Michalina Staszewska
Our client is a fin-tech startup whose main spectrum of activities is a cryptocurrency exchange, an online service that allows the sale and purchase of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Due to investment and strategic activities, we cannot disclose its name. The main asset of the company is the Owners’ passion for the virtual currency itself. Thus, the place is created with attention to every detail, taking into account the preferences of users and being at the disposal of customers 24 hours a day.
The client’s main need was to create a development infrastructure for testing the final application that is flexible, scalable and cost-optimized. In addition, the client’s main need was to ensure a high level of security, due to the connections to various payment gateways and stored data. In addition, creating work directly on the production environment could have caused numerous errors and dissatisfaction for the end customer.
Our first step was to create an AWS-based environment with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). The infrastructure and configuration was written in CaaC code and based on a tool like Terraform. This allowed the servers to be properly configured for specific services to connect to the right resources, in addition to providing the highest level of security, which was a priority in the project. The designed solution also empowered employees and all services to communicate with each other in a non-threatening manner.
As a result, we prepared an application and infrastructure login based on the ELK stack technology, and introduced Rancher (Management Layer over the EKS layer) so that less technical people could easily use the capabilities of the Kubernetes service, e.g. downloading business information on profits or number of customers.
The next step was to configure a suitable database, which we based on relational and non-relational database solutions. This has made it easier for developers to communicate with the application, at a significantly lower cost.
Automation of the environment was also an important point in the overall project. The client needed to implement automated solutions to minimize manual activities.
The benefits of the proposed and implemented solution are many. First of all, the costs generated by the infrastructure in AWS are several times lower than when buying out classic servers. A perk of operating in AWS is the ability to shut down the environment overnight. Cheap hosting servers do not meet the requirements for such large projects, and especially when conducting tests at the development layer.
Cloud deployment also has the advantage of being able to quickly launch and test specific services. Verifying that the chosen technology meets the client’s needs was very important, not only in terms of parameters, but also in terms of cost.
The solution used introduced a high level of security, which is a priority in this type of business.
In summary, the cloud solution is ideal for all types of prototype projects. It allows for rapid scalable changes, without unnecessary and long-lasting costs.
