Andrey Devyatkin, co-founder and principal consultant at FivexL, led this project. The primary task was to enable the startup to grow and increase the number of customers, which required an elastic and scalable infrastructure.

Henrik Segersven, CTO of Kuvio, reflects, “Before FivexL, our product faced scalability and stability issues. Their solutions not only eradicated these problems but also enabled us to sell our service and expand our client base significantly”.

FivexL adheres to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, focusing on its six pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability. That is why FivexL proactively included cost optimization and security objectives, even though they were not explicitly requested, ensuring a comprehensive infrastructure setup.



Scalability

The migration from Lightsail to AWS ECS (Amazon Elastic Container Service) marked a pivotal change for Kuvio. FivexL utilized AWS ECS on Fargate, a powerful combination of Amazon’s container orchestration service and a serverless compute engine, which simplified the management and deployment of containerized applications. This shift to Fargate brought several critical advantages for the startup: it significantly reduced the need for maintenance, as AWS handled security and upkeep, and there was no requirement for patching virtual machines. This streamlined operations and enhanced overall efficiency.
Through their partnership with FivexL, Kuvio developed a scalable, robust infrastructure, now fully defined as code using Terraform. Their API efficiently auto-scales to meet demand with predictable bandwidth and self-healing capabilities, enabling the business to plan client onboarding and extend its client base without concerns about system reliability. The database setup underwent a significant update: it was reconfigured using Terraform, right-scaled for the load, and moved from the default VPC to a new, more secure network without internet access.
The API’s infrastructure, being entirely defined in code, provides flexibility for replication or restoration from scratch, which is essential for expanding into new regions or for swift disaster recovery and business continuity. This setup also facilitates collaborative work through pull requests and maintains a history of changes for auditing purposes.

Developer productivity

Developers saw a boost in productivity following FivexL’s implementation of automated Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for container building, testing, and deployment. Andrey Devyatkin implemented alerting on production issues, enabling developers to address and resolve any arising challenges quickly. Developers received easy access to all metrics/logs they needed, along with the availability of a separate environment for experiments and testing. So the Kuvio team can focus on developing new business capabilities.

Security
Kuvio received AWS infrastructure with all essential security controls implemented. Andrey Devyatkin set up an AWS Organization, separating production and development into different accounts. FivexL also implemented AWS CloudTrail and CloudTrail to Slack, alerting for suspicious activity alerts, along with AWS GuardDuty for intrusion detection. Service Control policies were configured to guard against common security threats.
In addition, FivexL integrated AWS Config and AWS Security Hub to enhance Kuvio’s security posture management. AWS Config provided Kuvio with a way to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of their resources, ensuring compliance and governance. AWS Security Hub offered a unified view of its security alerts and security posture, making it easier for the startup to manage its security strategy and respond promptly to potential threats.



Cost optimization
The FivexL team understands that startups often operate with limited resources. Their consultants consistently focus on building cost-effective solutions as well as optimizing cloud spending for existing resources. For Kuvio, FivexL utilized savings plans for Fargate and reserved instances for RDS, along with the automated removal of unused resources, to achieve cost efficiency. Additionally, Andrey Devyatkin configured budget and cost anomaly detection alerts and proactively monitored the infrastructure costs, making adjustments where possible to ensure continued efficiency.
FivexL also educated Kuvio’s developers about more cost-optimal solutions, equipping them with the knowledge to maintain cost-effectiveness in their ongoing operations.