Probitas - Empowering a Leading UAE Company with a Robust Railway Management System
Probitas is a reputable software solutions company known for delivering cutting-edge technology solutions to its clients. They took on a significant project in collaboration with 1Crew to assist a leading company in the UAE. The company aimed to revolutionize the transportation industry by establishing the country's first-ever railway network for freight services. Probitas partnered with 1Crew to design and implement an advanced IT infrastructure capable of efficiently managing the complexities of the railway operations.
Services
1Crew provided a comprehensive range of services to Probitas, enabling them to empower the leading UAE transportation company with a robust Railway Management System.
Our Services
- Consulting and planning: 1Crew worked closely with the client’s team to design an optimal onsite IT infrastructure that could support the Railway management system effectively.
- Infrastructure deployment automation: The team automated the deployment process of the IT infrastructure, ensuring efficiency and consistency across the board.
- Environment setup: 1Crew delivered the necessary environment for the Railway management system to operate seamlessly.
- Ongoing infrastructure support: The team provided continuous support and maintenance for the IT infrastructure to ensure uninterrupted railway operations.
Our deliverables
- Highly available hybrid on-prem Kubernetes cluster.
- Automation with Ansible automation for the deployment of two clusters per zone (total 4 zones and 8 clusters)
- Deploying and implementing maintenance strategy for external ETCD databases for the above mentioned Kubernetes clusters
- Metrics collection and log monitoring solutions deployment for the applications deployed
- Comprehensive documentation of the solution and maintenance documentation
- DNS and proxy servers per environment
We used
- Kubernetes
- CentOS and Windows server
- Containerd
- Calico
- Ansible
- Kubespray
- ELK Stack
- Prometheus and Grafana
- Bind9
- Nginx
- RabbitMQ
- Keycloak
- Helm
- ETCD
The Challenge
- Probitas, a renowned software solutions company, partnered with 1Crew to assist a leading transportation company in the UAE. The company embarked on the ambitious mission of establishing the country's first railway network for freight services. While non-IT aspects were managed by other parties,, 1Crew, in collaboration with Ptobitas, focused on delivering a Kubernetes-based solution to host the Terminal Operating System (TOS) responsible for managing the train schedule. The TOS software was provided by SAAB.
- The goal was to deploy the TOS in four facilities (ICAD, DIC, RUWAIS, ADP), each with two Kubernetes clusters (UAT, Prod), resulting in a total of eight clusters.
Solution
1Crew devised and implemented a comprehensive solution to meet the client’s requirements:
Physical servers and hypervisors: Each site was equipped with three physical servers running VMware hypervisors, forming the foundation for virtualized infrastructure.
Kubernetes cluster architecture: For each facility, three master Linux machines (master nodes), six Linux machines, and three Windows servers were provisioned to create highly available Kubernetes clusters. The distribution of machines across servers ensured redundancy and fault tolerance.
Storage management: All virtual machines' storage was handled by local storage servers managed by Probitas, ensuring efficient and reliable data access for the Kubernetes clusters. External ETCD databases were hosted on master nodes and managed by systemd, with backup processes handled through snapshots.
Ansible-based deployment: The clusters were deployed using Ansible Playbooks (Kubespray), streamlining the setup process and ensuring consistency across environments.
Service machine for DNS and reverse proxy: Each cluster had a dedicated "service machine" responsible for running the DNS server and reverse proxy, facilitating communication and future service integration.
SCM and Helm Charts: All deployment scripts were stored in a Source Code Management (SCM) system, specifically Bitbucket. Kubernetes deployments were organized as Helm Charts, providing a standardized and version-controlled approach.
Application deployments and configuration: Calico, RabbitMQ, Keycloak, Postgresql, Prometheus, and ELK stack were deployed and configured within the Kubernetes clusters to support the TOS and enable efficient monitoring and analysis.
Documentation: Comprehensive documentation was created, guiding the deployment process and serving as a reference for maintenance and troubleshooting.
Result
1Crew successfully delivered the envisioned solution, meeting all of the' objectives:
- Deployment and provision of environments: The environments required for hosting the Railway management system were deployed and made available to the client.
- Support transition: A support process was established, and the project moved into the support phase under a managed services model, ensuring ongoing maintenance and assistance.