How a National Transportation Software Provider
Migrated a Mission-Critical Test Infrastructure to AWS
with Cascadeo
Vadim Astakhov, Ecosystem Solutions Architect, AWS
Elbert Lubas, Senior Program Manager, Major National Transportation Software Provider
Jared Reimer, CTO, Cascadeo
September 26th, 2017

Vadim Astakhov, Ecosystem Solutions Architect, AWS
Windows on EC2

Reduce burden to IT staff Enabling more rapid
scalability
Lowering costs
Why are Microsoft Workloads Moving to the Cloud?

CustomerAdoption
2008 Today
WS 2008 & SQL Server 2008
Visual Studio Toolkit
MSFT SCOM plug-in release
AWS Directory Service
EC2 Dedicated Hosts (BYOL)
MSFT SharePoint 2016 (Marketplace)
WS 2008 R2 SQL Server 2008 R2WS 2003
.NET SDK
MSFT SCVMM Plug-in
WS 2012 & SQL Server 2012
AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell
Amazon RDS adds SQL Server
EC2 Run Command
EC2 Systems Manager
WS & SQL 2016
EC2 Dedicated Instances (BYOL)
 41 instance types, 10 instance families
 31 different AMIs for Windows workloads
 300 different Windows ISV listings in AWS marketplace
New! .NET on Lambda
New!
SAP instance on AWS 2012
Innovation: Windows on AWS

Accelerate Innovation Reduce costs Strengthen security posture
Easily manage and scaleImprove uptime and
performance
Benefits of Running Microsoft Workloads on AWS

Accelerate Innovation
 Access to the broadest and deepest set of cloud services
 Provision resources on-demand and eliminate lengthy
procurement and deployment cycles
 Establish a global footprint without the cost or time
associated with building new facilities
 Integrate emerging technologies like IoT and machine
learning with less risk
 Focus on delivering customer value instead of time-
consuming hardware maintenance

Reduce Costs
 Pay only for what you need and replace CapEx with OpEx
 Bring your existing Microsoft software licenses
 Continue to derive value from existing investments as part
of a hybrid architecture
 Use Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances to save up to 70%
off of the on-demand price
 Improve application performance without hardware
refresh costs

Strengthen Security Posture
 Streamline compliance with more than 50 common regulatory
requirements using AWS Assurance Programs
 Use AWS Direct Connect and Amazon VPC to establish multi-
layered network security
 Bring existing Microsoft Active Directory users, groups, and
credentials and use with AWS Identity and Access
Management
 Protect data in-transit and at-rest with 256-bit AES encryption
 Leverage leading third-party security solutions available in
AWS Marketplace

Improve Uptime and Performance
 Establish multi-synchronous geographic redundancy
 Variety of EC2 instance types, each optimized to support
the needs of your target workload
 Immediately respond to changing resource requirements
using Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing
 Maintain full visibility with a single pane of glass
 Place applications and data in AWS Availability Zones
near end users to reduce latency

Easily Manage and Scale
 Reduce learning curve by extending existing investments
and toolsets into AWS
 Leverage automation capabilities to free up more time for
innovation and delivering customer value
 Offload Microsoft SQL Server administrative tasks with
Amazon RDS
 Tap into the AWS Partner Network for migration and
managed services
 Receive the same support from Microsoft as you do
on-premises

License-included: Bring your own licenses:
 Current and legacy versions available
from AWS Marketplace or AWS
Management Console
 License costs included in AWS bill
 AWS handles license compliance
 Can use License Mobility through Software
Assurance, or make use of Amazon EC2
Dedicated Hosts
 Extend license investments to the cloud and
pay only for AWS services you consume
 You are responsible for license compliance
For additional information, contact Microsoft, your Microsoft reseller, or Microsoft@amazon.com
Licensing Options on AWS

Accelerate Time to Value with re:Think Credits
 Designed to help enterprises migrate or build
new Microsoft applications cost-effectively
 New Windows workloads are eligible for credits
based on the projected annual spend from:
 EC2 Windows (including BYOL)
 SQL Server usage (EC2 or RDS)
 Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
This is a limited time credit program - contact us today to see if your Windows
workload qualifies!
re:Think for Windows Program

Elbert Lubas, Senior Program Manager, Major National Transportation Software Provider
VM Public Cloud Deployment Project

Positive Train Control
initiative
Constraints and
Consequences
Heterogeneous
Windows / RedHat
Environment
Historical Virtual
Infrastructure for
Parallel Testing,
Deployment Automation
and Configuration
Management
AWS Project Background

Leverage massively
parallel infrastructure
when needed
Eliminate persistent /
durable VMs in favor of
immutable
Optimize for cost,
performance,
parallelism over time
Adopt best-of-breed
AWS platform
technologies to
accelerate development
and innovation
Motivation for AWS Cloud

