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How to Build Your Own Cloud Architecture with Kubernetes
Maaz Malik Maaz Malik | November 02, 2022

Our Cloud Engineering team at adjoe is committed to choosing when to use self-hosted or managed services to reduce 300,000 USD of monthly hosting costs – as well as still ensuring convenience and data security for our developers.

In this series of short-but-sweet articles, I – as a DevOps engineer – will walk you through the process of migrating from a traditional Elasticsearch cluster on spot EC2 instances to a cluster running on Kubernetes.

What Is Kubernetes Used for at adjoe? 

First things first: Kubernetes automates the networking, scaling, deployment, and availability of containerized workloads and services. Elasticsearch is a real-time, scalable search engine that supports full-text and structured search as well as in-depth analytics. It is useful for storing and searching through large amounts of textual data, such as logs. It can also search through a wide variety of documents.

Previously, we were running Elasticsearch on spot EC2 instances. This required a lot of scripting and configuration or using third-party services. Now, we use Kubernetes and Elasticsearch operator to deploy Elasticsearch clusters, which improves the availability, scalability, and maintainability of the overall cluster. This ultimately increases the reliability of the system.

The first thing we need to understand is the following: 

  • How was the cluster initially running? 
  • Which problems arose and thus demanded the migration over to Kubernetes?

After clarifying these, I’ll describe which list of tools you need for the migration.

Why Migrate to Kubernetes?

Initially, the Elasticsearch cluster was running on AWS EC2 instances. The cluster was scalable; however, the costs of running on-demand instances were quite high. We therefore needed instances with a spot lifecycle, which AWS provides at a significantly lower cost. 

So, we chose instances with a spot lifecycle. On one hand, this reduced costs considerably, but – on the other hand – it also introduced some issues, which required manual intervention or further automation. In order to have a reliable option where we could use an EC2 spot lifecycle as well as reduce manual intervention, we chose to migrate to Kubernetes with an operator that manages the Elasticsearch cluster with little to no human intervention.

In order to handle databases such as Elasticsearch, you can use Kubernetes resources, including StatefulSets and PersistentVolumeClaims.

This is what you’ll need resource-wise:

  • A Kubernetes cluster that is up and running (we use AWS EKS)
  • The ECK operator from Elasticsearch
  • An infrastructure as code platform (we use Terraform)
  • Helm charts
  • A single sign-on provider for authentication

Below, I’m giving you an overview of the architecture of the Elasticsearch cluster running on Kubernetes.

Elasticsearch architecture on Kubernetes

What happens next? Stay tuned for the next article, in which I’ll talk about the following:

  • The essential configurations that would allow us to create an Elasticsearch cluster
  • Automating various manual tasks, so that when we deploy the cluster, all the post-deploy ES and Kibana configurations are in place
  • Kibana configurations, such as index lifecycle management, index templates, Kibana data views, etc.
  • Using Kubernetes ConfigMaps as a resource

Project Manager: Cloud Technologies (f/m/d)

  • adjoe
  • Cloud Engineering
  • Full-time
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adjoe is a leading mobile ad platform developing cutting-edge advertising and monetization solutions that take its app partners’ business to the next level. Part of the applike group ecosystem, adjoe is home to an advanced tech stack, powerful financial backing from Bertelsmann, and a highly motivated workforce to be reckoned with.

Meet Your Team: Cloud Engineering

The Cloud Engineering team is the core of adjoe’s tech department. It is responsible for the underlying infrastructure that helps adjoe’s developers to run their software – and the company to grow its business. 

From various AWS services to Kubernetes and Apache foundation open source projects, the team continuously validates new cloud and architecture services to efficiently handle a huge amount of data. Cloud Engineering tackles the challenge of choosing when to use self-hosted or managed services to reduce $300K of monthly hosting costs, while still ensuring convenience and data security for adjoe’s developers. 

Because adjoe needs to ensure high-quality service and minimal downtime to grow its business, Cloud Engineering invests heavily in monitoring and alerting technologies for insights into system health (networking, application logs, cloud service information, hardware, etc.). The cloud engineers also provide working solutions, knowledge, and documentation to the entire community of adjoe developers, giving them the autonomy to work on the infrastructure themselves and ensure the smooth sailing of adjoe’s systems. 
What You Will Do
  • Manage our Cloud Engineering team.
  • Enjoy P&L management of a $5 million yearly cloud budget.
  • Discuss, align, and report project statuses with Management, Tech, and Product Leads on a regular basis.
  • Manage project progress, identify problems, and find efficient and innovative solutions.
  • Manage team members and enable their growth by listening, delegating, and motivating them in a transparent and honest way.
  • Prioritize tasks in agreement with internal stakeholders.
  • Keep up with modern cloud technology and future innovations in one of the fastest-growing industries.
  • Work in an international and agile environment with flat hierarchies and efficient decision-making processes.
    • Who You Are
  • You have at least 2 years’ experience in IT project management or a similar discipline
  • You are very interested in technology, business processes, and functional dependencies
  • You are proactive and hands-on, and you have a creative problem-solving mindsetYou possess basic knowledge of agile IT project management frameworks
  • You are pragmatic and adapt quickly to new services, processes, and stakeholdersYou are approachable and able to communicate effectively at all levels – internally and externallyYou are committed to overall team success and supporting colleaguesYou have excellent people skills that allow you to encourage team members’ personal growth
  • You have excellent communication skills and are fluent in written and spoken English
  • You have completed studies in business informatics or a similar discipline
  • Plus: You have experience in Scrum environments
  • Plus: You have basic software development knowledge
  • Plus: You are interested in cloud providers such as Azure, AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud
    • Heard of Our Perks?
  • Tech Package: Create game-changing technologies and work with the newest technologies out there.
  • Work–Life Package: Work remotely for 2 days per week, enjoy flexible working hours and 30 vacation days, work remotely for 3 weeks per year, modern office in the city center, dog-friendly.
  • Relocation Package: Receive visa and legal support, a generous relocation subsidy, and free German classes in the office.
  • Never-Go-Hungry Package: Graze on regular company and team lunches, free breakfasts, and a selection of free snacks and drinks.
  • Health Package: Free in-house gym, biweekly yoga classes
  • Activity Package: Enjoy a host of team events and hackathons.
  • Career Growth Package: Dedicated growth budget to attend relevant conferences and online seminars of your choosing.
  • Wealth Building: Virtual stock options
    • Skip writing cover letters. Tell us about your most passionate personal project, your desired salary and your earliest possible start date. We are looking forward to your application!

    We welcome applications from people who will contribute to the diversity of our Company.
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