In the following blog post, we will explain in detail the IT solutions we use, why we switched from our previous solutions to OVHcloud, and how we meet these requirements to ensure that our platform is always stable and secure.

What is important about fainin's IT infrastructure?

In the digital world, a company's IT infrastructure is crucial to success. At fainin, the safest marketplace for renting and lending things, we have focused on three important aspects: scalability, availability, and data security.

Why is scalability, availability and data security so important to us at fainin?

We founded fainin with the vision of bringing sustainable consumption to the forefront of society. Therefore, it is important to create the foundation for sustainable & significant growth with the platform.

1. Scalability allows us to adapt our platform to the growing demands of our users. By being able to scale quickly and easily, we can ensure that our platform remains stable and reliable even during high demand.
2. Availability is important because we need to make sure fainin's platform is always rechable for users to complete their rental and lending transactions - high reliability is a key factor on our road to success. 
3. Data security is essential to protect the information of our users and ensure we comply with all data protection regulations. This is especially important as we are responsible for handling sensitive information such as contact and payment details.

In total, these three aspects ensure that fainin's platform is stable, reliable, and secure for users, thus ensuring the success of the company.

What are the main challenges when it comes to these goals?

The central challenge is to operate a complex business logic with chats, real-time data and search indexing while simultaneously meeting data protection needs and cost control. This requires secure and GDPR-compliant storage and processing of data, high availability and load handling, as well as transparency in budget planning. Previously, fainin had taken cloud services from one of the common hyperscalers, but there were high costs and data protection concerns. Fainin ultimately chose OVHcloud as an alternative and has been working with the leading European hosting provider for several months.

How were these challenges solved in fainin's IT infrastructure?

To overcome this challenge, an IT infrastructure was built that is based on multiple services and databases which are orchestrated in a Kubernetes cluster. This allows fainin to take advantage of benefits such as Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD), load balancing and monitoring integrations, all developed in OVHcloud's Startup Program.

1. The codebase of the individual services is based on NodeJS, and we use the headless e-commerce framework vendure.io, which includes TypeORM, NestJS, and GraphQL. This framework divides the business logic into various tasks, so for example, all computationally intensive and asynchronous functions are executed in a worker instance.
2. PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch were chosen as databases. Additionally, we host a web server for providing a web application. To ensure that all services can communicate securely, all connections are SSL-encrypted and protected behind a reverse proxy.

With this infrastructure we can ensure that fainin's platform runs stable and secure while still meeting the data privacy needs and cost control.

What requirements were the basis for this decision? 

The requirements that were the basis for this decision were: control over the infrastructure to better plan the budget and avoid high costs for optimization to prevent increasing costs. Additionally, data protection is another important concern, as trust is the most important factor in a secure sharing community and processed data must therefore be treated with the highest priority. The solution is to use OVHcloud's GDPR-compliant data storage.

OVHcloud's startup program is the favourized solution

OVHcloud provides us with the ideal foundation for operating our platform by providing a GDPR-compliant and efficient public cloud. 🤝 In OVHcloud's Startup Program, we were able to save costs in the low four-digit range and instead focus on the development of the community. With the setup of new instances, security is ensured by the mandatory SSL encryption of connections. We are especially lucky, as fainin benefits from a direct contact who helps them with technical problems and questions - especially important since the trustful handling of user data is embedded in fainin's DNA as the safest platform. Data protection, sustainability and the joy of innovation are the common values that bring the collaboration of fainin and OVHcloud to a trusting level. Read more about our digital infrastructure in OVHcloud's blogpost. #SharingIstTheNewOwning