Upgrades and Maintenance for Vea Analytics

Enhancing Performance and Reliability

At SenSource, we are dedicated to continuously improving our SaaS analytics platform, Vea Analytics, to provide exceptional experiences for our customers. In this article, we’ll take you through our recent major upgrades, showcasing the dedication behind our efforts to provide uninterrupted operations and enhanced performance.

Seamless Transition: Planning and Testing

The foundation of successful upgrades lies in meticulous planning. Weeks before the scheduled maintenance window, our team invested significant time and effort in developing a comprehensive upgrade script. We practiced it in parallel test environments to ensure a smooth transition. Leveraging the copy-on-write database volume clone feature offered by AWS, we rapidly duplicated the cluster structure, enabling rigorous real-world tests.

To minimize disruption, we carefully scheduled the maintenance window and provided advance notice to our customers. The evening before the upgrade, we conducted a thorough dry run, rehearsing each step of the upgrade process. This rehearsal allowed us to anticipate and address potential challenges, ensuring a seamless transition during the actual upgrade, and allowing us to address potential challenges proactively.

Finally, we ran a final, live test on a cloned cluster to prepare us for the job ahead.

Upgrades: Cross Your Fingers!

Once 1am local time arrived, it was time to begin the upgrades. The SenSource team shut down the 15+ applications comprising the Vea Analytics platform. Ensuring all connections were dropped and verifying the database’s settled and stable state, a series of checks were conducted. Once confirmed, the team commenced the upgrade process.

During the maintenance period, we not only upgraded the servers in our PostgreSQL cluster from version 11 to 15 but also seized the opportunity to introduce hardware enhancements. Leveraging the latest generation of custom-built Graviton processors from AWS, we multiplied our compute performance, doubled the memory and significantly increased network bandwidth. These enhancements paved the way for improved performance, responsiveness, and scalability, as well as future upgrades and optimizations.

Startup: Bringing it Back to Life

After completing the necessary upgrades and ensuring the stability and integrity of our system, it was time to bring the Vea Analytics applications and services back to normal operations. Starting with the data ingestion applications, we gradually brought each service back online.

We understand the criticality of data for our customers’ businesses so we took measures to ensure data integrity and continuity during the upgrade. With our sensors buffering data onboard, no data was lost throughout the maintenance period. As the applications came back online, the sensors seamlessly connected and back-filled the buffered data.

As the surge of incoming data plateaued and stability was confirmed, we proceeded to restart other critical components of the Vea Analytics platform. From job schedulers to notification services, customer integration services, forecasting, and metrics calculation services, each piece was restored to full functionality.

Throughout this process, we closely monitored the system, conducting rigorous checks and tests to ensure that everything was functioning as expected. As the applications and services of Vea Analytics came back online, our customers could once again leverage the full power and capabilities of our platform. With improved performance and enhanced infrastructure, we remain committed to providing an exceptional user experience and empowering our customers to derive valuable insights from their data.

Next Up: Looking Ahead

This major upgrade exemplifies our dedication to continuous improvement. Building on this foundation, we are excited to announce forthcoming significant performance enhancements. Our team remains resolute in our commitment to delivering exceptional service and support, empowering our customers to achieve their goals.

A Customer-Centric Approach

Our customers’ satisfaction is the cornerstone of our endeavors. With a customer-centric mindset, we executed the upgrades to minimize disruptions and maximize reliability. Our meticulous planning and execution resulted in successful restoration of the applications, ensuring minimal disruptions and a seamless experience for our customers.

As a leading people counting and analytics company, SenSource is committed to providing highly accurate sensors and a top-quality SaaS analytics platform. Our recent upgrades and maintenance for Vea Analytics underscore our relentless pursuit of excellence. We couldn’t do what we do without our dedicated team and amazing customers.

If you’re looking for a partner to stay dedicated to you as a customer and continually improve the platform, you can count on us!