ZAML setup on AWS using Kubernetes framework for large Financial Services firm

A large mortgage company was running into performance issues with their ZAML application hosted in their on-Prem datacenter. The user-base that the platform supported had outgrown the platform itself, primarily because the existing platform was OnPrem Linux servers with no room for further expansion. To solve the problem, the company wanted a solution that is scalable as per business needs which would provide high availability, capacity, scalability and efficiency. Along withthe architecture and implementation of this technical solution, the company also wanted to upgrade the application to newer version. This path also had to provide all the preexisting functionalities from the old platform. Finally, the company required training for their user-base to ensure full usability for their newly implemented functionality.

The company had problems scaling up the current environment when there were performance problems. The company was also migrating all the infrastructure from current OnPrem datacenter to AWS. There was limited exposure to AWS among existing personnel. The complete revamp of their system was put on an indefinite delay as a direct result.

Because of their lack of experience dealing with AWS, they reached out to Stratacent for help with setting up the application AWS and educating their employees on how to use it. This new environment would be highly available and scalable because it uses Kubernetes framework underneath as part of the setup rather than a single machine.

Stratacent was able to intervene with highly proficient staffing solutions. The ZAML application was designed with proper AWS architecture. This architecture was devised from the ground up, with the company’s interests kept in mind throughout using CFTs and modern deliveries guidelines. The latest ZAML libraries available were implemented in the new Kubernetes architecture, bringing the system up to spec.

The Stratacent consultants built multi-level architecture with High availability and fault tolerance in mind. Different levels included:

• EC2 Instances(3 m5.4xlarge, 21 r5.8xlarge and 2 r5n.24xlarge)
• Elastic File system(EFS) 4 TB
• Elastic Block Storage(EBS) 256 GB on each pod.

Beyond the architectural backend, our consultants also built essential processes to reduce maintenance issues. These new processes included using Kubernetes framework to scale up and down as needed, the setup of backup and recovery solutions, configuring failovers, migrating existing metadata into the new environment, and devising data migration/user migration paths. Our consultants also implemented monitoring and reporting solutions for the ZAML application and set up alerts based on storage, as well as CPU usages. All of which was put in place in order to facilitate more efficient system management for the employees.

The final result was an overall efficient ZAML application setup on AWS using Kubernetes framework. It functioned with minimal manual intervention and was highly fault tolerant.

The ZAML Platform was developed to be scalable, with the ability to add more nodes if required in the future. This freed the platform team to bring more Line of Businesses onboard and create a truly expansive enterprise platform.The new platform was also built to be highly available; nodes could be taken out of the cluster for upgrades and troubleshooting, without affecting availability.