What is the VM Public Cloud Deployment Project?
 The VM Public Cloud Deployment project is an MCC initiative to solve the ongoing
need for MCC teams when they utilize virtual machines as a platform to test,
validate, create and access software and integration development.
 The opportunities and problems we are attempting to solve are the following:
 Governance over request and deployment for Virtual Machines
 Golden Templates for each needed test/validation configuration
 Scalable solution with an option to flex up or tear down on demand
 Subscription limitation based on roles or department
 Clear utilization of demand analysis for Virtual Machine consumption
 Automated deployment process for Virtual Machine Configuration
 Automated Build Verification process
 Opportunities for Dispatcher (For Test execution and collation of results)
 Opportunities for RNS – Radio Network Simulator
 As Is:
 MCC Enterprise IT maintains a private cloud infrastructure which is the present solution to
perform VM Provisioning for our Engineering teams

Phase 1: MVP Scope
Automated regression test infrastructure for Messaging that can burst into an unlimited number of
on-demand test “Triplet” hosts running in the Cloud.
Cloud
Infrastructure
Automate cloud
infrastructure
(network,
subnets,
security) and
connectivity
(VPN, dedicated
network)
Continuous
Integration
CI pipeline for
Messaging,
automating the
images and code
deployment for
the DevelopHost
64-bit, TestHost
64-bit, and
TestHost 32-bit.
Auto Scaling
Controlled auto-
scaling and
metadata
synchronization
for each triplet to
optimize cost
and speed of
regression tests.
Dispatcher
Queuing
Queuing service
to ensure
dispatcher can
continue to
develop
messages while
the auto-scaling
is increasing the
number of
instances.
Monitoring
Monitoring of the
full regression
test
infrastructure.

Achieving Maximum Business Agility: Thinking
Differently About IT Infrastructure
Jared Reimer, Chief Technology Officer, Cascadeo

About Cascadeo
 Cascadeo is an AWS Premier
Partner
 Vendor-neutral team
comprised of ~60 industry
veterans.
 Based in Seattle with more
than a decade in business;
operations in US & Asia.

What Sets Cascadeo Apart?
 Firm believers and advocates of
the “automate early and often”
philosophy
 We are an engineering-first
organization with decades of
industry experience around full-
stack automation and
distributed systems at scale.
 Top-tier partner and industry
validation.

The Endless Loop
Trying to build systems that
never fail while still relying upon
humans to perpetually monitor
and operate them

Massively parallel
(1000s) nightly test
runs with different
scenarios and
configurations.
Immutable
infrastructure with
full-stack
deployment
automation and
configuration
management.
Extensively
leverages
Serverless Compute
using AWS Lambda
and higher-order
PaaS services like
AWS CodePipeline,
CloudWatch, and
CloudTrail.
Can optimize for
cost or performance
as required, on the
fly, day or night.
Cloud Solution Introduction

Availability
Understand what is
“good enough”.
Preserve the UX /
endpoint health even in
failure scenarios
Durability
What is your worst case
tolerance for data loss
and time to recovery?
What is your acceptable
data loss window?
Security
Assume that breaches are
inevitable and mitigate
damage when they occur.
Keep the humans out!
Designing the Cloud for Compromise

The strategy:
 Leverage AWS
PaaS services to
maximum extent
possible
Architecture

Tests Added to Queue by Devs

AMI Build and Tests Queued
Prepare Test Harness
and Create AMI

Tests Executed

Test Results and Analytics

Deploy, Rinse, Repeat!
 You have a much higher degree of
confidence if you use deployment
automation, configuration management, and
frequently re-deploy. Why?
 Our mantra is to automate early and often.
Replace deployments proactively rather
than reactively, and keep the humans out of
production environments wherever and
whenever possible.
 Redeploy - don’t patch, hotfix, RDP

Legacy cruft piled
up by iterative
patching
Unknown security and ops
history; complete inability to
detect modern rootkits /
malware
Entropy is not your friend.
Reset to baseline as often
as practical.
No repeatability =
no recoverability =
eventual failure
Documentation is always
wrong when you need it
most.
Counting on humans to
operate systems
perpetually without failing
does not work.
Band-aids fossilize
into permanent
fixtures
The emphasis shifts and
never returns (until the next
crisis occurs)
Refactoring later is rarely
fun or glamorous work
There is no “just
do it once” in the
cloud.
Don’t believe the marketing
hype. “Lift and Shift” is a
recipe for failure 9 times out
of 10.
Why Not “Lift and Shift” Instead?

The A380 vs. The GigaFactory

Thoughtful Cloud Adoption
Is this truly
unique to your
company?
Everything else
is a SaaS
(or a Lambda
function, or SPI
glue)
Develop!
Develop!
Develop!
Automate early
and often!
Limit blast
radius within
and across
microservices.
How much is
“good enough”
vs. overkill

Mo Gawdat, CBO, Google X; Author; Father
“Happiness is equal to or greater
than the events of your life minus
your expectation of how life
should be.”
Mo Gawdat, CBO, Google X; Author; Father

Conclusions
 Business agility wins.
 Leverage SaaS/PaaS services rather than reinventing wheels.
 Challenge your expectations and assumptions about infrastructure
requirements and realities.
 Develop, don’t operate.
 Automate early and often.
 Make thoughtful compromises and cloud design decisions.

Q&A
Vadim Astakhov, Ecosystem Solutions Architect, AWS
Elbert Lubas, Senior Program Manager, Major National Transportation Software Provider
Jared Reimer, CTO, Cascadeo