Building and Deploying VA Applications at Scale

Have you seen recent news stories about organizations struggling with the increase in cloud costs and repatriating workload from the cloud back to on premise?  Have you wondered how VA can afford to modernize under existing budget constraints?  Have you wondered if there’s a better way?  We did too.  Which is why we created VA Platform One—an enterprise-class hosting service that helps drive VA digital transformation. VA Platform One is the cornerstone modernization platform that allows VA technology experts to enhance development, security, and operation (DevSecOps) capabilities and react quickly to changes.

In 2023, VA Platform One played a pivotal role in enabling container-technology-as-a-service within VA’s software factory, an organized workspace where software is built, tested, and prepared for use. Containerization, which essentially packs that software and all its dependent services into a single, portable container, makes it easy to move that software around and deploy across different systems. Transitioning to containerization-as-a-service improves our agility further, allowing us to innovate and implement continuous improvements more quickly, while standardizing our approach to containerization across the entire enterprise.

This focus on relentless improvement and continual innovation has made it easier to create and launch important applications, and helped VA meet the highest standards of security, quality, and efficiency. For example, the VA Platform One team was able to onboard the VA Logistics Integration Platform (VALIP) team onto VA Platform One within weeks, saving the VALIP team’s valuable time and resources. With VA Platform One, the VALIP team has been able to focus on deploying their application for their customers, without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.  

Another benefit? To-date, the VA Platform One team has reduced their required compute resources by 75 percent.

Given the ever-increasing demands on IT today to help VA deliver on our promise, VA Platform One is a key part of our strategy to use modern hosting across our hybrid environments – from Cloud to the Edge where we meet our customers

The Business Need

For VA, our digital transformation is about creating a seamless, world-class digital experience for our employee and the Veterans, families, and caregivers. Specifically, we are:

• Embracing methods that reduce cost, increase efficiency, enhance security, and stabilize operations
• Moving away from legacy on-premises solutions supported by inefficient technology and driven by manual processes  
• Optimizing service delivery to the end-user and enhancing collaboration, mobility, traceability, and accessibility 
• Enhancing workplace technologies so VA team members have the tools they need to succeed, while fostering a more collaborative and efficient work environment
• Aligning seamlessly with the strategic goals of VA and VA’s Office of Information and Technology and enhancing business outcomes and Veteran and VA staff user experiences

More efficient, secure, portable deployments

VA Platform One focuses on aligning traditional on-premises server and cloud hosting strategies to deliver applications that meet specific business needs. Using container technology in cloud and on-premise environments, VA Platform One streamlines that workflow. This approach removes team reliance on traditional servers, storage, and network resources. Teams have more time to focus on delivery of application-related capabilities and innovations, while the actual platform runs in the background to manage workloads across cloud and on-premises data center resources. The approach also ensures an efficient system, and allows for a more streamlined development process, enhancing the adaptability, scalability, and readiness for future technological advancements.

Before migrating to VA Platform One, deployments were slowed by mismatched environments, monolithic update risks, server inconsistency, infrastructure constraints, and insufficient testing resulting in outages, rework, and delays.

VA Platform One provides consistency across all environments, including deployments in the cloud and on-premises. Developers no longer need to worry about the infrastructure or operating systems.

And importantly, VA Platform One moves security to the forefront, so the code is scanned for vulnerabilities often, early, and continuously. VA Platform One also provides VA developers with the capability to do zero downtime deployment.  

VA Platform One containers encapsulate an application and its dependencies, ensuring consistency across different environments. This “portability” allows developers to build, test, and deploy applications seamlessly across various platforms, from development to production. The consistency also reduces the risk of issues arising due to differences in the underlying infrastructure, enabling teams to focus more on innovation and less on debugging compatibility problems.

VA Platform One has demonstrated the potential for cost avoidance of about 75 percent.

Kendall Krebs, deputy executive officer for Infrastructure Operations

Lowered costs and enhanced application scalability

VA Platform One containers also provide unparalleled agility in deploying and scaling applications. This rapid deployment capability is particularly advantageous in a software factory setting, where quick iteration and frequent releases are essential. VA Platform One containers are lightweight compared to traditional virtual machines. This efficiency translates into lower resource consumption, allowing organizations to optimize infrastructure utilization and reduce costs associated with hardware and cloud resources. Additionally, the modular nature of containers enables efficient use of resources, facilitating the creation of microservice architectures that can be individually scaled as needed.

Before migrating onto VA Platform One, applications within the VA were monolithic, where the aspects of the software were interwoven instead of containing different components. One example VA application consisted of over 140 instances deployed onto more than 100 servers. The team overseeing that application partnered with VA Platform One to modernize the application and convert it to a containerized solution.

With VA Platform One and its use of containerization, that application now runs more efficiently. It can adjust its performance based on demand, using the minimum amount of resources it needs until more is required. The VA Platform One servers that host containerized applications are also built with high availability. So, if there’s a problem with one server, the application can quickly move to another one without users noticing any downtime. Moving to VA Platform One helped the team achieve cost avoidance of nearly 75 percent of what they typically spent on infrastructure. Plus, it gives them more flexibility to scale up or down, move the application around easily, and make changes quickly.

In a nutshell: Accelerating excellence and innovation

Building to scale–As VA strives to deliver true value in today’s dynamic software development landscape, embracing containerization with VA Platform One has become not just a technological choice, but a strategic imperative for achieving modern, efficient, and resilient software factories that build and deploy applications at scale. Additionally, containers seamlessly integrate with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, promoting automation throughout the software development lifecycle.

Enhancing security–By incorporating container technology into the VA software factory modernization approach, VA Platform One has enabled several benefits. Isolation of each container enhances security by encapsulating applications and their dependencies so that they operate independently of other applications, minimizing risk and application conflicts.

Agility, consistency, accelerating development–VA Platform One aligns perfectly with VA DevSecOps principles by encapsulating the entire application stack, making it easier for developers to work in consistent environments and for operations teams to manage deployments effectively. This collaborative approach enhances communication, accelerates feedback loops, and promotes a more efficient and agile development process.