Cloudemy Case Study

Background

Cloudemy is a cloud-based SaaS e-learning solution designed specifically for Australian Registered Training Organizations (RTOs). Founded in 2019, Cloudemy has quickly become a vital tool for RTOs, offering a comprehensive suite of features that streamline training and compliance processes. They were initially faced significant challenges with their infrastructure on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. These challenges included performance, scalability, reliability, and web traffic load balancing issues.

Objective

The objective was to enhance Cloudemy’s infrastructure by addressing the existing issues and ensuring a seamless transition to a more robust and automated environment. This involved migrating from AWS Elastic Beanstalk to a CI/CD pipeline environment, utilizing AWS services to support continuous integration and continuous deployment processes.

Industry / Domain

Cloudemy operates within the e-learning and education technology (EdTech) industry, specifically catering to Australian Registered Training Organizations (RTOs). The EdTech industry focuses on leveraging technology to enhance learning experiences, streamline educational processes, and improve accessibility to education.
Cloudemy

Technology Stack

Cloudemy icons 2

Features

  • Production and Staging environments with EC2 instances (2 for production) and auto-scaling capabilities.
  • RDS (Multi-AZ) for high availability and failover support for the database.
  • AWS Application Load Balancer for efficient traffic distribution.
  • WAF (Web Application Firewall) for protection against common web exploits.
  • Secrets Manager for secure management of sensitive information.
  • Route 53 for DNS web service.
  • CloudFront for content delivery with low latency and high transfer speeds.
  • S3 for storage of static files and deployment packages.
  • Deployment pipeline using Bitbucket for source code repository, CodeBuild for building and testing code, S3 for storing static files, and CodeDeploy for deploying applications to EC2 instances.

Challenges

  • Performance issues under varying loads.
  • Difficulty in scaling the infrastructure to meet growing demands.
  • Frequent downtimes and failures affecting user experience.
  • Inefficient distribution of web traffic leading to bottlenecks.

Solution Delivered

  • Conducted a thorough assessment and review of Cloudemy’s existing environment.
  • Recommended and implemented a restructured server environment with a focus on CI/CD automation.
  • Ensured a seamless transition from AWS Elastic Beanstalk to AWS EC2 and CI/CD pipeline environment.
  • Utilized the full capabilities of AWS to support continuous integration and continuous deployment processes.
  • Created production and staging environments with EC2 instances, RDS, load balancer, WAF, Secrets Manager, Route 53, CloudFront, and S3.
  • Established a CI/CD pipeline using Bitbucket, CodeBuild, S3, and CodeDeploy.

Benifits

  • Significant improvement in application performance and response time.
  • Automatic scaling instances to handle increased traffic and demand.
  • High availability and fault tolerance ensured minimal downtime.
  • Enhanced security measures to protect against threats and vulnerabilities.
  • Streamlined CI/CD automation for efficient and reliable software delivery.