GSM
Amazon EKS Empowers GSM’s Global Expansion
Green and Smart Mobility (GSM) is Vietnam’s first pure electric taxi firm that debuted in early 2023 on the streets of Hanoi. Starting with a modest fleet of 600 EVs, the company aims to expand across the nation to encompass a minimum of five provinces and cities such as Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang. GSM not only offers eco-friendly transportation but also promotes EV adoption through a comprehensive green mobility ecosystem, including electric vehicle leases and advanced services like package car rental and personalized car rental. After achieving success in Vietnam and Laos, GSM plans rapid expansion into other Southeast Asian countries, in terms of not only fleet size, but also the variety of platforms that support its ride-hailing services, including mobile app, call center, and on-the-road bookings.
Industry
Electric Taxi Service
Technology
OVERVIEW
Green and Smart Mobility (GSM) is Vietnam’s first pure electric taxi firm that debuted in early 2023 on the streets of Hanoi. Starting with a modest fleet of 600 EVs, the company aims to expand across the nation to encompass a minimum of five provinces and cities such as Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang. GSM not only offers eco-friendly transportation but also promotes EV adoption through a comprehensive green mobility ecosystem, including electric vehicle leases and advanced services like package car rental and personalized car rental. After achieving success in Vietnam and Laos, GSM plans rapid expansion into other Southeast Asian countries, in terms of not only fleet size, but also the variety of platforms that support its ride-hailing services, including mobile app, call center, and on-the-road bookings.
KEY CHALLENGES
For an EV taxi provider that prides itself on futuristic innovation while operating in multiple countries like GSM, the pressure on its underlying infrastructure is immense. Challenges such as scalability and geographical distribution are inevitable on GSM’s path to global expansion. As a solution, GSM has decided to adopt Amazon EKS, entrusting its container orchestration capabilities would provide a robust solution for GSM’s complex IT infrastructure.
SOLUTION
Leveraging the power of the Amazon EKS cluster, Renova seamlessly orchestrated the bulk of workload and the core data flow of GSM’s ride-hailing system. Specifically, this was done by employing Karpenter that automatically provided suitable EC2 instances with the right sizing and at the right time, to cater to diverse resource requirements of container workloads inside the Amazon EKS cluster.
Figure: Proposal ArchitectureTo address the scalability challenge, Renova decided to adopt the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Hashicorp Terraform after careful assessment of the client’s existing infrastructure. By using these tools, Renova could efficiently provision and manage the GSM’s environments, allowing for seamless scaling of resources. In addition, the establishment of a baseline through AWS Cloud9 enabled swift and consistent deployment of resources across accounts, ensuring that future changes or the addition of new resources can be easily accommodated, aligning with the dynamic scalability requirements of an EV taxi platform operating internationally.
To enhance the reliability of the GSM solution, Renova collaborated with the client to create a multi-cluster system with an aim to prevent any single cluster from causing system failure. This teamwork between GSM and Renova involved using GitOps on the client side and Infrastructure as Code on Renova’s side to ensure consistent infrastructure deployment across various accounts and regions. By selecting AWS EKS for container orchestration and management, the teams effectively maintained the container clusters used for GSM’s ride-hailing solution. Additionally, Renova simplified the deployment process using Terraform, applying changes to the environment as code, ensuring a consistent and reliable setup across different locations. This approach helped GSM tackle challenges related to geographical distribution, making it highly available to customers regardless of their location.
BENEFITS
Implementing Amazon EKS has brought several advantages for GSM’s global ride-hailing platform. Firstly, with its container orchestration features, EKS facilitates efficient management and scaling of the platform’s operations across various regions, ensuring optimal performance and responsiveness. Secondly, the platform’s global deployment capabilities reduce latency, providing a smoother experience for users, as well as boosting GSM’s confidence when entering a new market in the future. Last but not least, the EKS solution simplifies infrastructure management, addressing challenges related to scalability, technology stack consistency, and geographical distribution, ultimately contributing to a more reliable and seamless operation of GSM’s ride-hailing service.
