From AWS to Private Cloud with Netris
Improving Unit Economics By 90%

Challenges Faced and the Netris Solution

The initial challenge was that infrastructure cost at AWS was biting a high percentage of revenue. Infrastructure cost optimization would play a vital role in improving unit economics. Initial expense modeling has demonstrated that moving to own private cloud in a bare-metal colocation facility can reduce infrastructure costs significantly compared to AWS. However, there were technical challenges at the beginning. 

The team used Rancher for Kubernetes cluster management and Ceph for storage. That combination delivers the necessary application platform.

However, finding the right tool to cover their networking needs quickly became challenging.

Full Interview with AcceleratXR’s Jean-Philippe Steinmetz sharing their journey of moving from AWS to their own private cloud.

Infrastructure Software Stack

Border Routing: FRR + DPDK + Netris

Elastic Load Balancing: DPDK + Netris

NAT: DPDK + Netris

Firewall: DPDK + Netris

DHCP: ISC KEA + Netris

VPN: Wireguard + Netris

Storage: Ceph

Kubernetes: Rancher + Netris Operator

IaC: Terraform

Infrastructure Hardware Stack

Physical Network: Dell Z9100 Switches

SoftGate the VPC Gateway: 2 x Generic Servers + Nvidia ConnectX-6 SmartNIC

Worker Nodes: Generic Servers with 25G Ethernet

Storage: Generic Servers with fast disk drives and 100G Ethernet

Management: Generic Servers with 10G Ethernet

When using AWS, you know that the cloud provider is responsible for infrastructure operations, and you can use their support in case you hit any issues. But who is responsible for what when it comes to your own private cloud on your own hardware

Netris software subscription includes 24/7/365 support that covers not only Netris software issues but also all underlying Linux and open-source components that the Netris VPC system is leveraging. This way, AcceleratXR gets a “single throat to choke” for their Networking stack.

If there is a hardware issue, while HA (high availability) will keep systems running, Netris’s built-in monitoring system will generate an alarm. If further troubleshooting is required, Netris support will help narrow the problem down so the AcceleratXR team knows what hardware piece needs a replacement.
If there is a software issue somewhere in the network solution, then Netris is responsible for troubleshooting and resolution.

Additionally, the Netris Professional Services team helped AcceleratXR’s engineers design the architecture, choose the proper hardware, set it up, and go live.

Today, AcceleratXR’s product is running on its own private cloud. Netris, Rancher, and Ceph software solutions bring the cloud-like infrastructure consumption experience to their private cloud.

AcceleratXR has designed a highly automated and horizontally scalable private cloud that helped them significantly reduce infrastructure costs compared to AWS and achieve 90% better unit economics.

Growing further, they will scale their initial California-based infrastructure and will launch more regions using colocation and bare-metal-as-a-service providers. With Netris, AcceleratXR has a single, unified, and easy way to consume any network, with the comfort of AWS but on their own terms.

Choosing a hardware provider became just a business decision, as Netris abstracts away technical details and integration overhead, and building your own private cloud anytime, anywhere became the norm.