Aspecto
Aspecto helps modern development teams solve production issues before they evolve. Using deep telemetry analysis, Aspecto learns your microservices and leverage this data to make sure everything will smoothly work when making a change. It automatically generates insights based on the analysis of API usage in production. You can scale while staying confident that your code is keeping up.
Challenge
The project is quite challenging both from a technical and business perspective. It actively uses telemetry installed on client projects to gather all the data required for providing valuable insights.
Leveraging telemetry makes privacy a number one priority as no one wants their sensitive data to leak into the wrong hands. To solve that, Aspecto does everything possible to not even know about the data internals and the customer’s raw data never reaches their servers in the first place.
Aspecto analyzes all the data from every microservice. The total load from each client is often even higher than the client’s product handles. Keeping in mind the target audience, which are established startups with complex microservice architectures, incredible scalability is crucial for making it work.
For some functionally, a near-real-time solution is an absolute necessity. Combined with more than 3 Gb per hour of data after sampling from just one of the customers and close to 100% uptime requirements this makes the project extremely challenging.
Involvement
Aspecto started working with us because they knew our skills and that we deliver. They had a working prototype and started with one developer as a remote team extension to help improve it. When they needed more hands, we provided them with another developer. Hiring great developers in Ukraine is a bit easier than in Israel.
Our developers work closely with the client’s team. They are actively involved in architecture discussions, product design, DevOps, back-end and front-end development. The project leverages full-stack developers to assign a complete feature to a single developer and get it done fast and efficiently. This also means that every developer should know the AWS stack, MongoDB, Node.js, React, and every other technology used on the project very well.
Solution
The project deploys part of its code that handles all the data into the customer’s AWS account to remove the privacy obstacle. It’s called a hybrid SaaS solution, and that way, sensitive data never leaves customers company. To fine-tune what get’s stored and transferred, it has complex configurable rules that filter the telemetry data right when it enters the system.
Aspecto leverages MongoDB Atlas, AWS Fargate, Kinesis, S3, Athena, and other products from the AWS stack for extreme scalability. Its core is written in Node.js and Python, with React on the frontend. The product itself is built on complex microservice architecture so naturally, it is its own customer.
OpenTelemetry
The prototype had its unique solution for telemetry that was working perfectly but was also an unnecessary point of tension with its customers. It’s not easy to convince big companies to install a piece of software in every one of their microservices. The founders decided to switch it to OpenTelemetry, an open-source solution developed by Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It’s a large organization backed by AWS, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and other tech giants.
Aspecto has quite special needs and plans for telemetry data to make everything work perfectly. They are constantly pushing OpenTelemetry to the limits together with the core team. We’re proud of our contributions, open-source plugins, and extensions we’ve created in close collaboration. Giving back to the open-source community for the greater good drives the team and pushes their productivity to the next level.
Conclusion
The project is currently in closed-beta under active development. We can’t share any of the secrets, but they share some on their Medium. Feel free to follow Aspecto on LinkedIn and be one of the first to get more information and news directly.
We’re proud to be part of this project together with the client’s team. It’s incredibly challenging, dynamic, and fun to work on. Things are going well.
The client is happy, and the success of our clients measures our success.
