How to Build a Backend-as-a-Service: Lessons Learned
summary
Describes building a Backend-as-a-Service using Fastly CDN for SSL persistence and cache invalidation, and stateless authentication with signed tokens so the CDN can enforce access control. Covers an architecture of Redis, Storm, Zookeeper, and S3, Docker containers colocated to avoid cross-host latency (co-located app+node containers), and production failure modes including Docker network iptables limits, EBS/lockfile problems, and a custom high-throughput syslog implementation.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (12)
- 0:00Baas intro
- 1:06Developer platform
- 4:59Platform dev challenges
- 5:20Internal architecture
- 10:03Connection setup & load balancing
- 13:22CDN updates
- 16:15Access control & tokens
- 22:32Backend code execution
- 27:48Docker at scale
- 34:15Log streaming perf
- 37:06Best practices
- 38:11Q&A
related talks
18mScaling APIs to Billions: Extreme-Scale Reliability
13mLow-Maintenance Backend Architectures for Scalable Applications
43mDesigning and building resilient backend APIs in the cloud
43mIntro to Stateful Services
23mContent delivery sucks, and what you can do about it
42mFrom Localhost to Production
56mArchitecting Cloud Native Microservices
53mHow do we build high‑load microservices