In this webinar, Cascadeo will show you how they helped a national transportation software provider build an AWS architecture that enables them to effectively support more than 3,300 complex integration tests against nightly builds of their Interoperable Train Control Messaging (ITCM) application. You’ll also learn about how this software provider can scale on-demand, has improved governance and cost management, and rapidly supports new projects without increasing IT overhead using AWS.
How a National Transportation Software Provider Migrated a Mission-Critical Test Infrastructure to AWS with Cascadeo PPT
1. How a National Transportation Software Provider
Migrated a Mission-Critical Test Infrastructure to AWS
with Cascadeo
Vadim Astakhov, Ecosystem Solutions Architect, AWS
Elbert Lubas, Senior Program Manager, Major National Transportation Software Provider
Jared Reimer, CTO, Cascadeo
September 26th, 2017
3. Reduce burden to IT staff Enabling more rapid
scalability
Lowering costs
Why are Microsoft Workloads Moving to the Cloud?
4. CustomerAdoption
2008 Today
WS 2008 & SQL Server 2008
Visual Studio Toolkit
MSFT SCOM plug-in release
AWS Directory Service
EC2 Dedicated Hosts (BYOL)
MSFT SharePoint 2016 (Marketplace)
WS 2008 R2 SQL Server 2008 R2WS 2003
.NET SDK
MSFT SCVMM Plug-in
WS 2012 & SQL Server 2012
AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell
Amazon RDS adds SQL Server
EC2 Run Command
EC2 Systems Manager
WS & SQL 2016
EC2 Dedicated Instances (BYOL)
41 instance types, 10 instance families
31 different AMIs for Windows workloads
300 different Windows ISV listings in AWS marketplace
New! .NET on Lambda
New!
SAP instance on AWS 2012
Innovation: Windows on AWS
5. Accelerate Innovation Reduce costs Strengthen security posture
Easily manage and scaleImprove uptime and
performance
Benefits of Running Microsoft Workloads on AWS
6. Accelerate Innovation
Access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud services
Provision resources on-demand and eliminate lengthy
procurement and deployment cycles
Establish a global footprint without the cost or time
associated with building new facilities
Integrate emerging technologies like IoT and machine
learning with less risk
Focus on delivering customer value instead of time-
consuming hardware maintenance
7. Reduce Costs
Pay only for what you need and replace CapEx with OpEx
Bring your existing Microsoft software licenses
Continue to derive value from existing investments as part
of a hybrid architecture
Use Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances to save up to 70%
off of the on-demand price
Improve application performance without hardware
refresh costs
8. Strengthen Security Posture
Streamline compliance with more than 50 common regulatory
requirements using AWS Assurance Programs
Use AWS Direct Connect and Amazon VPC to establish multi-
layered network security
Bring existing Microsoft Active Directory users, groups, and
credentials and use with AWS Identity and Access
Management
Protect data in-transit and at-rest with 256-bit AES encryption
Leverage leading third-party security solutions available in
AWS Marketplace
9. Improve Uptime and Performance
Establish multi-synchronous geographic redundancy
Variety of EC2 instance types, each optimized to support
the needs of your target workload
Immediately respond to changing resource requirements
using Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing
Maintain full visibility with a single pane of glass
Place applications and data in AWS Availability Zones
near end users to reduce latency
10. Easily Manage and Scale
Reduce learning curve by extending existing investments
and toolsets into AWS
Leverage automation capabilities to free up more time for
innovation and delivering customer value
Offload Microsoft SQL Server administrative tasks with
Amazon RDS
Tap into the AWS Partner Network for migration and
managed services
Receive the same support from Microsoft as you do
on-premises
11. License-included: Bring your own licenses:
Current and legacy versions available
from AWS Marketplace or AWS
Management Console
License costs included in AWS bill
AWS handles license compliance
Can use License Mobility through Software
Assurance, or make use of Amazon EC2
Dedicated Hosts
Extend license investments to the cloud and
pay only for AWS services you consume
You are responsible for license compliance
For additional information, contact Microsoft, your Microsoft reseller, or Microsoft@amazon.com
Licensing Options on AWS
12. Accelerate Time to Value with re:Think Credits
Designed to help enterprises migrate or build
new Microsoft applications cost-effectively
New Windows workloads are eligible for credits
based on the projected annual spend from:
EC2 Windows (including BYOL)
SQL Server usage (EC2 or RDS)
Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
This is a limited time credit program - contact us today to see if your Windows
workload qualifies!
re:Think for Windows Program
13. Elbert Lubas, Senior Program Manager, Major National Transportation Software Provider
VM Public Cloud Deployment Project
14. Positive Train Control
initiative
Constraints and
Consequences
Heterogeneous
Windows / RedHat
Environment
Historical Virtual
Infrastructure for
Parallel Testing,
Deployment Automation
and Configuration
Management
AWS Project Background
15. Leverage massively
parallel infrastructure
when needed
Eliminate persistent /
durable VMs in favor of
immutable
Optimize for cost,
performance,
parallelism over time
Adopt best-of-breed
AWS platform
technologies to
accelerate development
and innovation
Motivation for AWS Cloud
16. What is the VM Public Cloud Deployment Project?
The VM Public Cloud Deployment project is an MCC initiative to solve the ongoing
need for MCC teams when they utilize virtual machines as a platform to test,
validate, create and access software and integration development.
