Behind the Scenes at Geoxphere

Behind the Scenes at Geoxphere

How We Keep Your Services Running Smoothly
By Tom Huntley. October 2024

At Geoxphere, we use the power of cloud computing to deliver secure, reliable, and user-friendly geospatial tools to customers across the UK. Much of this work is hidden behind platforms like XMAP and HUB, we’d like to give you a peek into the technical magic that keeps everything running seamlessly.

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is like having a vast, virtual toolbox available whenever you need it, without having to own or maintain the tools yourself. Instead of managing physical servers and hardware, we tap into resources from providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) to access servers, storage, databases, and software over the internet.

The majority of our services are hosted on AWS. Some of these services are shared among all customers, while others are exclusive to specific organisations like yours.

Dedicated Infrastructure for XMAP Users

Many of our Local Authority customers prefer the security of their own “dedicated stack.” This is like having your own private workspace within our cloud. Here’s how we set it up using a few key AWS services:

  1. Load Balancer: Think of this as a traffic director, making sure incoming requests go to the right place.
  2. Auto Scaling Group: This part monitors the health of your services and can automatically adjust to ensure everything runs smoothly.
  3. EC2: These are the servers where we run applications like Geoserver, which provide map data and services.
  4. RDS: This is a managed database service, where we use scalable Postgres instances to store your data.

Our Auto Scaling Group adds an extra layer of resilience. In the unlikely event that your service goes down, this system steps in within 30 seconds to fix it. If the problem persists, it automatically spins up a new server in a different data centre, usually getting you back online within 5 minutes.

With dedicated services, we can also apply custom security rules, like IP whitelisting, ensuring that only authorised users can access your data.



 
Shared Services for Efficiency

In addition to dedicated services, we also offer shared services to keep things efficient and cost-effective. For instance, our Print tool allows users to generate high-quality PDFs and PNGs for exporting or printing maps. Instead of dedicating resources to each customer, we provide this as a shared service. This way, we manage all the processing and maintenance on our end, and you get a secure, scalable service without the extra cost.

However, the biggest benefit of these shared services, is that we keep them up to date for you. We make updates to XMAP frequently (often daily!) and as a customer, you get them immediately, and at no additional cost.

We Share Data Too

It's not just services that we share—we also host over 300 regional, national and global datasets for use in XMAP. Here’s why that’s great for you:

  1. Up-to-date Data: We handle all the updates, so you always have access to the latest information.
  2. No Extra Load: These datasets don’t burden your dedicated infrastructure, but you can still use them as if they were your own.
  3. Consistency: Everyone has access to the same data, ensuring a single source of truth across organisations.

Conclusion

We’re all about making your geospatial experience not just smooth and secure, but also cost-effective and hassle-free. Whether it’s your dedicated setup humming away in the cloud or our shared services giving you top-notch performance at a fraction of the cost, we’ve got you covered. We handle the heavy lifting, so you can enjoy the perks of cutting-edge technology without breaking a sweat—or the bank. 



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