Prometheus on DevOps Engineer & CloudAdmin

.NET Backend Observability & Telemetry Integration

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

.NET Backend Observability: Telemetry Integration & Performance Optimization

Client

E-commerce platform with high-load .NET 8 backend

Challenge

The .NET backend had no observability — no distributed tracing, no centralized metrics, no structured logging. Finding slow requests required manual log digging. The team needed full OpenTelemetry integration: trace propagation from Ingress through .NET to downstream services (PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, HTTP upstreams), automatic slow-query detection, and a path to optimize P99 latency.

CI/CD & Production Infrastructure for a Social App

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Client

Puzzle Master — a social matching platform

Challenge

The startup had a production-ready Nest.js backend and Angular frontend, but zero infrastructure: deployments were manual, there was no CI/CD, no monitoring, no backups, and no separation between dev and prod environments. The goal was to build a complete DevOps stack from scratch before the public launch.

Solution

1. Application Containerization

Multi-stage Dockerfile for backend (Nest.js + Prisma, non-root user)
Multi-stage Dockerfile for frontend (Angular 12, legacy OpenSSL, Nginx for static assets)
Docker Compose full stack: PostgreSQL 15, Redis 7, imgproxy, Nginx
Healthchecks and depends_on for correct startup ordering
Isolated dev and prod environments in /opt/dev and /opt/prod

2. GitLab CI/CD

Migration of repository from Bitbucket to GitLab
Pipeline for backend and frontend: build → push → deploy
GitLab Container Registry for Docker image storage
Automatic deploy to dev on every push; manual trigger for prod
SSH deployment to VPS via SSH_PRIVATE_KEY

3. Nginx Reverse Proxy

Environment-agnostic config via envsubst for dev/prod parity
SSL/TLS (TLSv1.2, TLSv1.3) with Cloudflare certificates
Routing: /api/* → backend:4000, /* → frontend:80
www → root domain redirect (301)
Separate imgproxy stack with SSL termination

4. Security (Ansible)

Server hardening via Ansible: SSH key-only auth, root login disabled
UFW Firewall: only ports 80, 443, and custom SSH open
Database accessible only via SSH tunnel
All secrets stored in GitLab CI/CD variables

5. Monitoring

Prometheus + Grafana with automated dashboard provisioning
Exporters: Node, cAdvisor, Postgres, Redis, Nginx, Blackbox
5 Grafana dashboards: server, Docker containers, PostgreSQL, Redis, Nginx
Alertmanager with Slack/webhook integration; alerts on CPU/RAM/Disk/API/SSL

6. Database Backups

Automated pg_dump every hour
gzip compression and upload to S3-compatible object storage (Cloudflare R2)
Prometheus backup metrics: success status, size, timestamp
Alerts: DatabaseBackupMissing, DatabaseBackupFailed, DatabaseBackupSizeAnomaly

Technologies

GitLab CI

Docker

Ansible

Prometheus

Nginx

PostgreSQL

Results

✅ Deploy: git push to main → automatic build and deploy to server
✅ Environments: full dev/prod isolation on a single VPS
✅ Monitoring: 5 dashboards, alerts across 6 categories
✅ Backups: automated hourly pg_dump to Cloudflare R2
✅ Security: UFW, key-based SSH, database inaccessible from outside
✅ Scalability: architecture ready for database extraction to a dedicated server

CI/CD & Production Infrastructure for a Web Application

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Production Infrastructure & CI/CD for a Company Website

Client

A manufacturer of branded research products that needed a website to present its product catalog to customers

Challenge

The developers had written the code of a conventional web application (NestJS backend + Next.js frontend), but infrastructure was completely missing: manual deployments, no CI/CD, no server setup, no monitoring, no backups and no separation between test and production environments. The goal was to build a complete DevOps stack from scratch: GitLab CI/CD, a self-hosted server, two isolated environments, HTTPS, monitoring, alerting and automated backups.

Geo-Distributed Blockchain Node Cluster in Kubernetes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Geo-Distributed Blockchain Node Cluster in Kubernetes

Client

Cryptocurrency platform (Web3 / DeFi)

Challenge

The client needed fault-tolerant infrastructure to run ETH and BSC full nodes across four regions (EU, US, AP, LatAm) with minimal latency for end users, DDoS and RPC spam protection, secure HSM-based transaction signing, and centralized observability. Cold node sync takes 2–3 weeks — a fast-bootstrap solution was required.

