Challenges

This case study highlights the groundbreaking efforts achieved by Cognetiks Consulting in collaboration with 3line. 3line offers tailored technology solutions in the electronic business space to cater for individual and corporate needs. Leveraging our expertise in cloud platform engineering, containerized deployments, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), we empowered 3line to implement a comprehensive DevOps transformation. This transformation optimized their AWS workloads by enhancing security, improving operational efficiency, and reducing costs.

Client Background

3line is a technology company that specializes in delivering tailored technological solutions that address the unique needs of each client in the electronic business space. By leveraging secure platforms, bespoke payment solutions, and innovative products like Gravity Agent Banking and Talo Social Banking, they help organizations connect with people and provide services designed to meet their specific goals. Partnering with industry leaders, 3line ensures that financial services are accessible, efficient, and secure. 3line needed a robust IT infrastructure to provide an efficient, secure and seamless software delivery process. Realizing the importance of this, 3line engaged Cognetiks Consulting to streamline their development and operations processes, enhance security, and modernize their infrastructure.

Cloud Optimization

Collaborating closely with the internal 3line technical team, Cognetiks Consulting migrated workloads from oversized and underutilized EC2 instances to a containerized architecture. In addition, we helped 3line transition to a more granular resource allocation strategy using ECS clusters, enabling better scaling and cost management.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

The Cognetiks team leveraged Terraform to deploy all cloud resources. This enabled rapid environment provisioning and consistent configurations across Development, QA, and Production environments. This achievement established a process to rebuild compromised environments in under 15 minutes, mitigating risks of configuration drift.

Environment Segmentation and Access Control

Cognetiks Consulting created separate Development, QA, and Production environments with strict access controls, adhering to the principle of least privilege. In addition, we locked down the QA and Production environments, restricting access to CI/CD tools and designated personnel only. Consequently, Cognetiks Consulting guaranteed enhanced security and minimized the risk of unauthorized access or unintended changes. Restricting QA and Production environments to CI/CD tools and designated personnel maintained process integrity and reduced potential errors, improving system reliability and operational efficiency.

CI/CD Pipeline Implementation

Cognetiks Consulting implemented a robust continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline using GitHub Actions for automated builds, testing, and deployments. This strategy guaranteed that supplementary functionalities and changes were deployed independently, following a systematic testing and deployment process. Cognetiks' expertise in automated testing contributed to the seamless integration of new functionalities while maintaining secure and reliable software delivery from the outset. To ensure high-quality code, we implemented automated unit tests, security scans (SonarQube), and QA validations. Consequently, 3line was able to reduce deployment times and minimized deployment-related errors.

Branching Strategy and Versioning

Cooperating closely with the internal 3line technical team, we standardized the branching strategy using Trunk-Based Development, with clear conventions for feature, hotfix, and release branches. By introducing semantic versioning for artifact management we ensured seamless rollbacks and better feature tracking.

Monitoring and Alerting

To proactively identify and address issues before they impact end-users Cognetiks Consulting implemented a monitoring and alerting solution using DataDog and AWS CloudWatch. This strategy improved system reliability through real-time alerts and predictive insights.

Containerization

The Cognetiks team leveraged Docker and AWS ECS clusters to containerized applications for better workload management and scalability. We utilized AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR) to securely store and manage container images, simplifying image versioning and retrieval for deployments. This approach significantly reduced resource waste and improved operational efficiency compared to the previous EC2-based setup.

Outcome

Through our DevOps transformation and cloud migration efforts, 3Line achieved a modern, secure, and cost-efficient infrastructure. In addition, deployment times were reduced and success rates improved to 99%. These improvements not only addressed their immediate pain points but also positioned them for sustained growth and scalability in the future.