From October to December 2022 all Rapidi customers were moved to Rapidi's new hosting platform. In this blog post, we would like to give you a short overview of the platform and what benefits we see from using the new hosting platform.
The New Rapidi HOSTING PLATFORM
Last year we have used a lot of time and resources to develop our new hosting platform. We will not go into detail with all the elements in this blog post, but just mention some elements of the new setup: To run the platform, we use systems like Kubernetes, ARGO, GitHub Actions, and Prometheus. Then, we use Grafana for monitoring and for sending notifications to our Slack channels. Furthermore, we have adapted our Rapidi Service Engine to run in this new containerized environment - it continues to handle all of the actual data transfers and running the Schedules.
AWS as Hosting Provider
As a hosting provider, we have chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) which gives us some great advantages. Our criteria for choosing a new hosting provider included a number of different things. For example, the ability to offer hosting in both US and EU with automatic failover in each region, to be able to run on a carbon-neutral platform, to offer all this in a price-performant optimal way and at the same time be able to scale very easily. Amazon Web Services fulfilled all these criteria.
Hosting of RAPIDI Services in either the EU or the US
Rapidi has chosen to offer two hosting locations to our customers based on two different regions: EU Frankfurt (Germany) and US Oregon (US WEST - Oregon). Having those two options gives you the flexibility to choose the location that suits you best. Typically you would choose the hosting location closest to your own location.
Easier GDPR compliance
From a data processing perspective, our European customers, have easier compliance with the GDPR rules as all your data will be processed within the EU.
Better connectivity & speed
Having the hosting center located in the same continent will give you better connectivity and improve speed and performance. For example, many of our customers would use Salesforce and the Dynamics Product Suite. Those providers also have hosting locations depending on the location of their clients. So, if both the Rapidi Integration Platform and all the integrated applications reside in the same continent it will improve the connectivity and speed.
Protected from breakdowns
In both EU and US, we have configured automatic failovers. This means that in each region we have set up both our database servers and virtual machines to use two different availability zones. In case of a breakdown of one service or one hosting center, the hosting will continue in another hosting center in the same region.
High-security standards
AWS is architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. The core infrastructure is built to satisfy the security requirements of e.g. the military, global banks, and other high-sensitivity organizations. This is backed by a deep set of cloud security tools, with over 300 security, compliance, and governance services and features. Furthermore, we have put in a lot of effort to also secure our servers and application to ensure that sensitive data is encrypted and that the servers are kept secure.
Powered by renewable energy & reduced energy use
RAPIDI strives to be a more sustainable business and has a goal of becoming zero-carbon in the near future. This we take very seriously. So in the process of choosing a hosting provider, it was an important point.
We found that Amazon was very well aligned with our goals to become a more sustainable business. Amazon Web Services has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2025. Therefore AWS is in the process of powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. To achieve this goal AWS contracts for renewable power from wind and solar projects that add clean energy to the grid.
AWS states that the two hosting regions that Rapidi has chosen are already carbon-neutral.
Last but not least, with our new hosting environment we expect to be able to reduce our processing power requirement by up to a factor of 3 compared to the old setup, which also helps to reduce the overall energy usage and be more sustainable.
