Project Name
Six AWS Environments Governed, Monitored, and Auto-Scaled in One Sprint with Spacelift
A mid-market AdTech and eCommerce SaaS provider based in North America, serving major consumer brands with real-time retail analytics and media attribution, had built its entire cloud infrastructure through manual AWS console provisioning. Six Elastic Beanstalk environments, no Terraform, no version control, no monitoring, and no auto-scaling – every new environment was a one-off effort with no repeatable pattern. In an AdTech platform where milliseconds drive revenue, that lack of governance was a growing liability. Applying its AI-First approach, Ksolves designed and delivered a complete IaC foundation, reusable Terraform templates, Git-based version control, Spacelift governance, and auto-scaling – all within a single sprint.
- Fully Manual Environment Provisioning: All six Elastic Beanstalk environments had been created manually through the AWS console with no Infrastructure as Code. Every new environment required hand-configuring settings from scratch, introducing inconsistencies and consuming significant engineering time with no repeatability.
- No Version-Controlled Infrastructure Definitions: Without Terraform or any IaC tooling, there was no Git history, no peer review process, and no audit trail for infrastructure changes - making it impossible to track what changed, when, or why across any of the six environments.
- Zero Monitoring Across All Environments: None of the six environments had CloudWatch alarms or SNS notifications configured. Environmental health degradation, instance failures, and resource exhaustion went entirely undetected until users reported outages.
- No Auto-Scaling Policies in Place: Environments ran on fixed-capacity configurations with no scaling triggers, leaving the platform vulnerable to traffic spikes during peak campaign periods and wasting resources during off-peak hours - a direct revenue risk for an AdTech provider.
- No Enforced Standards Across Environments: Without a standardised template, each environment had its own ad hoc configuration. Tagging was inconsistent, cost allocation was unreliable, and alerting was absent, with no mechanism to enforce organisational standards at environment creation time.
- Environment Replication Was Slow and Error-Prone: Spinning up a new environment meant manually replicating an existing one step-by-step through the console - a process that took hours, introduced configuration drift between environments, and could not scale as the product grew.
Ksolves designed and delivered a complete Infrastructure as Code foundation - creating reusable Terraform templates for Elastic Beanstalk environments, checking them into Git, and wiring everything through Spacelift for state management, variable handling, and governed deployments. The governing principle was template-driven consistency: any new environment created from the template automatically inherits all best practices around tagging, cost allocation, monitoring, and auto-scaling - eliminating manual setup entirely.
- Terraform Template Library for Elastic Beanstalk: Created reusable, best-practice Terraform templates for Elastic Beanstalk environments with built-in tagging standards, cost allocation tags, and CloudWatch alerting - so every new environment inherits governance by default, not by manual effort.
- Git-Based Version Control for All Infrastructure: Checked all Terraform templates into a Git branch, establishing peer review, full change history, and auditability for every infrastructure modification - replacing the previous zero-visibility console-only approach entirely.
- Spacelift for State and Variable Management: Configured Spacelift to manage all Terraform state and variables centrally, with automated plan/apply pipelines, drift detection, and approval workflows - eliminating manual state handling and enabling collaborative, governed infrastructure operations.
- CloudWatch Alarm and SNS Integration via Template: Embedded standardised CloudWatch alarms for CPU utilisation, instance health, latency, and error rates into every Terraform template, with SNS notifications routed to the engineering team. Every environment created from the template ships with monitoring on day one.
- Auto-Scaling Policy Configuration via Template: Defined auto-scaling policies based on CPU and network throughput triggers directly in the Terraform templates, ensuring every environment scales dynamically during campaign surges and contracts during off-peak windows - with no additional setup required per environment.
- Rego (OPA) Policy Enforcement: Integrated Rego-based plan-time policy checks enforcing mandatory tagging, naming conventions, and resource constraints before any infrastructure change is applied through Spacelift - ensuring governance is enforced at every deployment, not reviewed after the fact.
Technology Stack
| Category | Technology |
|---|---|
| Platform | Spacelift |
| Infrastructure | Terraform |
| Infrastructure | AWS Elastic Beanstalk |
| Methodology | Rego (OPA) |
| Processing | CloudWatch + SNS |
| Infrastructure | Auto Scaling (AWS) |
- 6 Environments Fully Codified in One Sprint: All six manually-built Elastic Beanstalk environments were codified into reusable Terraform templates, managed through Spacelift with remote state, approval workflows, and full change history - delivered within a single sprint with zero disruption to production.
- New Environment Provisioning Reduced From Hours to Minutes: Any new Elastic Beanstalk environment can now be created from the template in minutes, automatically inheriting all tagging, CloudWatch alerting, auto-scaling, and cost allocation best practices with no additional manual steps.
- Zero Unmonitored Environments: Standardised CloudWatch alarms and SNS notifications are now baked into every environment template, providing real-time visibility into CPU, health, latency, and error metrics from day one - replacing the previous outage-first discovery model entirely.
- Auto-Scaling Live Across All Environments: Dynamic auto-scaling policies triggered on CPU and network thresholds are now built into every environment template, ensuring the platform scales during campaign peaks and contracts during off-peak hours without any per-environment configuration.
- IaC Code Volume Reduced by ~60% Through Template Reuse: A single parameterised Terraform template library checked into Git now serves all six environments, enforcing consistent tagging, cost allocation, and alerting standards and reducing total IaC code volume by approximately 60% versus per-environment definitions.
“We operate in AdTech where campaign traffic is unpredictable and downtime is unacceptable. Ksolves gave us auto-scaling, monitoring, and IaC governance in a single sprint. We went from zero visibility to full control.”
-VP of Engineering
A mid-market AdTech platform running six manually provisioned Elastic Beanstalk environments with no IaC, no monitoring, and no auto-scaling was fully codified and governed in a single sprint through Ksolves’ DevOps consulting services. Reusable Terraform templates checked into Git and governed through Spacelift now give every environment monitoring, auto-scaling, tagging, and cost allocation from day one. New environment provisioning dropped from hours of manual console work to minutes, IaC code volume reduced by approximately 60% through template reuse, and Rego-based policy enforcement ensures every change is version-controlled, peer-reviewed, and compliant before it is applied.
Still Provisioning Cloud Environments Manually With No Governance or Repeatable Patterns?
