 Implementation Period: 2018–2021
Project Objective
To deliver a stable, scalable, and fault-tolerant IT infrastructure for the Favorit betting platform during the sharp increase in traffic caused by the FIFA World Cup 2018, and to support sustained user growth in the following years.
Key Challenges and Objectives
- Ensure uninterrupted 24/7 system performance during international sporting events under high load
- Build a horizontally scalable architecture capable of handling millions of real-time events
- Implement a robust monitoring and incident response system
- Automate deployment and delivery processes (CI/CD)
- Integrate with payment providers, analytics systems, and advertising networks
- Protect the platform from DDoS attacks and high-load scenarios
- Implement comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategies
Delivered Solutions
Infrastructure Development
- Designed a fault-tolerant architecture with load balancing using HAProxy and Nginx
- Implemented horizontal scaling for both application and database layers
- Leveraged virtualization technologies (oVirt, vSphere) with distributed storage via DRBD
Containerization & Orchestration
- Migrated microservices to Docker containers
- Deployed Kubernetes clusters managed via Rancher
- Adopted Helm for deployment management and standardization
CI/CD & Automation
- Automated configurations with Ansible, Puppet, and Chef
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI/CD and TeamCity for rapid release cycles
Monitoring & Logging
- Deployed a real-time monitoring and alerting stack: Zabbix, Prometheus, and Grafana
- Centralized logging with Elasticsearch and Logstash
Security & Protection
- Deployed a DDoS protection system and other threat mitigation tools
- Integrated HashiCorp Vault for secure secrets management
Integrations
- Connected external payment gateways, ad tracking systems, and analytics platforms (Apache NiFi, Kafka)
Backup & Disaster Recovery
- Implemented a backup system with regular recovery testing
- Developed and documented disaster recovery plans
Results
- Achieved 99.99% uptime during the World Cup and under peak loads
- Handled up to 25,000 transactions per second without performance degradation
- Real-time scalability to meet demand spikes seamlessly
- Reduced deployment times from hours to minutes
- Lowered incident rates through proactive monitoring and alerting
- Improved fault tolerance thanks to a resilient architecture and redundancy
Conclusion
This project became a benchmark for building scalable and reliable infrastructure for high-load digital platforms. It ensured uninterrupted operations for Favorit during a mission-critical period and set the foundation for long-term technological growth and innovation.
