Innovating for Performance: How our Infra Team Powers 100+ Million Downloads A Year (While Keeping our SaaS Reliable and Secure)
We just shared big news about the open-sourcing of our Node.js Runtime and the release of our AI Copilot for Node, both requiring a big role from our infrastructure (Infra) team. They are the team behind the scenes, dedicated to delivering top performance, and have been instrumental in maintaining our reputation for fast, stable, and secure delivery of our SaaS product and Binary Distributions–which generate over 100 million annual downloads a year.
The team is always looking for ways to innovate our infra to meet the growing demand and efficiency of our services, and as a part of the product releases, made some key updates to our platform. We wanted to share so others could gain value in their efforts as well as celebrate this critical group for us. Next time you talk to your infra team, give them some love, they do so much!
Infrastructure Enhancements: Moving Forward with EKS and GitOps
Our Infra team has recently completed significant updates to further improve our services:
1. Migration from ECS to EKS: To streamline our operations, we have transitioned from AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) to Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). This move simplifies our operational framework by unifying it on a single platform (EKS), significantly reducing the need to manage and monitor multiple platforms. This change also enhanced our security. In Kubernetes, we now manage our security with policies and roles and the automated Kubernetes control plane security provides the services that make Kubernetes work.
2. Pipeline Enhancements: Our deployment processes have been upgraded for efficiency and reliability. The integration of GitOps and GitHub Actions play a pivotal role in these improvements:
Single Source of Truth: Both infrastructure and application configurations now have a centralized, standardized management system. This approach ensures consistency and reliability in our deployment processes.
Enhanced Collaboration and Automation: The adoption of GitOps allows for smoother collaboration and automation, making it easier to deploy changes rapidly and efficiently.
Declarative Configuration: Our configuration is designed to be easily readable and understandable, facilitating quick and accurate deployments.
3. Faster Deployment Times: One of our key achievements has been a reduction in deployment times of almost 70%. This efficiency gain translates to quicker availability of new features and updates for our customers, enhancing their overall experience.
4. Reduced Cost: In addition to all of the above, we also reduced the costs for our deployments by 80%!!!
Our Commitment to Timely Updates and Ecosystem Support
At NodeSource, we are proud to be a leading distributor of the open source binaries for DEB and RHEL and for setting the standard for release speed. Millions of websites, apps and more count on our binaries because we deliver them rapidly. We release security updates within 24 hours and Node.js feature builds inside of 48 hours. This rapid response time supports the evolving needs of the Node.js ecosystem and demonstrates our commitment to providing the latest and most secure features to our customers. Check out our GitHub Distributions for more.
Conclusion: A Continued Legacy of Innovation and Excellence
At NodeSource, the Infra team's ongoing innovations ensure that we remain at the forefront of performance, stability, security, and availability. We are proud of our efforts to support the Node.js ecosystem, as well as organizations that rely on Node, by providing the best tooling, service, and support.