All our applications were containerised with Docker and orchestrated with ECS, ensuring they followed the 12-Factor principles to keep it running smoothly. CI/CD pipelines were created to own build, test and release, allowing hotfixes to be live in minute, before users could even spot an issue. Deployment time fell 80% and deployment stopped being an event.

Containerise everything

An ever growing user-base with peak periods throughout the day required horizontal scaling to meet the increased demands and higher volume of data. Code changes could be deployed without affecting the core system.

Event-driven services designed for growth

Moved away from large, infrequent releases towards smaller, incremental deployments. This reduced the potential damage surface and allowed new features and fixes to reach users quickly without requiring the whole system to be released at once.

Build for independent, frequent releases

Implementing observability tools such as Sentry and Cloudwatch alarms allowed us to monitor any unexpected behaviour, deploying patches before the user even notices there is a problem.

Observe everything, hide nothing

Mechanisms were introduced such as feature flags, staged rollouts, and fast rollback procedures. Any problematic releases could be disabled or reverted without taking the entire application offline.

Reversible deployments

From zero to hero: Covering backend, infrastructure and delivery

Training software that keeps up with 90,000 athletes.

The different components of application were built as Go microservices communicating over gRPC, with a thin REST gateway for the browser and rate limiting pushed to the reverse proxy. Every piece stays small enough to hold in your head, with cross-dependencies held to a minimum.

Small services, speaking gRPC

A scraper polls the published feeds every 15 minutes, normalises the data into simple shapes, before being indexed in PostGIS, making finding the cheapest fuel near you instant.

Scrape, normalise, index

Containerised in Docker and orchestrated on Kubernetes to ensure it was highly available. Deployments became a breeze and updates were seamless and hassle-free.

Notes from the homelab.

Network security, infrastructure and the occasional £40 gadget. Written so future me can follow along.

Training software that keeps up with 90,000 athletes.

Fuel prices, found and visualised.

Make your own WiFi Pineapple on a budget

Strengthen your network security against malicious actors