How IAMOPS DevOps Ignited Aggua's Growth
“Building a POC is one thing. Having enterprise-ready production is another thing. I think that’s where DevOps shines. You need stuff to work 99.99999%. That’s what DevOps does, from the easy 80% uptime all the way to what you need to sell to real customers.”
-Avi Greenwald, CTO and Co-Founder, AGGUA
Overview
Aggua aims to revolutionize data management. Their new cost management tool helps organizations save money and effectively manage their data pipeline.
Scalability and system performance take the highest priority in providing such first-of-its-kind solutions.
Aggua partnered with IAMOPS to outsource its DevOps workload during its POC.
The major DevOps Challenges included:
- Monolithic Architecture
- Manual deployment
- Testing on local host
- Poor networking configuration
- Developers’ time allocated to DevOps tasks
IAMOPS played a vital role in enabling Aggua to have optimized cloud infrastructure, CI/CD and implement DevOps best practices from its early stage onwards.
Location: Hoboken, NJ
Industry: Data Infrastructure and Analytics
Number of employees: 20+
Founding Date: September 2021
The collaborative data management platform specifically built for teams with Snowflake, BigQuery or Redshift at the heart of their architecture. Aggua helps data and business teams gain real-time data insights and make better decisions.
IAMOPS Implementing DevOps Best Practices
1. From Monolithic to Microservices
Aggua initially adopted a monolithic architecture which combined all functionalities and business logic into a single codebase. Avi Greenwald, Aggua‘s CTO, stated though it worked for them, it wasn’t the best decision architecture-wise because it wasn’t scalable, considering they need to move fast.
IAMOPS designed and developed microservices architecture and migrated from its previous monolithic infrastructure. The process for this transition involved breaking down the monolithic system into smaller, scalable services that can be managed independently.
Having microservices architecture enabled Aggua’s application to handle increasing user demand. Their team can now work on different services simultaneously improving development speed. This empowered Aggua to adapt to changing business needs and scale effortlessly.
2. From basic to optimized CI/CD pipelines
The initial state of Aggua’s CI/CD set up was very basic and not up to the desired standards. It led to suboptimal automation, limited functionality, slower updates, and challenges in maintaining the quality and stability of the deployed applications.
To address these issues, IAMOPS optimized their CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions, integrating it with version control and automated testing at every deployment stage. For easier and quicker deployment, Aggua and IAMOPS mutually migrated from AWS Beanstalk to ECS.
This approach minimizes errors and allows for more frequent updates as Aggua’s network expands. Their developers can now actively participate in the deployment process, enhancing efficiency and their overall experience.
3. From testing on a local host to having a reliable staging environment
Aggua encountered issues with their local host testing as it failed to replicate the complexities of the live production environment. It wasn’t as reliable as they wanted it to be.
In response, IAMOPS created a robust staging environment for controlled testing. A standardized and version-controlled deployment infrastructure was also established, using a dedicated repository for configuration and scripts.
Avi Greenwald, Aggua’s CTO, mentioned that getting the Terraform scripts right and building new environments were essential for improving their development and QA workflow.
Aggua can now test in a better manner, detecting and resolving issues early, eliminating downtime.
4. From poor network configuration to following network best practices
Aggua also faced a persistent DNS issue that remained unresolved despite months of collaboration with a cloud provider.
On the first call with IAMOPS in November 2021, this specific pain point was discussed, and IAMOPS’ CTO Roy promptly analyzed the issue and resolved it within the same meeting.
To fix their DNS issue, IAMOPS migrated Aggua’s DNS records to Route 53 and established a consolidated VPC, following AWS best practices for effective security configuration management.
Avi Greenwald, Aggua’s CTO, emphasized, “At the beginning, you’re focusing on the product, on getting things done.” This quick DNS resolution, highlighting their shared values of responsiveness and expertise, sparked the beginning of a wonderful partnership between IAMOPS and Aggua.
5.From developers doing DevOps tasks to taking Devops tasks off the developers' plates
Aggua’s founding team consisted of two co-founders and two developers, one for front-end and one for back-end. Their developers spent nearly 40% of their time managing DevOps tasks, researching tools and methodologies.
Avi Greenwald, Aggua’s CTO recalled, “It’s not that developers can’t do it. They can do it but at some point, it becomes a burden. It takes from their experience and time. While they are working on other things.”
IAMOPS DevOps Team stepped in to boost productivity by taking charge of continuous delivery, collaboration, and application monitoring.
By optimizing the cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipeline and automating repetitive tasks, developers can save time and effort, focusing on improving software features.
Aggua now enjoys enhanced productivity, faster delivery cycles, a secure and up-to-the standard infrastructure and overall better use of developer resources, freeing up almost 90 hours previously dedicated to DevOps tasks.
At a Glance
Business Need
Aggua needed DevOps experts to facilitate a transition towards a more scalable infrastructure and reduce the burden of their developers.
Solution
IAMOPS followed AWS well architected framework, implemented Microservices, developed CI/CD pipelines, created staging environments, configured network correctly, and streamlined DevOps workflow.
Results
Aggua has achieved desired scalability, quicker deployment process, better visibility and improved team efficiency, freeing nearly 90hrs previously spent on DevOps tasks.
Watch AGGUA’s growth journey with IAMOPS DevOps on IAMPODCAST For Startups: https://iamops.io/iam-podcast/
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