Kaizen! New beginnings

S3 Transition

The transition to hosting static files on AWS S3 marks a significant milestone for Gerhard Lazio and the team. This move, years in the making, was driven by the need to simplify processes and improve performance. Justin Garrison explains that the decision was delayed due to initial technical challenges and priorities, but now it enables the platform to "fly both literally and figuratively" 1.

It's finally happened after months and months. Actually no, after years of talking about it. Years. Nice months of months and years and months. Yeah. We have finally switched all our assets to s three aws. S three.

--- Gerhard Lazio

Despite some initial hiccups, like elevated 404 responses for Favicons, the team is optimistic about the improvements and the potential for further optimization 2 3.

   

CDN Costs

Optimizing CDN performance is crucial for cost management and efficiency. Justin Garrison highlights the importance of setting up origin shielding to reduce CDN misses, which can significantly impact costs 4. The team discovered that their AWS S3 costs increased by 1900% after the transition, prompting immediate action to mitigate expenses 5.

I'm literally rolling out the shielding for fastly right now. I'm hitting activate. So hopefully that'll probably knock it down to a quarter. Maybe. Hopefully an 8th.

--- Justin Garrison

Gerhard Lazio and Autumn Nash discuss the need to explore alternative CDN solutions like Cloudflare to simplify configuration and improve performance metrics 6.

   

Multi-Cloud

The shift towards a multi-cloud strategy is driven by the desire for resilience and learning. Gerhard Lazio emphasizes the importance of exploring multiple platforms to enhance infrastructure flexibility and share insights with the community 7. This approach allows the team to test various environments and tools, ensuring they are not limited to a single solution.

Because we like to improve. We don't know what improvement looks like. Kaizen. Exactly. Is that simpler? Is that better?

--- Gerhard Lazio

Autumn NashJustin Garrison discuss the balance between cost and resilience, highlighting the need for efficient infrastructure expansion without unnecessary expenses 8 9.