The opportunities and problems we are attempting to solve are the following:
Governance over request and deployment for Virtual Machines
Golden Templates for each needed test/validation configuration
Scalable solution with an option to flex up or tear down on demand
Subscription limitation based on roles or department
Clear utilization of demand analysis for Virtual Machine consumption
Automated deployment process for Virtual Machine Configuration
Automated Build Verification process
Opportunities for Dispatcher (For Test execution and collation of results)
Opportunities for RNS – Radio Network Simulator
As Is:
MCC Enterprise IT maintains a private cloud infrastructure which is the present solution to
perform VM Provisioning for our Engineering teams
17. Phase 1: MVP Scope
Automated regression test infrastructure for Messaging that can burst into an unlimited number of
on-demand test “Triplet” hosts running in the Cloud.
Cloud
Infrastructure
Automate cloud
infrastructure
(network,
subnets,
security) and
connectivity
(VPN, dedicated
network)
Continuous
Integration
CI pipeline for
Messaging,
automating the
images and code
deployment for
the DevelopHost
64-bit, TestHost
64-bit, and
TestHost 32-bit.
Auto Scaling
Controlled auto-
scaling and
metadata
synchronization
for each triplet to
optimize cost
and speed of
regression tests.
Dispatcher
Queuing
Queuing service
to ensure
dispatcher can
continue to
develop
messages while
the auto-scaling
is increasing the
number of
instances.
Monitoring
Monitoring of the
full regression
test
infrastructure.
18. Achieving Maximum Business Agility: Thinking
Differently About IT Infrastructure
Jared Reimer, Chief Technology Officer, Cascadeo
19. About Cascadeo
Cascadeo is an AWS Premier
Partner
Vendor-neutral team
comprised of ~60 industry
veterans.
Based in Seattle with more
than a decade in business;
operations in US & Asia.
20. What Sets Cascadeo Apart?
Firm believers and advocates of
the “automate early and often”
philosophy
We are an engineering-first
organization with decades of
industry experience around full-
stack automation and
distributed systems at scale.
Top-tier partner and industry
validation.
21. The Endless Loop
Trying to build systems that
never fail while still relying upon
humans to perpetually monitor
and operate them
22. Massively parallel
(1000s) nightly test
runs with different
scenarios and
configurations.
Immutable
infrastructure with
full-stack
deployment
automation and
configuration
management.
Extensively
leverages
Serverless Compute
using AWS Lambda
and higher-order
PaaS services like
AWS CodePipeline,
CloudWatch, and
CloudTrail.
Can optimize for
cost or performance
as required, on the
fly, day or night.
Cloud Solution Introduction
23. Availability
Understand what is
“good enough”.
Preserve the UX /
endpoint health even in
failure scenarios
Durability
What is your worst case
tolerance for data loss
and time to recovery?
What is your acceptable
data loss window?
Security
Assume that breaches are
inevitable and mitigate
damage when they occur.
Keep the humans out!
Designing the Cloud for Compromise
29. Deploy, Rinse, Repeat!
You have a much higher degree of
confidence if you use deployment
automation, configuration management, and
frequently re-deploy. Why?
Our mantra is to automate early and often.
Replace deployments proactively rather
than reactively, and keep the humans out of
production environments wherever and
whenever possible.
Redeploy - don’t patch, hotfix, RDP
30. Legacy cruft piled
up by iterative
patching
Unknown security and ops
history; complete inability to
detect modern rootkits /
malware
Entropy is not your friend.
Reset to baseline as often
as practical.
No repeatability =
no recoverability =
eventual failure
Documentation is always
wrong when you need it
most.
Counting on humans to
operate systems
perpetually without failing
does not work.
Band-aids fossilize
into permanent
fixtures
The emphasis shifts and
never returns (until the next
crisis occurs)
Refactoring later is rarely
fun or glamorous work
There is no “just
do it once” in the
cloud.
Don’t believe the marketing
hype. “Lift and Shift” is a
recipe for failure 9 times out
of 10.
Why Not “Lift and Shift” Instead?
32. Thoughtful Cloud Adoption
Is this truly
unique to your
company?
Everything else
is a SaaS
(or a Lambda
function, or SPI
glue)
Develop!
Develop!
Develop!
Automate early
and often!
Limit blast
radius within
and across
microservices.
How much is
“good enough”
vs. overkill
33. Mo Gawdat, CBO, Google X; Author; Father
“Happiness is equal to or greater
than the events of your life minus
your expectation of how life
should be.”
Mo Gawdat, CBO, Google X; Author; Father
34. Conclusions
Business agility wins.
Leverage SaaS/PaaS services rather than reinventing wheels.
Challenge your expectations and assumptions about infrastructure
requirements and realities.
Develop, don’t operate.
Automate early and often.
Make thoughtful compromises and cloud design decisions.
35. Q&A
Vadim Astakhov, Ecosystem Solutions Architect, AWS
Elbert Lubas, Senior Program Manager, Major National Transportation Software Provider
Jared Reimer, CTO, Cascadeo