Modernizing for the Ascent: How Trust

Modernizing for the Ascent: How Trust in Tours Achieved Operational Excellence with AWS

Overview

Trust In Tours, Nepal’s leading cycling expedition operator, connects riders from around the world with the country’s most breathtaking trails , from the Annapurna Circuit to Upper Mustang. It manages complex operations across multiple regions, with a growing fleet of servers supporting their website, booking platform, and administrative tools. As the company scaled, manually managing servers, patching systems, and deploying updates became time-consuming, error-prone, and risky.

To modernize operations, Trust In Tours adopted AWS Systems Manager (SSM) as a centralized operations hub. SSM provides secure, auditable access to all servers, eliminates the need for bastion hosts and SSH keys, and enables automated patching, configuration management, and deployment tasks. By using SSM, the operations team can manage their infrastructure consistently and efficiently, reduce downtime, and focus on enhancing the customer experience rather than maintaining servers.

The Challenge: Navigating the Peaks and Valleys of Digital Operations

As Trust in Tours grew, their traditional infrastructure faced several operational challenges:

• Inconsistent Server Configurations: Manual setup of servers caused mismatches between development and production environments, leading to unpredictable deployment failures.
• High-Risk Security Management: Managing multiple servers required SSH keys and bastion hosts, creating potential security vulnerabilities and complex auditing challenges.
• Manual, Disruptive Maintenance: Security patching and software updates were done manually, risking website downtime during critical booking periods.
• Slow, Error-Prone Deployments: Launching new features, tour packages, or bug fixes was time-consuming and prone to errors, limiting the team’s agility.

Trust in Tours needed a cloud architecture that was scalable, secure, automated, and resilient, allowing them to focus on delivering extraordinary cycling experiences rather than managing IT operations.

The Solution: A Centralized, Automated Hub with AWS Systems Manager

To overcome these challenges, Trust in Tours implemented a modern, automated architecture on AWS, with AWS Systems Manager (SSM) at the core. This centralized hub gives the team complete visibility and control over their infrastructure while enabling secure, repeatable operations.

AWS Cloud Architecture

Fig: AWS Architecture diagram for Trust in Tours

CI/CD & Infrastructure Automation

• GitHub: Central repository for all application code (website) and infrastructure code (CloudFormation templates).
• AWS CodePipeline: Automatically detects changes in GitHub and orchestrates the build, test, and deployment process.
• AWS CodeBuild: Compiles code, runs tests, and creates deployment packages stored in S3.
• AWS CloudFormation: Provisions infrastructure as code, ensuring consistent, repeatable environments across all stages.
• AWS CodeDeploy: Deploys application artifacts to EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group, supporting zero-downtime updates.

User Request Flow (Website Access)

• Amazon Route 53: Translates the website domain into IP addresses and directs users to AWS resources.
• Amazon CloudFront & AWS WAF: CloudFront delivers content globally with low latency, WAF filters malicious traffic.
• Elastic Load Balancer: Distributes requests across multiple EC2 instances to prevent overload and ensure high availability.
• EC2 & Auto Scaling Group: Virtual servers automatically scale in or out depending on traffic demand, maintaining performance and optimizing cost.

Backend & Data Processing

• AWS Lambda: Handles event-driven tasks, e.g., AI-powered trail recommendations, contact form processing, or image uploads.
• Amazon DynamoDB: Provides fast access to frequently queried data, such as tour details.
• Amazon Aurora (RDS): Stores relational data, such as bookings and detailed itineraries.
• Amazon S3: Stores images, tour documents, and builds artifacts for global access via CloudFront.

Centralized Operations & Management (AWS Systems Manager)

• SSM Agent & Session Manager: Secure, auditable server access without SSH or open ports. All commands are logged in CloudTrail.
• Parameter Store: Securely stores sensitive information like database passwords, fetched dynamically by EC2 instances at runtime.
• State Manager: Ensures EC2 instances maintain a consistent configuration (e.g., security agents, monitoring tools).
• Maintenance Windows & Automation: Automates OS patching and routine updates without disrupting service.

Monitoring & Security

• Amazon CloudWatch: Centralized monitoring of logs, metrics, and events. Provides dashboards and alarms for proactive issue resolution.
• AWS Security Tools:
  • AWS KMS: Manages encryption keys for secure data storage in Aurora and S3.
  • AWS Shield & WAF: Protects the application from DDoS attacks and common web exploits.

The Results: Reaching New Heights

By modernizing their infrastructure with AWS, Trust in Tours achieved:

• 90% Reduction in Operational Overhead: Automation eliminated most manual server management tasks.
• Stronger Security Posture: Secure access and centralized secrets management reduced risks and improved auditability.
• Faster, Safer Deployments: CI/CD pipelines accelerated feature releases and updates by 3x.
• Improved Reliability and Uptime: Automated configuration management and scheduled maintenance ensured consistent, reliable website performance.

With this modern, secure, and scalable foundation, Trust in Tours is ready to grow its offerings, enhance customer experiences, and continue delivering world-class cycling adventures across the Himalayas, without being limited by IT operations.