AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Symposium

Canberra, Australia | May 20, 2014

Test and Development on AWS John Hildebrandt Solutions Architect Amazon Web Services

Ryan Rowley Architecture and Strategy Shared Service Centre Department of Education, Department of Employment

Some Challenges Customers Tell Us About

Managing multiple environments is tough

Experimentation is slow

Obtaining servers takes weeks

How The AWS Cloud Can Be Useful

Simplify management of multiple environments

Adopt new development practices

Obtaining Servers in minutes

Development  &  test  in  the  cloud  

Preserve it for future reference

Take lots of it when you need it Throw it away when you don’t Unlimited elastic capacity Cost optimization

Durable imaging & storage

Extend on-premise environments…

with Amazon VPC…

Populate as demand dictates…

Connect over dedicated links…

And turn it off when you are done

Spinning  up  environments  in  a  way  that  suits  you  Do  it  yourself  

 CloudForma2on  

 Beanstalk  

AMIs, snapshots, bootstrapping

Using core AWS features to set up an environment to

meet your needs

Use console or enact through simple scripting

Declaratively defined to your requirements

Take full control of complex environments using Cloud

Formation template language

Generate environment specifications as you build

software

Managed standard containers

Give development & test environments to developers

direct from IDEs

Configure containers to meet your needs through

properties

AMIs, snapshots, bootstrapping

Custom building block

Generic image

Quickly  deploy  and  manage  apps  in  AWS…  

Beanstalk  

…into  a  range  of  containers  

The  benefit  of  templated  environments  

Template  

Declara2ve  defini2on  Define  what  not  how  

Known  configura2on  Store  stack  configura@on  in  source  control.  Same  template  for  Dev,  Test,  Prod.  Template  for  DR.  

Parameter  driven  Dynamic  and  user-­‐driven  

templates  

Collabora2on  Share  templates  with  ease  as  just  files  

CloudForma2on  

Create  environments  to  support  specific  test  types  

Tes3ng  at  scale  

Unit  &  regression    

Scale up and parallel run unit and regression plans in a

fraction of the time  

Load  &  performance    

Utilize spot market for generating load and test how

applications perform with auto-scaling

A/B    

Run A/B scenario testing with replica stacks

Security    

Create sandboxes for aggressive security testing  

     

Dispose  for  cost  op@miza@on,  but  preserve  cri@cal  configura@ons  

Disposable  environments  can  be  recreated  

AMIs Create a catalog of AMIs for

each iteration of an application

Stored in S3

Templates Source control infrastructure

templates with every application version

Snapshots Save disk images with

‘frozen’ data sets and attach to instances when needed

Roll  back  and  recreate  an  environment  for  any  given  applica3on  version  

www.ssc.gov.au

Shared Services Centre and Amazon Web Services Ryan Rowley Architecture and Strategy Shared Service Centre Department of Education, Department of Employment

Shared Services Centre and Amazon Web Services

•  The SSC’s Current Development Environment •  The business requirements •  How cloud meets this need •  SSC integration with AWS •  Automation and Orchestration •  Benefits •  The Future and AWS integration

Current Development Environment

•  Providing services for 600 developers •  Servers used mainly during business hours •  Around 400 internally hosted servers •  Majority of Development servers don’t contain any form

of sensitive data •  Virtual servers hosted across 4 hyper v clusters •  40 TB of SAN storage used for Development virtual

servers

Our Requirement •  Reduce the cost of providing in house

development services. •  Make the server provisioning process more

efficient for SSC and Developers. •  Keep end user access to AWS console to

minimum. •  Build on our strengths - use products and

expertise that exist within the Department.

How cloud meets our requirement

•  Reduced cost •  Pay for infrastructure as and when you need it •  No requirement to maintain underlying host •  Technology alignment and integration

–  VPC being able to work with our Active directory, SCOM etc.

•  Security

How we achieved this •  Environment Overview •  Products Used •  Automated server provisioning in AWS •  Changes to internal process •  Hurdles

Development Environment

Products used •  System Centre Orchestrator 2012 R2

–  Remote PowerShell –  Microsoft SharePoint –  Microsoft Excel

•  Microsoft PowerShell •  AWS API Command Line Tools •  Microsoft InfoPath

Automation and AWS

Server Request Form and Automation Video

(Play Videos)

Server Request Form and Automation Video

(Play Videos)

Changes to internal process •  Power off servers after hours •  Lock down available server options

–  Provide three specifications of servers •  Type 1: 2 CPU, 4GB Ram •  Type 2: 2 CPU, 8GB Ram •  Type 3: 4 CPU, 16GB Ram

–  Tie server specifications to Roles •  Application •  Database •  Management

•  Create new server naming standard •  Record server reservation data •  Use of Metadata to track servers and inform billing

Hurdles •  Changing the perception of cloud •  Lack of information available due to early

adoption •  Not being able to use existing server

deployment process •  No server 2012 R2 operating system available

Benefits •  Technology alignment and integration – VPC

enables easy integration into existing infrastructure management products – AD, SCOM, SCCM etc

•  Cost – roughly 50 percent reduction over 5 years •  Rapid infrastructure provisioning

•  Reduced server deployment time to 20 minutes •  Readily available backup and restoration – S3 •  Automation and repeatability •  Future opportunities - i.e.  the  ability  to  instan3ate  a  

large  number  of  servers  to  mimic  load  on  an  applica3on  and  then  destroy  these  servers  a=er  use.

Future

Development

Pre-Production

Production

THANK YOU Please give us your feedback by filling out the Feedback Forms

AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Symposium

Canberra, Australia | May 20, 2014