At Tai, we pride ourselves on our cutting-edge infrastructure, which plays a crucial role in delivering reliable and scalable solutions to our clients. We are strategically structured to leverage the Microsoft Development Stack, which includes the .NET framework, SQL Server, and the power of the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
This technology stack powers our core applications and enables us to provide enhanced performance, reliability, and security.
This article will clarify how our infrastructure is managed and the benefits we gain from it, particularly in terms of scalability, redundancy, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, risk mitigation, and security.
Our Infrastructure
Unlike traditional companies that depend on on-premises servers for hosting applications and storing data, Tai has strategically engineered a cloud-first architecture by utilizing Cloudflare and Microsoft Azure for most of our infrastructure needs. This modern design allows us to access several advanced features that would be difficult or costly to implement with physical servers or other traditional designs.
Key Benefits of Our Cloud Infrastructure
(Security, Scalability, Performance, and Redundancy)
The cloud-first approach brings several significant benefits to Tai, which we will break down further.
- Scalability
Dynamic Scaling, an intelligent feature of our cloud infrastructure, automatically adjusts to fluctuating demand. This ensures we are able to quickly adapt the necessary resources to meet demand, whether a sudden spike in traffic or off-peak hours. Tai's automatic scaling feature ensures a smooth user experience without manual intervention.
- Dynamic Load Balancing
Load balancing helps ensure traffic is efficiently distributed across multiple servers and geographies. By automatically directing requests to the server with the best performance, we can prevent bottlenecks and provide faster response times, especially during periods of high demand.
- Active Databases in Multiple Geographic Locations
Our infrastructure includes multiple active databases strategically located at the protected Microsoft Data Centers around the United States. These databases ensure our data is highly available and protected from localized failures. They are designed to scale dynamically based on demand, ensuring optimal performance at all times.
- Offline backups
Offline backups are a critical part of our strategy, allowing us to maintain access to data in case of any unexpected downtime or data loss. This design gives us a strong foundation for disaster recovery
- Geo-Redundancy
Leveraging Azure's capabilities, we ensure high availability and geo-redundancy. Our architecture spans multiple data centers, so that in the event of a data center failure in one region, services can be seamlessly redirected to another, preventing downtime and ensuring business continuity
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- Disaster Recovery and Risk Mitigation
Disaster recovery is built into our architecture. With multiple copies of data stored across geographic regions and offline backups ensuring data safety, our systems are designed to handle unexpected failures and recover automatically. Leveraging Microsoft Azure's disaster recovery services we are able to quickly redirect services during a catastrophe, minimizing any disruption to our customers, including the need to restore services.
Furthermore, we mitigate risks effectively by taking advantage of Azure's security features. Whether it's patch management, compliance adherence, or firewall updates, Microsoft Azure takes care of many of the behind-the-scenes security tasks, freeing us up to focus on developing new features and services.
- Tai Serverless PaaS Infrastructure
- Cost Efficiency
Tai can allocate resources dynamically and on demand without needing to maintain physical hardware or deal with physical server management overhead, reducing operational costs and improving scalability and performance.
- Faster Recovery
Thanks to our dynamic architecture and geographic distribution we are able to nearly eliminate the need for a recovery process. We do this by eliminating any single point of failure across each distributed geography. In the event of a failure, the system will redistribute traffic and resources to other geographies automatically. This dramatically reduces the availability risk associated with a catastrophic event.
- Security and Maintenance
One of the most critical aspects of any infrastructure is security. At Tai, we leverage Cloudflare and Microsoft Azure to facilitate several key security functions, including:
- Web Application Firewall
Using Cloudflare WAP and other enterprise security tools we are able to stay compliant with the ever-changing security demands of web-based applications. This includes a multi-layer security approach that includes zero-day attack prevention and OWASP rules.
- Cloudflare Entry Points & Global Edge Network
One key difference in our infrastructure is the use of Cloudflare at the entry points to our network. It enables us to provide faster access for our global users by caching content at 52 edge locations worldwide. This geographic distribution ensures that our services are fast and resilient, no matter where users are located. The data travels through the nearest edge location, enhancing speed, security, and reliability.
- Security Patches and Updates
Azure manages and automates the deployment of security patches, ensuring that our systems are always up to date with the latest protections. This reduces the workload on our IT teams and ensures that vulnerabilities are quickly addressed.
- Firewall Management
Azure’s built-in firewall services add another layer to safeguard our systems from external threats by filtering incoming and outgoing traffic once inside our infrastructure. This extra layer of protection in our infrastructure further reduces the risk of attacks.
- Threat Detection
We leverage both Cloudflare and Azure advanced tools for detecting and mitigating security threats, including intrusion detection systems, vulnerability scans and monitoring tools. This helps us maintain a secure environment for our internal systems and clients.
- Security Management
Cloud-based services like Cloudflare and Azure handle complex security updates, firewalls, and patches, whereas on-premises infrastructure requires dedicated staff to perform these tasks manually.