform and traceable configuration, which made clarity and maintainability considerably more difficult. - Migration challenges
Before the changeover, the old setup had to continue to be supported in live operation. At the same time, a timely migration to new servers and versions was necessary. A key requirement was to carry out the migration without interruption. - International collaboration
The project was coordinated between teams in three countries with up to an eight-hour time difference. Despite these conditions, the international collaboration worked smoothly.
I'm thrilled with the new infrastructure makandra created for our web applications. I especially appreciate the smooth migration process with no downtime. There was always a backup plan, which allowed us to safely migrate our large and complex infrastructure.
Our solution for FMAdata
- All deployments are now configured for high availability.
- Better performance thanks to optimized AWS instance types, newer versions, and optimized configuration.
- More flexible setup for developers: Ruby/Node version can be changed dynamically for each deployment.
- Uniform basic setup for all servers and deployments.
- Regular security updates and maintenance.
- Advanced monitoring and intervention in case of problems.
- Automated, daily checks of the AWS infrastructure (current security best practices and unwanted manual changes).
- Infrastructure as Code & Configuration Management.
- Changes to existing deployments can be implemented quickly and securely (e.g., scaling up/down, adding new servers).
- New servers and deployments can be provisioned quickly and reproducibly.
Technical implementation
- First, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the AWS account, existing IaC code, applications, and customer requirements. This assessment resulted in the prioritization of the next steps.
- We rebuilt the AWS setup and defined the infrastructure entirely as IaC with OpenTofu/Terragrunt; the server configurations were implemented with Puppet. Existing resources were imported into the new setup where appropriate, otherwise they were rebuilt from scratch. Where possible, additional AWS services were used, including EFS, ElastiCache, AWS Backup, and ACM.
- This was followed by the migration: all applications were moved to new servers without downtime, as was the database cluster - despite its size of several terabytes. Necessary version updates were carried out in parallel. Finally, we optimized the AWS account in terms of costs.
The makandra team was *highly responsive, actively listening to our needs and adapting accordingly. I greatly appreciate the automations built for us, which make my job quicker and easier. I highly recommend makandra.
Project scope
Our services for FMAdata
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