Serverless Architecture For Real Time Utility Management
DevOps & Solution Architecture
AWS Lambda
API Gateway
CloudFormation
SQS
Amazon Aurora MySQL
Event Bridge
Overview
Genergy is a company specializing in AI-powered energy management, focusing on sub-metering and utility management solutions. Their platform is designed to help property owners and managers centralize the management of various utilities—such as electricity, gas, water, and steam—reduce overhead costs, and provide real-time energy consumption insights to tenants. The goal is to enhance sustainability, improve cost efficiency, and increase tenant satisfaction through advanced automation and data-driven decision-making.
Problem
1.Scalability Concerns:
Genergy was managing a large number of properties, each with multiple utilities to track and optimize. As the number of clients and meters grew, their existing infrastructure struggled to scale effectively, leading to delays and inefficiencies in data processing and billing.
2.Real-time Data Processing:
With the need for real-time insights into energy consumption and automated billing, their existing setup was not fast enough to handle the volume of data generated across various properties. This caused delays in reporting and hindered their ability to provide immediate feedback to tenants.
3.Complex Billing Processes:
The invoicing and tenant billing processes were time-intensive and prone to errors, which led to delayed payments and increased administrative overhead. Genergy needed a more streamlined and automated system to ensure timely and accurate billing.
4.Lack of Flexibility in Infrastructure:
Their monolithic architecture made it challenging to quickly implement new features or scale individual components based on demand. This lack of flexibility affected their ability to adapt to changing business needs.
4.High Operational Costs:
The existing infrastructure involved significant fixed costs for maintaining servers and other resources. This led to inefficiencies in cost management, especially during periods of low activity.
AWS Serverless Microservice Architecture Solution
To address these challenges, you provided Genergy with a serverless microservice architecture built on AWS, which included the following key components:
1.Microservices Design:
The architecture was divided into several microservices, such as Tenant Portal, Client Portal, and Eguage Meter Data Microservices. Each microservice handled specific tasks independently, improving scalability and flexibility.
2.AWS API Gateway and Lambda:
By using AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda functions, the architecture enabled serverless execution of microservices, which could scale automatically based on demand.
3.Aurora MySQL for Data Management:
Each microservice utilized Amazon Aurora MySQL instances for persistent data storage, offering high availability and performance. This setup allowed for efficient and reliable management of utility data and tenant billing information.
4.Event-Driven Architecture with AWS EventBridge and SQS:
To handle asynchronous events, such as tenant billing and data updates, the architecture used AWS EventBridge and SQS.
5.Cost Optimization:
The serverless architecture was designed to be cost-efficient, enabling Genergy to pay only for the resources they actually used. This "pay-as-you-go" model significantly reduced their operational costs, particularly during periods of low demand.
Outcomes
By implementing this serverless microservice architecture, Genergy was able to achieve significant improvements in scalability, efficiency, and flexibility. The real-time data processing capability allowed them to provide up-to-the-minute insights to tenants, and the automated billing system reduced administrative overhead and improved cash flow consistency.