Cybersecurity Education Platform Cloud Optimization
Our client is a purpose built cyber range platform that measures and curates cyber security skillsets.
Industry
Cyber Security
Technology
Cloud Computing
Services
Cloud Optimization and DevOps
Project Overview
Our client is a purpose built cyber range platform that measures and curates cyber security skillsets. It provides on-demand pre-configured infrastructure setups for cybersecurity hands-on training. Client’s infrastructure had been facing a high load variability. To control costs associated with running the infrastructure 24×7, the training infrastructure was spinned up on demand. However, this required the capability to spin up >1,000 concurrent setups of training lab at times.
Challenges
Following challenges were identified while the scoping discussions with the client:
- End user sometimes had to wait up to 1 hour to set the training lab up and running. This was primarily happening due to failure of the system to handle multiple (up to 1000) concurrent requests to start the training lab during a live webinar or offline class.
- Low ROI on investment due to underutilization of provisioned infrastructure and high variability in load driven by the ongoing training labs as per training institutes course schedule.
- Achieving zero down time for system update as it was difficult to find a maintenance time window for updates, due to scheduled training of partner institutes.
- Make system fault-tolerant given the criticality of the platform for reputed universities
Solution
EbizOn team designed and supported implementation of the following changes:
- Since every incoming request for setup of training lab was forwarded directly for actual labs spin up on VMs, it was overwhelming for the infrastructure to handle 1000s concurrent lab creation request. EbizOn brought RabbitMQ Message Queue in between and delegated task of spinning up of required labs to Celery workers, so they can do batch processing of incoming requests and take new job as soon as any lab gets created. This modification significantly improved average lab creation time when many user request for labs simultaneously. Leveraged both serverless + managed services + mix of reserved and spot instances to scale as needed, paying extra cost only if needed.
- Identified all the single point of failures and introduced new infrastructure components like availability-zone and region redundancy, using managed service for database ensuring high availability. Implemented blue green deployment strategy to make deployment new update in few minutes, achieving almost zero downtime.
- Optimized database queries, removed unused indexes, Moved non-clustered indexes to clustered indexes wherever possible to reduced database IO, resulting in significant performance cost benefit.
Impact
- Reduced time to create concurrent labs from 60 mins to 5 mins even in case of 1000 concurrent lab creation as per benchmark load test
- Achieved close to zero downtime
- Reduced over all cloud cost by 50%
What Our Customers Says
reviewed by JOE WILLIAMS
Senior manager, Remedy Liqour
Head of Business Engagement, WRI
“Ebizon is one of the best in the business and they back this up with their quick and friendly support. The team is relentless to listen to our issues and come up with a solution. Have seen the team stretch beyond their knowledge to help us.”
reviewed by JOSEPH CURLEY
Vice President, Sokolin
Content Officer, Society for Science & Public
“My experience with this partnership has been positive. The support Ebizon extended towards us was commendable. It perfectly fulfils our requirements with their support we had no hassle.”
reviewed by Beat Walder
Manager, Forester Beauty
Chief of Staff, Strategic Dentistry
“I’m the owner of Forester Beauty in Switzerland. I’ve contacted Dee and he led me through the whole process of migrating our online shop to Shopify, including custom elements to enhance user experience. The whole Project Team at Ebizon has a very professional attitude and provide their support and insights promptly.”
reviewed by Wilma Pretorius
Managing Director, Cranimals
For fully managed WordPress installs, WPEngine is my Go-To
“The Team worked well with my company to migrate our Magento store to a new Shopify store. Ebizon was able to implement required applications to enable a near seamless transition. Thanks Team!
reviewed by Raul
Senior Manager, Emporium Embroidery
Head of Business Engagement, WRI
“Emporium Embroidery – customization module / Magento upgrade Thank you Ebizon and a great thank you to the team who was always very helpful on this journey.”
reviewed by Alexandre Salem
eCommerce Manager, Ada Cosmetic
Chief of Staff, Strategic Dentistry
“Thanks to EbizON solution, the platform enabled the company to sell products efficiently. The team worked in sprints and held weekly meetings, ensuring accurate outcomes.”
reviewed by Po Ming Lam
Manager, Avec Plaisirs Chefs Traiteurs
For fully managed WordPress installs, WPEngine is my Go-To
“Ebizon is helping our Magento development needs. Their customer oriented approach has made our experience very pleasant and efficient. We are definitely sending more work to them and recommend others to try them out!”
