Automating Cloud Infrastructure with Kubernetes and Ansible

New York, NY

Executive Summary

A Fortune 500 financial institution managing $2.3 trillion in assets faced critical inefficiencies in their cloud environment — high operational costs from over‑provisioned resources, deployment cycles measured in weeks instead of days, and a monolithic architecture that buckled under peak trading volumes. Their IT teams spent the majority of their time on routine maintenance rather than strategic innovation, directly impacting business agility in a fast‑moving market. THNKBIG was engaged to modernize the infrastructure with Kubernetes orchestration, Ansible automation, and GitOps‑driven CI/CD — transforming a fragile, manual environment into a resilient, self‑scaling platform.

Key Scope Items

30%

Reduction in Cloud Costs

50%

Faster Deployments

99.9%

Uptime During Peak Trading

Solution Implemented

Kubernetes (K8s) for Container Orchestration — Replaced legacy VM‑based deployments with scalable, containerized microservices, improving resource utilization by 40%.
Ansible for Automation — Automated provisioning, configuration, and deployment to eliminate manual errors and accelerate workflows from weeks to hours.
CI/CD Pipeline Optimization — Integrated GitOps practices with ArgoCD to enable zero‑downtime deployments with automated rollback capabilities.
Cost Monitoring with Kubecost — Provided real‑time visibility into cloud spending, helping optimize resource allocation and surface hidden waste.

Outcomes Expected

Achieve a 30%+ reduction in operational cloud costs by eliminating over‑provisioning and right‑sizing workloads.
Cut deployment cycle times by ≥ 50%, enabling weekly releases instead of monthly.
Maintain 99.9% uptime during peak trading hours with elastic autoscaling.
Improve resource utilization by ≥ 40%, reducing idle cloud spending across all environments.

Challenge

The client faced three critical issues in their cloud environment:

High Operational Costs — Manual infrastructure management resulted in over‑provisioned resources, leading to unnecessary cloud spending of $400K+ per month in waste.
Slow Deployment Times — Application releases took weeks instead of days due to inconsistent deployment processes and manual approvals.
Lack of Scalability — Their monolithic architecture struggled to handle peak trading volumes, causing performance bottlenecks and P1 incidents during market hours.

Without automation, their IT teams spent excessive time on routine maintenance rather than strategic initiatives, impacting business agility.

Challenge

The client faced three critical issues in their cloud environment:

High Operational Costs – Manual infrastructure management resulted in over-provisioned resources, leading to unnecessary cloud spending.
Slow Deployment Times – Application releases took weeks instead of days due to inconsistent deployment processes.
Lack of Scalability – Their monolithic architecture struggled to handle peak trading volumes, causing performance bottlenecks.

Without automation, their IT teams spent excessive time on routine maintenance rather than strategic initiatives, impacting business agility.

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Solution

To address these challenges, we implemented a modernized cloud infrastructure using:

✔ Kubernetes (K8s) for Container Orchestration – Replaced legacy VM-based deployments with scalable, containerized microservices, improving resource utilization.

✔ Ansible for Automation – Automated provisioning, configuration, and deployment to eliminate manual errors and accelerate workflows.

✔ CI/CD Pipeline Optimization – Integrated GitOps practices with ArgoCD to enable zero-downtime deployments.

✔ Cost Monitoring with Kubecost – Provided real-time visibility into cloud spending, helping optimize resource allocation.

This approach ensured faster, more reliable deployments while reducing operational overhead.

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Implementation

The transformation followed a structured, phased approach:

Assessment & Planning (3 Weeks)

Conducted a full infrastructure audit to identify inefficiencies.

Defined Kubernetes cluster architecture (multi-zone for high availability).
Pilot Phase (4 Weeks)

Migrated 10 critical applications to Kubernetes.

Automated infrastructure provisioning using Ansible playbooks.
Full Rollout (8 Weeks)

Scaled Kubernetes clusters to 500+ nodes.

Implemented GitOps workflows for seamless CI/CD.
Optimization (3 Weeks)

Fine-tuned autoscaling policies (HPA/VPA).

Set up Kubecost dashboards for cost tracking.

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Results & Impact

The new infrastructure delivered measurable improvements:

30% reduction in operational costs by eliminating over-provisioning.
50% faster deployment times, enabling weekly releases instead of monthly.
99.9% uptime during peak trading hours, improving client satisfaction.
40% improvement in resource utilization, reducing idle cloud spending.

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Key Takeaways

Automation is Non-Negotiable – Ansible and Kubernetes eliminated manual toil, freeing teams for innovation.
Scalability Requires Modern Orchestration – K8s enabled elastic scaling, handling market volatility seamlessly.
Cost Control Needs Visibility – Kubecost exposed waste, turning cloud spend into a strategic lever.

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