Back in May, my colleague Fernando Macías introduced the web-based demo of ATICA in a previous blog post. Today, I am excited to take you behind the scenes and explain how is the architecture of AWS cloud deployment for ATICA Web, using a simple yet robust cloud infrastructure.
Why We Chose Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leading cloud service provider worldwide, offering an extensive suite of tools designed to meet virtually every development and infrastructure need.
While small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) often benefit the most from AWS due to its pay-as-you-go model, many large enterprises like Netflix, also rely on AWS for its flexibility, scalability, and global reach.
For our project, we opted for a basic but effective deployment architecture, carefully selecting only the necessary AWS services to keep the system scalable, secure, and maintainable.
AWS Services Used in the Deployment
Before diving into the architecture diagram, it’s important to understand the key AWS components we used.
- VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
The VPC is our private virtual network, essentially our project’s home within AWS. As Amazon puts it:“This virtual network is similar to a traditional network that you wold operate in your own data center, with the benefits of using AWS’s scalable infrastructure.”
We used Security Groups and Network Access Control Lists (ACLs) to manage inbound and outbound traffic. These tools act as firewalls and traffic filters, ensuring each part of our system communicates securely.
Within the VPC, we also configured public and private subnets, depending on whether or not internet access was needed for specific resources.
The Internet Gateway is the portal that connects our cloud network to the outside world. It is essential for enabling public internet access to selected services.
VPC - EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
EC2 instances are virtual machines that allow you to select your desired OS, CPU, memory, and more. Essentially, it is like spinning up a computer in the cloud. We used two EC2 instances:- One dedicated to running the frontend (registration and login page).
- One responsible for running Capella instances, tailored to each user session.
This separation ensures horizontal scalability. If the number of users increases, the backend EC2—which does the heavy lifting—can be scaled independently of the lightweight frontend server.
EC2 - RDS (Relational Database Service)
Instead of manually installing a database on an EC2, we used Amazon RDS, a managed database service that simplifies setup, operation, and scaling.
RDS supports multiple database engines including MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and more. We chose it for its ease of use, reliability, and performance.
Source: AWS
The Architecture: A Visual Overview
In the diagram above, you can identify all previously mentioned components, plus the addition of Security Groups, depicted with red dashed lines.
Notably, the database is not hosted on an EC2 instance, but instead on Amazon RDS. This decision was driven by the convenience, security, and efficiency of AWS’s managed services.
The two EC2 instances each serve specific purposes:
- Frontend EC2 handles UI components and static content.
- Backend EC2 runs the dynamic services (Capella) that respond to user interactions.
Traffic between services is tightly controlled using Security Groups and ACLs, reinforcing a secure and segmented environment.
Final Thoughts: Simplicity with Strength
Although this architecture does not make use of the full suite of AWS services, it is a strategically simple setup powerful in computation, solid in security, and perfectly suited for our current needs.
Thanks to AWS, companies like Anzen can deploy production-level infrastructure without major capital investments or the burden of ongoing hardware maintenance.
At Anzen Innovation, we remain committed to staying at the forefront of modern technologies, including cloud computing with AWS, as part of our mission to always deliver the best solutions to our clients and users.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going 🚀
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this deployment or your own experiences using AWS!
- Have questions about our setup?
- Curious how this architecture could be adapted to your project?
- Want to share how your team approaches cloud deployments?
💬 Leave a comment below or
📩 Email us at aticasupport@anzenengineering.com. We are always happy to connect, learn, and collaborate.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates from the Atica team!
And don’t forget to try the Atica Demo!
About the author
César Munuera is a computer engineer specializing in Cloud and IT infrastructure at Anzen.
At Anzen, César’s work focuses on ATICA, our model-based tool for safety analysis. He contributes to the development and evolution of ATICA by implementing and maintaining key functionalities. His responsibilities include designing and managing API communication between the different ATICA applications, as well as deploying services both in the cloud and on-premises environments.