Solution

1. Infrastructure & IaC (Terraform + EKS)

Terraform modules: VPC, subnets, security groups for 4 regions (Frankfurt, Virginia, Singapore, São Paulo)
Managed Kubernetes (EKS 1.29+) per region with dedicated node pools: full nodes, archive nodes, signing service
NVMe StorageClass (gp3) via CSI driver for high-performance chaindata storage
Helm charts for geth / bsc-node with per-region custom values

2. GitOps: Flux CD Multi-Cluster

Flux CD v2 with Kustomization per region — single source of truth for all clusters
Secrets management: HashiCorp Vault + External Secrets Operator (ESO)
All infrastructure changes applied via git push — no direct cluster access required

3. Load Balancing & Anti-Spam

HAProxy 2.8: sticky sessions, health checks via eth_syncing — traffic routed only to fully synced nodes
Nginx Ingress: rate limiting, IP reputation filtering (Lua-based, fail2ban-style)
Cloudflare Workers: geo-routing + L7 DDoS protection
Custom Go sidecar: health endpoint returns ready only when node is fully synced

4. HSM Integration for Transaction Signing

AWS CloudHSM (prod) / YubiHSM2 (staging) for private key storage
Go microservice with PKCS#11 abstraction — swap HSM vendor without rewriting code
Isolated K8s namespace + NetworkPolicy: no egress except to HSM endpoint
gRPC API for backend: sign tx, get pubkey
Full audit log of all signing operations → Loki

5. Monitoring & Alerting

Custom Prometheus exporter (Go): eth_blockNumber, eth_syncing, peer count per node
Grafana dashboards: sync lag, block height per region, RPC latency, SLO 99.9%
Alertmanager → PagerDuty: alerts on block lag > N blocks, node down, peer count below threshold
Loki + Promtail: structured logs from all nodes with region/pod correlation

6. Operations & Disaster Recovery

Snapshot bootstrap: chaindata from S3 via rclone — node ready in hours instead of weeks
DR playbook: step-by-step runbooks for regional recovery
Chaos Engineering (Chaos Mesh): node kill, network partition, pod failure tests
Architecture Decision Records (ADR) for all key design choices

Technologies

Kubernetes

Terraform

Helm

Flux CD

Prometheus

Grafana

Results

✅ Geo-routing: latency reduced by routing users to the nearest region
✅ Fast bootstrap: node ready in hours via S3 snapshot instead of 2–3 weeks of sync
✅ Anti-spam: rate limiting + IP reputation — public RPC handles bot load without degradation
✅ HSM: private keys never leave the hardware module
✅ GitOps: every infrastructure change goes through git with a full audit trail
✅ SLO 99.9%: tracked in Grafana, PagerDuty alerts on any degradation

Prometheus + Grafana Monitoring Stack

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Observability Stack for Microservices Architecture

Client

Early-stage startup

Challenge

After migrating to a microservices architecture (15+ services), the team had no centralized monitoring in place. Issues were only discovered through user complaints — typically 30+ minutes after they occurred. A full observability stack was needed to detect and diagnose problems proactively.

Solution

1. Monitoring Architecture

Prometheus for metrics collection
Grafana for visualization
Loki for centralized log aggregation
Jaeger for distributed tracing
Alertmanager for notifications

2. Metrics Collection

Automatic service discovery in Kubernetes
Application-level custom metrics
System metrics via node-exporter
Database metrics via postgres-exporter and redis-exporter

3. Grafana Dashboards

Per-service dashboards for each microservice
Unified infrastructure overview dashboard
SLA/SLO tracking metrics
Business metrics (RPS, conversion rate)

4. Centralized Logging (Loki)

Log aggregation across all services
Full-text log search via Grafana
Log-to-metric correlation

5. Distributed Tracing (Jaeger)

HTTP request tracing across services
Call chain visualization
Bottleneck identification
Per-service latency analysis

6. Alerting

Alerts delivered to Slack / PagerDuty / custom webhooks
Critical issue escalation
On-call rotation support
Automatic incident creation

Technologies

Prometheus

Grafana

Kubernetes

Docker

Helm

Linux

Results

✅ MTTD: reduced from 30 minutes to under 1 minute
✅ MTTR: recovery time reduced by 60%
✅ Alerts: proactive notifications before users are impacted
✅ Visibility: full observability across all services
✅ Capacity planning: data-driven resource forecasting

Prometheus on DevOps Engineer & CloudAdmin

.NET Backend Observability & Telemetry Integration

.NET Backend Observability: Telemetry Integration & Performance Optimization

Client

Challenge

CI/CD & Production Infrastructure for a Social App

Production Infrastructure & CI/CD for a Social App Launch

Client

Challenge

Solution

1. Application Containerization

2. GitLab CI/CD

3. Nginx Reverse Proxy

4. Security (Ansible)

5. Monitoring

6. Database Backups

Technologies

Results

CI/CD & Production Infrastructure for a Web Application

Production Infrastructure & CI/CD for a Company Website

Client

Challenge

Geo-Distributed Blockchain Node Cluster in Kubernetes

Geo-Distributed Blockchain Node Cluster in Kubernetes

Client

Challenge

Solution

1. Infrastructure & IaC (Terraform + EKS)

2. GitOps: Flux CD Multi-Cluster

3. Load Balancing & Anti-Spam

4. HSM Integration for Transaction Signing

5. Monitoring & Alerting

6. Operations & Disaster Recovery

Technologies

Results

Prometheus + Grafana Monitoring Stack

Observability Stack for Microservices Architecture

Client

Challenge

Solution

1. Monitoring Architecture

2. Metrics Collection

3. Grafana Dashboards

4. Centralized Logging (Loki)

5. Distributed Tracing (Jaeger)

6. Alerting

Technologies

Results