Transforming Integriser's E-Commerce Infrastructure with AWS
Mysterious Code rebuilt Integriser's e-commerce platform on AWS Fargate, supporting four times the traffic at comparable cost while halving the number of container types to manage.
Integriser’s e-commerce application struggled with scalability and resource demands due to rapid growth. Partnering with Mysterious Code and AWS, the company implemented a robust solution utilising Amazon’s PostgreSQL-compatible Aurora database, Amazon CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, and AWS Fargate. This approach enabled automatic scaling, simplified container management, and established a reliable testing and deployment process. As a result, Integriser now efficiently handles demand spikes, such as during Black Friday, and supports four times the previous traffic capacity at comparable costs. The solution significantly streamlined development, reducing complexity and optimising resource usage.
About Integriser
Integriser is an order management system, delivering SaaS solution for fulfilment warehouses and their e-commerce customers.
Challenge
Integriser’s order management system was experiencing rapid growth, leading to increased traffic and resource demands. The company needed its infrastructure to scale efficiently to accommodate new customers and sustain growth.
Initially, the infrastructure was deployed in containers on a single virtual instance hosted by Google Cloud Platform (GCP). However, this setup lacked the scalability needed to handle increased traffic, potentially limiting the company’s growth and ability to serve a larger customer base.
The application’s Docker containers, managed by Docker Swarm, were not easily scalable based on traffic and load. The complex load-balancing needs, which required path-based routing for incoming requests, further complicated container management and configuration.
Additionally, the GCP-hosted PostgreSQL database faced challenges in scaling up to meet the application’s demands. The absence of a repeatable testing process and a reliable deployment procedure further hindered the developers’ ability to innovate and release code changes efficiently.
Solution
Integriser chose AWS and Mysterious Code to address these challenges. While containerised applications can be hosted on various platforms, Amazon’s PostgreSQL-compatible Aurora database offered a robust solution for database-related issues. Aurora’s automatic scaling of storage and I/O based on number of queries and amount of data, along with its performance insights, allowed developers to focus on application development rather than infrastructure concerns.
By utilising Amazon CloudFront and an Application Load Balancer, Mysterious Code simplified the container configuration and eliminated the need for complex path-based routing. Hosting the containers on AWS Fargate enabled Integriser to s cale each application component independently.
Mysterious Code streamlined the container creation process, reducing unnecessary complexity. We also established a reliable and repeatable testing and deployment process using GitLab Pipelines, allowing developers to receive quick feedback on changes and deploy new features rapidly.
The application now uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy multiple ECS Services hosted on AWS Fargate, leveraging Fargate Spot for background worker containers to handle increasing data processing needs. The Infrastructure-as-Code paradigm implemented by AWS CloudFormation facilitated the deployment of an additional pre-production staging environment, providing a platform for developers to test and refine changes before release. This also ensures reproducible and predictable deployments, enhancing the application’s reliability and security.
Benefits
With the implemented solution, Integriser can now efficiently handle demand spikes, including those caused by periods that are known to pose a problem to many e-commerce platforms, such as Black Friday or Christmas. The development process became less complex, reducing the number of different types of containers to manage by half. The application now supports four times the amount of traffic it previously could, at a comparable cost, thanks to better resource sizing and the use of Fargate Spot.
