URW Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) is a multinational shopping center and commercial real estate company headquartered in Paris, France. URW's portfolio includes flagship retail centers, urban retail destinations, and conference and exhibition centers. The company's most well-known properties include the Westfield World Trade Center in New York City, Westfield London, Westfield Sydney, and Les 4 Temps in Paris. URW owns and operates over 90 shopping centers in 12 different countries.

URW Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW), a global commercial real estate leader, required an optimized DevOps strategy for their microservice-based backend applications, which were containerized and deployed on AWS ECS with EC2 compute. All the major workloads of URW were already deployed on AWS, and they needed to ensure efficient scaling, security, and management of their infrastructure. These applications were publicly exposed using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and AWS API Gateway, adding complexity to the existing infrastructure.

URW sought to streamline their CI/CD process using Travis CI and required each environment (development, staging, production) to have its own dedicated deployment pipeline. Additionally, they wanted to provide developers the ability to test their code in isolated application infrastructures for feature branches. Failure to implement this solution would risk inefficient resource allocation, increased deployment times, and potential service interruptions, which could impact their global operations across 90+ shopping centers in 12 countries.

URW selected Tech Holding as their DevOps partner due to our proven expertise in delivering robust, scalable solutions on AWS for large enterprises. Tech Holding has a large number of AWS Certified Engineers, provided URW with the technical depth and specialization required to effectively leverage AWS services. This, combined with our experience in implementing microservice-based architectures and automating CI/CD processes, was a key factor in URW’s decision. We demonstrated a successful track record of integrating tools like Terraform for Infrastructure as Code and Travis CI for CI/CD, which aligned perfectly with URW's needs.

Additionally, our ability to provide tailored solutions such as the isolated feature branch environments for developer testing showcased our commitment to delivering innovative and flexible infrastructures. The comprehensive pre and post-implementation support we offered, including training and support, reassured URW that they would have the necessary guidance throughout their DevOps transformation. Ultimately, our technical expertise and customer-first approach made us the ideal partner for URW to modernize and scale their AWS-based workloads.

Tech Holding Solution

To meet URW's challenges, we deployed a comprehensive DevOps solution entirely on AWS services. This solution leveraged Terraform for Infrastructure as Code, along with Bash and Python scripts to automate infrastructure tasks and support deployment needs effectively.

Solution Components:

1. Microservice Deployment on AWS ECS with EC2 Compute: Each of URW's microservices was containerized and deployed on AWS ECS clusters running on EC2 instances within a secure VPC to ensure network isolation and security. AWS Application Load Balancer and API Gateway exposed these services publicly, enabling secure and efficient traffic routing to the correct microservices. AWS CloudWatch was implemented for comprehensive monitoring of ECS containers, allowing proactive management of service health and performance. AWS IAM managed access controls to ensure secure inter-service communication. For scalability, we configured AWS Auto Scaling to dynamically adjust ECS instances based on traffic, optimizing resource utilization and ensuring reliable performance.
2. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Pipeline with Travis CI: Travis CI was integrated with URW's GitHub repositories to establish a robust CI/CD pipeline. A Git-based conventional workflow was employed, with separate branches for each environment (develop for development, staging for testing, and main for production). Travis CI automated the building, testing, and deployment processes, providing seamless transitions between environments whenever new code was committed, ensuring quality and efficiency across the pipeline.
3. Infrastructure as Code with Terraform: Terraform served as the primary tool for managing infrastructure, ensuring consistent and automated deployment of AWS resources. Bash and Python scripts were employed as Terraform helpers to streamline tasks like environment provisioning and customized configurations. This approach allowed URW to maintain flexibility in managing their infrastructure while achieving a high degree of automation and scalability.
4. Feature Branch Testing in Isolated Environments: A core requirement was enabling developers to test feature branches in isolated environments. Terraform automated the creation of temporary ECS clusters for each feature branch, allowing developers to deploy and test their code independently. Travis CI triggered these deployments, empowering developers to validate their work effectively before merging into the main environment.
5. Autoscaling and Secure VPC Configuration: The ECS clusters on EC2 instances were configured with autoscaling to dynamically adjust resources based on traffic demands, ensuring URW's applications could handle peak loads while minimizing costs during off-peak times. All workloads were deployed within a secure VPC, with strict control over inbound and outbound traffic using security groups and network ACLs to bolster security.
6. Monitoring and Logging with CloudWatch and CloudTrail: AWS CloudWatch was extensively used to monitor key performance indicators for ECS clusters, EC2 instances, ALBs, and API Gateway endpoints. This monitoring enabled real-time visibility and proactive issue management. Additionally, AWS CloudTrail was implemented to log all API calls made to URW’s AWS services, ensuring full transparency, facilitating compliance audits, and enhancing the security posture by tracking user and service actions. Together, CloudWatch and CloudTrail provided a comprehensive monitoring and logging framework to support the stability, security, and efficiency of URW’s AWS ecosystem.