Unlocking Growth Potential with AWS

4x

faster marine port operations

75%

Process get digitalized

99.99%

Resilient to failure and HA
Enhancing high availability of ERP with AWS

Unlocking growth opportunities with AWS high availability design

Click here to download

Customer Overview

Our client is a technology services provider serving the maritime and education sectors. Its flagship product is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform designed to support operational, financial, and administrative workflows across both industries. The client initially engaged TenUp to strengthen the ERP’s performance, stability, and resource efficiency. This first phase ensured the system could reliably support existing customers with consistent throughput, faster response times, and higher operational stability.

Project Overview

Following the completion of the initial improvements, the client faced a new requirement. One of the biggest tug operators in Singapore planned to adopt the ERP platform, introducing significantly higher data volumes, real-time usage demands, and transaction throughput than the system had previously handled. To support a customer operating at this scale, the ERP needed stronger resilience, high availability, and a more scalable architecture. The client once again partnered with TenUp to prepare the platform for these expanded operational demands and ensure uninterrupted support for high-volume maritime operations.

Challenges

Building a solution that enables the ERP to support high-volume maritime operations with strict uptime requirements, AWS High Availability, transparent failover, and self-healing capabilities, all while respecting codebase, architectural, and licensing constraints.

  • The ERP system needed to support high-volume maritime operations, including continuous vessel arrivals, real-time berth coordination across multiple operational teams, and the downstream billing workflows dependent on these activities.
  • Any downtime, even 10 minutes, could cause cascading operational failures, including communication breakdowns, berthing delays, congestion at the management site, and disruption to billing processes.
  • The platform had to scale to support significantly higher data throughput and concurrent system usage introduced by one of the biggest tug operators in Singapore.
  • The solution had to integrate with the existing system while adhering to strict architectural boundaries and minimizing changes to the current code base.
  • All applications needed to be fully compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS) without altering core product behavior.
  • Licensing constraints required that only one application instance could be active at a time, ruling out traditional multi-active high-availability patterns.
  • Achieving high availability demanded an active–standby architecture with seamless, transparent failover and no user-visible impact during transitions.
  • The system needed self-healing capabilities at both the application and node levels, enabling automatic recovery from crashes, environment setup, server restarts, and deployment of the latest build without human intervention.
  • The architecture had to prevent the standby instance from running in parallel with the active instance, while still enabling fast recovery during failures.
  • The final solution needed to be resilient, cost-effective, secure, and scalable for future growth without increasing operational complexity.

Solution

TenUp built a high-availability AWS architecture with automated failover and self-healing to keep the ERP reliable, resilient, and scalable for high-volume maritime operations.

  • Designed an AWS-aligned architecture that worked seamlessly with the existing system, met licensing constraints, and required no changes to the current code base.
  • Implemented enterprise-grade provisioning using Amazon Route 53 for DNS health checks and traffic routing between active and standby nodes.
  • Used AWS Application Load Balancer to distribute incoming traffic reliably across node instances.
  • Configured AWS Auto Scaling Group with CloudWatch integration to enable automatic failover by launching a standby node when the active instance fails.
  • Leveraged Amazon RDS to replicate the existing MySQL database and ensure maximum availability across all database operations.
  • Introduced a highly available shared storage layer using Amazon EFS to synchronize data across both ActiveMQ instances.
  • Enabled automated server-level recovery using Monit to detect crashes and restart services without manual intervention.
  • Increased node-level resilience by using AWS Auto Scaling Group, a custom AMI, and AWS CodeDeploy to automatically recreate failed virtual machine instances and deploy the latest application build.
  • Ensured high availability across all integrated components—including servers, message queues, databases, and load balancers—to support continuous operations for large-scale maritime workloads.

Benefits

With the new AWS high-availability architecture in place, the ERP now delivers measurable business benefits at enterprise scale.

  • High availability with multi-layer redundancy across application, database, and messaging components.
  • Improved performance and stronger security across all ERP operations on AWS.
  • Lower operational costs by eliminating on-premises hardware and reducing maintenance overhead.
  • Scalable architecture that supports significantly higher transaction volumes for maritime operations.

Technology

  • Amazon Route 53
  • AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB)
  • AWS Auto Scaling Group (ASG)
  • Amazon CloudWatch
  • Amazon RDS (MySQL)
  • Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
  • Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
  • AWS CodeDeploy
  • ActiveMQ
  • Monit (Linux supervisor)

Industry

  • Marine/Maritime
Improving Marine Operations with AWS High Availability

Conclusion

TenUp delivered a resilient, AWS high-availability architecture that allows the ERP to scale reliably, meet SLAs, and operate without interruption. With these optimized cloud solutions in place, onboarding large customers is seamless, and the platform is now positioned to support the evolving demands of enterprise-scale maritime operations. This engagement reinforces TenUp’s strength in cloud consulting and building future-ready systems that grow with the business.

Frequently asked questions

How do you make a traditional ERP system highly available on AWS without changing the core codebase?

faq arrow

You can make a traditional ERP highly available on AWS without changing its code by placing it in a multi-AZ, failover-ready architecture. The fastest approach is:

  • Active–Standby EC2 setup across AZs
  • Route 53 health checks + automatic failover
  • Auto Scaling Groups to rebuild failed nodes
  • RDS Multi-AZ for instant database failover
  • EFS shared storage if the ERP needs shared files

This keeps the ERP unchanged while adding cloud-level resilience and near-zero downtime.

