Summary

ShipEase Technologies offers a technology-driven logisticsplatform designed to supportsmall and medium-sized sellers in expanding their businesses. By seamlessly integrating with major online shopping platformsand courier partners,ShipEase simplifies the shipping processand covers over 28,000 pincodesacross India.

ShipEase provides a comprehensive logistics solution tailored for businesses with their own websites, marketplaces, and socialsellers. It offers multi-channel integration,SMS/email notifications, intelligent courier selection, and real-time trackingwith coverage acrossIndia and internationally. ShipEase's advanced NDR management toolshelp boost deliverysuccess rates, while features like reverse pickups,hassle-free remittance, and smart courierrecommendations make it ideal for high-volume shippers. With a pay-per-use model andfocus on user experience, ShipEase simplifieslogistics management forbusinesses of all sizes.

Challenges:

• Networking Complexities: Managing communication within a monolithic architecture caused operational bottlenecks and complexities in scaling the application.
• Limited Availability and Uptime: The monolithic nature limited faulttolerance, leading to frequent downtime, impacting the overall availability.
• Database PerformanceBottlenecks: Inefficient database queries andarchitecture led to latency and performance degradation during high traffic periods.
• Security Compliance Issues: Ensuring security across the monolithic application was cumbersome and prone to vulnerabilities.
• Logging and Monitoring Deficiencies: A lack of efficient logging andmonitoring tools made tracking issues difficult, limiting observability into system performance.
• Cumbersome Backup and CI/CD Processes: Manual backups and releaseprocesses made scaling and adoptingCI/CD methodologies difficult, hampering agility.

Shipease’s Modernization Journey with AWS cloud services and Third-party tools :

To overcome the challenges faced with their infrastructure, Shipease sought a reliable Cloud Managed Service Provider. This is where Velocis stepped in. Shipease embarked on a comprehensive modernization journey with Velocis to address the challenges of its monolithic PHP-based application by transitioning to modern technologies like containerization and Kubernetes.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Velocis provided a tailored set of recommendations to tackle these challenges. This modernization initiative involved rearchitecting Shipease’s entire application stack into containerized microservices, leveraging modernDevOps practices to enhance performance, scalability, and agility. Below are some of the recommended tools and AWS services:

• Microservices Architecture: The application was redesigned from a PHP-based monolithic structure to a microservices architectureusing Python for the backend. Thisshift allowed for faster development cycles and improved maintainability. The frontend was rebuilt using React.js, delivering a more dynamicuser experience.
• Containerization & Orchestration: Containerized the application using Docker, orchestrated by Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service). Kubernetes node groups(7+) were created to manage resources efficiently for both development and production environments
• AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) was used to provideShipease with extensive control overnetwork settings, including IP address ranges, subnets, route tables, and network gateways. Network Access Control Lists (NACLs) offeran additional security layer bycontrolling inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level, providingstateless filtering to enhance overall security
• Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) was utilized inconjunction with an Auto ScalingGroup (ASG) to dynamically adjust the number of EC2 instances basedon traffic demands. The application traffic was efficiently routed and balanced using AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB), ensuring high availability and fault tolerance
• Amazon Route 53 to provide global DNS resolution, allowingusers to access web applicationsusing the domain names. AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to provide simple and cost-effective way to manage SSL/TLS certificates for Shipease’ domain names.ACM certificate association is done with AWS ALB & it acts as a secure proxy, terminating SSL/TLS connections on behalfof origin servers.
• CI/CD Automation: GitHub is used for version control.Jenkins server was implemented to enable continuousintegration and continuous delivery (CI/CD),automating the build, testing, and deployment pipelinesto enhance workflowefficiency. Additionally, Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry) wasemployed to store and manage Docker images used for the application
• Monitoring & Logging: Prometheus andGrafana were deployed for real-time performance metrics, while Alert Manager handled automated alertsintegrated with AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS).For efficient log management, Loki wasintegrated with Grafanato manage logs across microservices. Also, AWS Cloudwatch and AWS CloudTrail was used for monitoring and logging.
• Amazon RDS was implemented to replace the previous databasesetup, effectively eliminatingperformance bottlenecks and providing features such as automated backups and seamless scaling.Additionally, Velero was utilizedfor regular backups of the Kubernetes cluster,supporting robust disasterrecovery capabilities.

Production Architecture Diagram (HLD)

Solution Description

The implemented solutioninvolved creating two isolated environments—Development (DEV) and Production (Prod)—to ensure asmooth testing and staging workflow without impacting live operations. Each environment supported over 25 Kubernetespods to efficiently manage microservice workloads.

The modernization of ShipEase’s application transitioned from a monolithic PHP-basedarchitecture to a microservices-based system,utilizing Python for the backendand React.js for thefrontend. The application was containerized using Docker and orchestrated on Amazon EKS for efficient scaling andmanagement. To optimize resource allocation, Kubernetes node groups were established, while AWSservices such as VPC, ALB, and ASG provided secure networking, fault tolerance, and autoscaling based on traffic demands.

Version control and CI/CD were facilitated through GitHuband Jenkins, enabling streamlined automateddeployments, while Amazon ECR was used for managing Docker images. Traffic routing and secure accesswere handled by Nginx IngressGateway and PritunlVPN.

AWSIdentity and Access Management (IAM), AWS SystemsManager (SSM) are used to providefine-grained access control to AWS resources, ensuring that only authorizedusers can access or modify resources. Furthermore, the incorporation of comprehensive monitoring and logging capabilities facilitated by AWS CloudWatch, Amazon CloudTrail, Amazon SNS and other 3rd party tools like Prometheus,Grafana, Loki, and Alert Manager empoweredus to proactively manage system health,performance, and logs, enabling swift responses to critical events and facilitating efficient communication and problem resolution.

Additionally, AWS Route 53 was employed as the DNS resolver,directing user traffic to the AWS ElasticLoad Balancer (ALB). The ALB was configured across two AvailabilityZones (AZ) to guarantee highavailability and resilience. To enhance security, an ACM Certificate was associated with the ALB.

Results and Benefits

Velocis takes great pride in serving as the trusted cloud managed servicesprovider for Shipease Technologies, and our collaborative partnership has led to significant advancements in their application and public cloud environment. The AWS Cloud architecture solutiondelivered for the challenges has not only helped Shipease toovercome shared challenges but has also contributed to their businessgrowth in following areas -

• Improved Fault Tolerance and Availability: With EKS and autoscaling, the system can now handlefailures gracefully and ensures high uptime.
• Enhanced Scalability: Kubernetes and containerization allowed for smoothscaling of application components inresponse to traffic surges.
• Optimized Performance: Database performance bottlenecks were eliminated through the use of RDS, and the use of Prometheus helped ensure that performance issueswere addressed proactively.
• Faster CI/CD: Jenkins and Docker streamlined the release process,enabling rapid deployment of updatesand bug fixes across environments.
• Comprehensive Monitoring and Logging: With Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, and Alert Manager,real-time monitoring and efficient troubleshooting became possible, ensuringquick identification and resolution of issues.
• Secure Networking and Access: Pritunl VPN and SSL certificate management ensuredsecure access to both the production and development environments.