Use case
Automating On-Demand Developer Environments for Preview and Testing
- Lakshya Chhajed
About the Customer
SkillForge is a global funding and trading company that provides trading services for financial markets. Their platform offers opportunities for traders to get funded by showcasing their skills in real-time market environments. The firm supports a diverse range of trading strategies across various instruments, with no minimum deposit requirements and a profit-sharing structure that can reach up to 100%. SkillForge aims to empower traders by providing them with the capital needed to succeed while fostering a supportive community for continuous learning and growth. The program features an evaluation and growth model, allowing traders to start with a real money account from day one and progress based on their performance.
Customer Challenge
SkillForge faced challenges in enabling developers to test their features or bug fixes without disrupting other ongoing work. Their current testing process in a shared staging environment caused contention, as it was not isolated. This created delays and inefficiencies, as changes could potentially affect other team members.
The lack of dedicated environments for developers also increased the risk of errors in production. Developers needed an independent way to verify their changes efficiently. Addressing these issues was critical for improving the development process and maintaining the quality of software deployments.
Solution
The solution involved implementing automated, on-demand environments using AWS services. This project was completed in three phases, leveraging infrastructure-as-code and automation tools to streamline development and testing workflows.
1) Phase: Preparation and Planning:
Key Requirements:
- Environment Isolation: Used AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) namespaces for developer-specific environments.
- Automation: Automated the creation, deployment, and teardown of environments with Helm charts.
- Monitoring and Logging: Integrated centralized monitoring using Grafana dashboards with namespace filtering.
- Resource Optimization: Employed EC2 t3.large (spot) instances for cost efficiency, coupled with Karpenter to manage scaling and stopping idle resources.
2) Phase: Pipeline Implementation and Deployment
Two pipelines were developed to automate environment management:
- Environment Provisioning Pipeline:
- Accepted developer inputs such as branch names.
- Built and deployed applications using Helm charts.
- Configured AWS resources, including Application Load Balancers (ALB), ElasticCache, and CloudFront, to provide isolated testing environments.
- Environment Teardown Pipeline:
- Scheduled automation to stop idle environments during nights and weekends.
- Released EC2 resources and notified developers of the shutdown status via Slack.
3) Phase: Post-Deployment Monitoring and Validation
- Established monitoring dashboards in Grafana.
- Validated load balancer configurations and Kubernetes resource metrics.
- Ensured efficient resource release through teardown automation.
Below is the flow diagram illustrating the architecture of the implemented solution:

Results & Benefits
The implemented solution delivered significant improvements in efficiency, cost savings, and developer productivity:
- Automated Developer Environments:
- Reduced manual effort for provisioning and managing environments.
- Enabled faster feedback cycles with provisioning completed in minutes.
- Optimized Resource Usage:
- Idle environments were automatically stopped, reducing cloud costs during non-active periods.
- Enhanced Collaboration:
- Isolated environments prevented resource contention and improved team collaboration.
- Operational Efficiency:
- Automation reduced manual intervention and allowed quicker testing cycles.
- Cost Optimization:
- Efficient resource allocation ensured cost savings during low-activity periods.
- Security Enhancements:
- Role-based access control provided secure namespace isolation.
- Comprehensive logging ensured traceability.
About IAMOPS
IAMOPS is a full DevOps suite company that supports technology companies to achieve intense production readiness.
Our mission is to ensure that our clients’ infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines are scalable, mitigate failure points, optimize performance, ensure uptime, and minimize costs.
Our DevOps suite includes DevOps Core, NOC 24/7, FinOps, QA Automation, and DevSecOps to accelerate overall exponential growth.
As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner and Reseller, we focus on two key pillars: Professionalism by adhering to best practices and utilizing advanced technologies, Customer Experience with responsiveness, availability, clear project management, and transparency to provide an exceptional experience for our clients.