MAGTEC: AWS Well-Architected Framework Review

About MAGTEC

MAGTEC is the largest UK manufacturer of electric drive systems for commercial vehicles; designing and manufacturing electric drive systems and components for a wide range of vehicle types including commercial heavy goods vehicles, buses, off-road multi-wheeled and tracked defence vehicles and bespoke specialist vehicles.

The Challenge

MAGTEC has developed a telematics system giving fleet managers access to numerous vehicle data points, allowing them to monitor and run diagnostics in real-time. It also allows them to perform on-board software upgrades and system tuning remotely, reducing the need for vehicle downtime.

Data is first collected by multiple sensors in each vehicle before being aggregated and transmitted wirelessly to a centralised server in AWS. In AWS, MAGTEC runs a platform to receive, process and store the monitored vehicle data so that it can be accessed by fleet telematics managers.

The business is planning a significant increase in data managed by the telematics workload and approached Devoteam Consulting to conduct a Well-Architected Review to assess possibilities for scalability, reduce manual management requirements, validate plans for platform improvements, and assess overall security.

The Solution

The Well-Architected Review conducted by Devoteam Consulting took an in-depth look at MAGTEC’s architecture; a Solutions Architect worked closely with the development team to assess the telematics workload against the 6 pillars of the Well-Architected Framework: Security, Cost Optimisation, Performance Efficiency, Reliability, Operational Excellence and Sustainability.

Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, a written report was produced for MAGTEC identifying issues in the AWS environment and providing a list of opportunities for short, medium and long-term improvement. Cost Optimisation, Security and Performance Efficiency were highlighted as the pillars requiring most attention.

MAGTEC took advantage of the cost-neutral remediation days offered by Devoteam Consulting as part of the Well-Architected Framework Review, where the cost of remediation is offset by AWS credits. With both teams working in close collaboration, the following changes were implemented to bring the environment in line with best practice:

Cost optimisation

• S3 lifecycle policies were set up to reduce the retention of unnecessary data and keep storage costs controlled.
• Budgets and alerts were set up to keep costs controlled and monitored.
• A demonstration of the AWS Pricing Calculator was given to support cost estimation of future work.

Security

• Security suite services were enabled to gain better insight and monitoring into security posture.
• An SSM agent to webserver instance was set up and tested to reduce the attack surface and better protect resources while maintaining the current level of access.
• SSO was enabled and configured to reduce risk and management overhead around user access maintenance.

Performance efficiency

• Autoscaling and Application Load Balancer were implemented for the webserver to reduce the need for manual configuration, improving performance while reducing cost.
• A simulation environment was set up to assess the scalability of 2 alternative database solutions. Traffic simulations were performed to assess the best option to replace the existing database solution. Performance configuration recommendations were documented to enable MAGTEC’s technical team to proceed with implementation of the new database solution.

The Benefits

Following remediation action taken after the Well-Architected Framework Review, MAGTEC has observed a 20% reduction in security risks identified by the Security Hub, with improved monitoring and reporting on security standards and policies moving forward.

It has benefited from an immediate 5% cost reduction, with improved cost monitoring coming from the deployment of budgets and cost related alarms.

The simulation exercise helped MAGTEC look beyond its existing database solution to assess other more scalable options, allowing it to make a well-informed technical decision. It is now able to modernise the telematics application by taking advantage of more efficient AWS-managed database services, decommissioning the existing database solution and the related infrastructure.

Finally, MAGTEC’s in house development team have benefitted from AWS knowledge transfer sessions, with 3 senior team members now upskilled.