Extended Abstract, Intetics Inc.
4851 Tamiami Trail N, Suite 200, Naples, FL 34103-3098, United States
Keywords: AWS, Lambda, Serverless, Cloud, Architecture, API
Selecting proper technology is important. In Examples of Selecting Technology and Designing Architecture, Intetics will provide five case studies in which the team chose technology that offers security, optimizes maintenance and infrastructural costs, improves time-to-value, and reduces manual work.
In all of the case studies, Intetics will describe the problem, solution, outcome, and lesson learned — as well as a detailed description of the selected architecture.
1. AMI Image Updater
Intetics presents a case study in which the Client needed the EC2 image update process to be automated. The Client was already using the EC2 Image builder service to build new AMI images, but there was a lot of manual work done for updating. The Intetics team proposed a serverless solution based on Lambda, SNS, Step Function, DynamoDB, and SES AWS services. The cost was calculated to be less than $50 per month, assuming that AMI images are updated once per month.
With this architecture, new AMI images are immediately and automatically applied to all EC2 instances. Therefore, by using fully-managed services, the Client was able to significantly reduce its maintenance work.
2. Serverless Façade API
In this case study, Intetics was tasked with improving the Client’s database reliability and extending its legacy API.
To address the first task, Intetics proposed migrating the data to the AWS Aurora Serverless database. And for the second task, rather than updating the legacy API, Intetics built a façade API using API Gateway with Lambda services. This allowed the legacy API to be kept as-is so that existing integrations were not affected.
Because of the migration to the Aurora Serverless database, the Client was able to get reduced maintenance costs. And the Façade API provided all the necessary data, allowing the Client to build a new frontend application. Through this case study, it became apparent that using fully managed services is the key to improving time-to-value.
3. AWS WAF + Authorizer@Edge
Intetics presents a case study in which they needed to improve a platform’s performance and reporting data by protecting the site from crawler requests. The Client’s platform was receiving a heavy load from crawlers, which was affecting reporting data. What’s more, static content on S3 was not protected, so Intetics was tasked with remedying the issue.
First, the Intetics team built CloudFront in front of the core platform to accelerate access to data. Then, the team built Authorizer@Edge using Lambda@Edge. This allowed only authorized requests to access static content from S3.
These measures improved the site performance, and 15% of crawler traffic is now automatically blocked.
4. Public Cloud Processing
In this case study, Intetics was asked to create a solution that could retrieve, process, and visualize the Client’s public cloud usage data. The Client didn’t have a centralized place in which they could access information about their spending on infrastructure and their usage of cloud resources.
To achieve the desired solution, Intetics proposed using AWS’ fully managed services, namely Credentials API, Report Downloader, ETL processing, Reporting API, and Abstracted API. The solution was built using Lambda, DynamoDB, Aurora Serverless, Time Series, API Gateway, SSM, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, X-Ray, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, SNS, SQS, and StepFunction AWS services.
The solution allowed users to view and manage their cloud resources from a single place — and it can easily be extended to support other public cloud providers. The main lesson learned from this case study was that fully managed services can significantly reduce operational costs when running the platform in test environments.
5. Video Streaming Platform
In this final case study, the Client needed a platform that offered functions for ordering physical hardware, streaming videos, and recording and storing streams. It was also necessary to include social features, such as comments, likes, and chats.
Intetics took into account ease of use, flexibility, scalability, technology, and cost/revenue models when selecting the architecture. The Team decided to go with the AWS serverless approach, allowing them to build a scalable platform that could handle a nearly limitless number of streams and viewers. What’s more, the platform is only charged by AWS for used resources and data.