What is the best AWS architecture for running a maritime or port-operations ERP with near-zero downtime?

faq arrow

The best AWS architecture for a maritime or port-operations ERP needing near-zero downtime is a multi-AZ, auto-recovering setup that keeps every layer redundant and failover-ready. The most reliable pattern is:

  • Multi-AZ EC2 Active–Standby with Route 53 health-check failover
  • Application Load Balancer for real-time traffic distribution
  • Auto Scaling Groups to instantly replace unhealthy nodes
  • RDS Multi-AZ for synchronous database failover with no data loss
  • EFS shared storage for ERP modules that require common files

This design ensures continuous availability during vessel activity spikes, node failures, or AZ outages, delivering true near-zero downtime for maritime operations.

How does AWS handle real-time maritime workloads like vessel movements, berth allocation, and tug operations?

faq arrow

AWS handles real-time maritime workloads by combining low-latency compute, event-driven messaging, and auto-scaling data services to process vessel activity without delays. In practice, this includes:

  • EC2 + ALB for real-time request handling
  • SQS/SNS or ActiveMQ for event-driven coordination
  • CloudWatch for continuous monitoring and anomaly alerts
  • RDS for high-throughput transactional updates
  • Auto Scaling to absorb spikes in vessel arrivals or port operations

This architecture keeps vessel movements, berth allocation, and tug operations running continuously with near-zero latency and no operational downtime.

How do you prevent downtime in ERP systems that must handle continuous, real-time operational data?

faq arrow

You prevent downtime in real-time ERP systems by making every tier redundant and able to fail over instantly. The most reliable AWS pattern is:

  • Multi-AZ compute nodes so a single AZ failure never stops operations
  • Route 53 health checks to trigger automatic failover to healthy nodes
  • RDS Multi-AZ for synchronous database replication with no data loss
  • Auto Recovery + Auto Scaling to rebuild failed instances automatically
  • CloudWatch monitoring + alerts to detect issues before they impact users

This architecture keeps the ERP online during load spikes, hardware failures, or unexpected disruptions, ensuring continuous real-time operations with near-zero downtime.

Can AWS Auto Scaling be used for failover and self-healing, or do you need additional tools?

faq arrow

AWS Auto Scaling can provide basic failover and self-healing by automatically replacing unhealthy EC2 instances, but it isn’t enough on its own for full high availability. For true resilience, you should pair it with:

  • Route 53 for automatic traffic failover
  • Health checks to detect failing nodes
  • Custom AMIs + CodeDeploy to launch production-ready replacements
  • CloudWatch alarms to trigger recovery actions

Auto Scaling handles instance replacement, but combining it with routing, monitoring, and deployment automation creates a complete failover and self-healing system.

How do maritime companies reduce operational risks by moving their ERP to AWS?

faq arrow

Maritime companies reduce operational risk on AWS by moving their ERP into a resilient, auto-healing cloud environment. Key benefits include:

  • High availability across multiple AZs to avoid downtime during vessel or port activity
  • Auto-scaling to handle unpredictable spikes in arrivals, logistics updates, or billing events
  • Automated failover so operations continue even if a node or AZ fails
  • Real-time monitoring and alerts to detect issues before they impact port workflows
  • Secure, redundant databases to protect sensitive vessel, berth, and billing data

This results in fewer delays, stronger operational continuity, and more reliable maritime coordination end-to-end.

Is AWS suitable for high-transaction ERP systems used by ports, shipping companies, and maritime operators?

faq arrow

Yes. AWS is highly suitable for high-transaction maritime ERPs because it provides the performance and resilience needed for vessel operations, port logistics, and real-time billing. The key enablers are:

  • Low-latency EC2 + ALB for fast transaction handling
  • Multi-AZ RDS replication for continuous database availability
  • EFS/S3 for scalable shared storage
  • Auto Scaling to handle traffic spikes from vessel movements
  • Event-driven messaging for real-time operational updates

This architecture supports heavy maritime workloads without slowdowns, even during peak port activity.

What AWS components are essential for building a fault-tolerant ERP architecture for large enterprise workloads?

faq arrow

The essential AWS components for a fault-tolerant ERP architecture are the ones that remove single points of failure and support automatic recovery. The core building blocks are:

  • EC2 + Auto Scaling Groups for self-healing compute
  • Application Load Balancer to route traffic to healthy nodes
  • Route 53 failover for DNS-level resilience
  • RDS Multi-AZ for synchronous database protection
  • Amazon EFS for durable shared storage
  • CloudWatch for real-time monitoring and automated alerts
  • CodeDeploy + custom AMIs to ensure consistent, safe rollouts

Together, these services create a resilient, multi-AZ ERP environment capable of handling large enterprise workloads with continuous uptime.

Is AWS an ERP platform, or does it power ERP systems?

faq arrow

AWS is not an ERP platform; it is a cloud infrastructure that hosts, scales, and secures ERP applications. Customers use AWS to run their chosen ERP software, benefiting from enhanced performance, automated resilience, and greater scalability. On AWS, ERP solutions gain rapid recovery from outages, instant resource scaling, and integrated security controls, while the ERP software itself remains your organization’s transactional and data management system.

Download Case Study
Contact us