Case Study: Implementing and monitoring the Azure infrastructure for CME
THE CLIENT
CME is a technology consulting firm. The company has helped 100+ global clients, including renowned Fortune 500 companies, become leaders in their fields. CME’s end-to-end solutions and comprehensive enterprise services cover Staff Augmentation, Custom Software Development, Smart Devices Engineering, Customer Experience, IoT, AI, Data and Analytics, and Process Automation. With a multinational team across 8 locations, the company delivers innovative and impactful projects, contributing to 8 US Patents, and serving 80 million users daily.
THE CHALLENGE
CME decided to partner with a cloud solution provider to implement and monitor the Azure infrastructure to ensure that the infrastructure is designed and deployed efficiently. Managing and monitoring the infrastructure requires continuous attention and specialized tools, which kloudr can offer, freeing up CME’s team to focus on the core business activities. It also enhances the infrastructure’s reliability, scalability, and security while mitigating risks and ensuring compliance.
THE OBJECTIVES
The primary objectives for CME’s engagement with kloudr were clearly defined:
- Present an architectural framework and an implementation for setting up landing zone subscriptions to create a highly scalable Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster for a CME’s application.
- Obtain comprehensive managed services for the newly implemented solution, including proactive monitoring, governance, compliance, 24/7 support, and cost management.
- Entrust kloudr with the ongoing management and optimization of CME’s infrastructure as the business continues to grow.
- Continuously optimize the cost-efficiency, ensuring the application’s infrastructure remains cost-effective while delivering top-tier performance.
THE SOLUTION
The Azure infrastructure solution has been meticulously designed to provide a robust and secure hosting environment for an application running on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. It employs a hub-and-spoke architecture (Landing Zone with a focus on the design principles of enterprise-scale), with separate hubs for both the production and disaster recovery environments, connected to three spokes representing test, production, and disaster recovery zones. The architecture incorporates a range of comprehensive security measures, including DDoS protection, Microsoft Defender for Azure, Azure Firewall, and Azure Front Door, ensuring the highest level of application security and availability.
Jump servers and bastions are in place to maintain secure administrative access, while Network Watcher and Azure Policy Management further enhance visibility and compliance. Furthermore, the deployment includes VPN Gateway and NAT Gateway to ensure secure connectivity and efficient management of network traffic. This holistic approach to infrastructure design ensures optimal performance, security, and resilience for the hosted application. All logs and metrics are meticulously streamlined through Event Hub to monitoring tools and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solutions, providing real-time insights into the infrastructure’s security posture and performance.
Additionally, Azure DevOps and Azure Pipelines facilitate streamlined CI/CD processes, ensuring efficient code deployment to the AKS cluster and Container Registry.
The integration of Database as a Service (DBaaS) and Azure Redis Cache goes a step further in enhancing the solution, streamlining database management, and elevating application performance. In addition, Storage Accounts are harnessed for efficient data storage while integrated with a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This strategic pairing ensures swift content delivery, minimizes data access latency, and boosts scalability to effortlessly handle surges in traffic demands.
THE RESOURCES
kloudr leveraged a wide range of Azure and Managed Services resources to deliver a comprehensive solution:
Main Azure & Business Apps:
- Azure DdoS Protection Standard
- Microsoft Defender for Azure
- Azure Firewall
- Azure Front Door
- Virtual Machine
- Azure Bastion
- VPN Gateway
- NAT Gateway
- Event Hub
- Monitoring tools
- SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solutions
- Azure DevOps
- Azure Pipelines
- Network Watcher
- Azure Policy Management
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Azure Container Registry
- Database as a Service (DbaaS)
- Azure Cache for Redis
- Azure Service Bus
Managed Services:
- Proactive monitoring
- Governance & Compliance
- 24x7x365 support
- Cost Management
THE RESULTS
The collaboration between CME and kloudr produced remarkable results:
- Solution Implementation: kloudr successfully designed and implemented a scalable Azure solution that met CME’s immediate and long-term needs for the application.
- Managed Services: With kloudr’s managed services, CME has access to proactive monitoring, governance, compliance, 24/7 support, and cost management, ensuring the solution’s ongoing success.
