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Aurea Software Goes Beyond the Limits of Amazon EBS to Run 200 Kubernetes Stateful Pods Per Host
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Device Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Logistics & Transportation
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Edge Computing & Edge Intelligence
- Fleet Management
- Inventory Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Aurea Software, the software engineering arm of ESW Capital, needed to create a single, multi-tenant Kubernetes platform capable of handling database workloads for 80 different SaaS companies. The company faced several challenges in achieving this goal. Traditional software-defined storage systems like Ceph and GlusterFS did not integrate well with Kubernetes or scale to the required levels. Furthermore, they were limited to only 40 EBS volumes per EC2 instance when using Amazon EBS for container storage, requiring them to overprovision VMs by 5x. The company also had to deal with the challenge of running their Kubernetes clusters multi-tenant, which meant that they had 80 different companies running on the same cluster, all simultaneously. This posed a significant challenge in isolating resources within the Kubernetes cluster, so that they do not interfere with each other.
About The Customer
Aurea Software is the software engineering arm of ESW Capital, a large investment fund which owns roughly 80 companies, mostly made up of SaaS and PaaS companies. Some of these companies provide SaaS, while others provide on-prem software. At Aurea, they write software, provide managed services, and professional services for these companies. The entire organization has about 4500 employees that make up the high-quality, fully remote teams, largely staffed by Crossover. The company is based on the principle of economies of scale, making a lot of acquisitions, with plans to acquire 50 more companies just this year. They aim to have a standardized approach for every company that they have, including a single platform engineering team that can deliver value across all the companies.
The Solution
To overcome the challenges, Aurea Software decided to use Portworx, which provides a single, cloud native storage and data management layer for Kubernetes, no matter which stateful services Aurea’s platform users require. Portworx allowed Aurea to easily blow past the 40 EBS volume limit imposed by Linux networking in order to run 200 container volumes per EC2 instance. The company also tested seven or eight different solutions before landing on Portworx. They looked at Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, GlusterFS, and Ceph running on EBS and instance storage among others. However, they had issues with performance with almost everyone. Ceph gave them good performance, but Red Hat advised them not to run Ceph over EBS because they would face issues if they did that. They also found issues with Ceph’s Kubernetes integration.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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