CI/CD & Production Infrastructure for a Social App

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Client

Puzzle Master — a social matching platform

Challenge

The startup had a production-ready Nest.js backend and Angular frontend, but zero infrastructure: deployments were manual, there was no CI/CD, no monitoring, no backups, and no separation between dev and prod environments. The goal was to build a complete DevOps stack from scratch before the public launch.

Solution

1. Application Containerization

Multi-stage Dockerfile for backend (Nest.js + Prisma, non-root user)
Multi-stage Dockerfile for frontend (Angular 12, legacy OpenSSL, Nginx for static assets)
Docker Compose full stack: PostgreSQL 15, Redis 7, imgproxy, Nginx
Healthchecks and depends_on for correct startup ordering
Isolated dev and prod environments in /opt/dev and /opt/prod

2. GitLab CI/CD

Migration of repository from Bitbucket to GitLab
Pipeline for backend and frontend: build → push → deploy
GitLab Container Registry for Docker image storage
Automatic deploy to dev on every push; manual trigger for prod
SSH deployment to VPS via SSH_PRIVATE_KEY

3. Nginx Reverse Proxy

Environment-agnostic config via envsubst for dev/prod parity
SSL/TLS (TLSv1.2, TLSv1.3) with Cloudflare certificates
Routing: /api/* → backend:4000, /* → frontend:80
www → root domain redirect (301)
Separate imgproxy stack with SSL termination

4. Security (Ansible)

Server hardening via Ansible: SSH key-only auth, root login disabled
UFW Firewall: only ports 80, 443, and custom SSH open
Database accessible only via SSH tunnel
All secrets stored in GitLab CI/CD variables

5. Monitoring

Prometheus + Grafana with automated dashboard provisioning
Exporters: Node, cAdvisor, Postgres, Redis, Nginx, Blackbox
5 Grafana dashboards: server, Docker containers, PostgreSQL, Redis, Nginx
Alertmanager with Slack/webhook integration; alerts on CPU/RAM/Disk/API/SSL

6. Database Backups

Automated pg_dump every hour
gzip compression and upload to S3-compatible object storage (Cloudflare R2)
Prometheus backup metrics: success status, size, timestamp
Alerts: DatabaseBackupMissing, DatabaseBackupFailed, DatabaseBackupSizeAnomaly

Technologies

GitLab CI

Docker

Ansible

Prometheus

Nginx

PostgreSQL

Results

✅ Deploy: git push to main → automatic build and deploy to server
✅ Environments: full dev/prod isolation on a single VPS
✅ Monitoring: 5 dashboards, alerts across 6 categories
✅ Backups: automated hourly pg_dump to Cloudflare R2
✅ Security: UFW, key-based SSH, database inaccessible from outside
✅ Scalability: architecture ready for database extraction to a dedicated server

CI/CD with GitLab + Kubernetes: deploy in 10 minutes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

CI/CD automation: from 2 hours to 10 minutes per deploy

Client

E-commerce startup, 5-person engineering team

Challenge

Manual deployment took 2 hours
Frequent release errors
No fast rollback path
Required: CI/CD automation, GitOps, fast rollback

Solution

Self-hosted GitLab
GitLab CI pipeline (Build → Test → Deploy)
Managed Kubernetes in Yandex Cloud
Flux CD for GitOps

Technologies

GitLab

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

Flux CD

Results

✅ Deploy time: from 2 hours to 10 minutes (12x)
✅ Errors: −90%
✅ Deploy frequency: from 1/week to 10+/day
✅ Rollback time: from 1 hour to 2 minutes

CI/CD and Release Engineering on DevOps Engineer & CloudAdmin

CI/CD & Production Infrastructure for a Social App

Production Infrastructure & CI/CD for a Social App Launch

Client

Challenge

Solution

1. Application Containerization

2. GitLab CI/CD

3. Nginx Reverse Proxy

4. Security (Ansible)

5. Monitoring

6. Database Backups

Technologies

Results

CI/CD with GitLab + Kubernetes: deploy in 10 minutes

CI/CD automation: from 2 hours to 10 minutes per deploy

Client

Challenge

Solution

Technologies

Results