IT Svit

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My name is Jorge, and I'm a cofounder of Digital Samba. We've been in the web conferencing business since 2002. We develop and run a web conferencing platform known as Samba Live.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit, and what were your goals?

We wanted help transitioning from a non-standardized VM deployment infrastructure to an automated containerized approach. Given the complexity of our platform, we know that we would need to take a phased approach. Initially, our goals were simply to be able to deploy standardized containers without having to triple check every little aspect of the deployment.

SOLUTION

How did you select IT Svit and what were the deciding factors?

We found IT Svit on Upwork. They had great reviews, and after an interview with Konstantin, we were convinced that they were the right partner for us.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We were looking to expand our existing team of developers and system administrators with a Docker and Kubernetes expert. Traditionally, we developed and deployed applications based on PHP, MySQL, MariaDB, Apache, Nginx, and various media server technologies.

We were looking to transition to a container-ready microservices model and needed expert support with some key challenges:

1. Challenges around persistent data: DB, file uploads, user-generated content
2. Redis for PHP sessions
3. Best practices on creating Dockerfiles
4. Best practices on passing a large set of config data to PHP container runtime
5. Setting up Kubernetes
6. Monitoring
7. Managing dependencies

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had weekly meetings with a very capable project manager (who was also an excellent developer). We also worked with a DevOps engineer on a daily basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We can't imagine going back to deploying the way we used to. This project has vastly improved the confidence we have in our deployments. We continue to work towards full automatization, but if for some reason, we were to stop striving for that, I'd be happy with what we have already achieved.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We met in our conferencing tool for the weekly meetings and used Slack for day-to-day activities. Our specification was not very detailed or concrete, so it was not always possible to give tight deliverable deadlines. Communication with IT Svit was always clear. The project manager was extremely effective in his communication with us.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The project manager's knowledge gave us confidence throughout the project. Whenever we hit a bump in the road, they quickly stepped in to brainstorm alternatives.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

There is always room for improvement- that's just the nature of things. If I'm nitpicking, at times, it would have been nice to get clearer estimates of bitesize tasks.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a CTO of a product for personalized news aggregation. We're developing SaaS solution that creates custom feeds of the news based on your preferences.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

We are expanding our team to improve the automation of our infrastructure. The initial project was to implement Kubernetes and Terraform so that we can expand our infrastructure.

What were your goals for this project?

Scalable and easy-to-use infrastructure on AWS

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We've connected on LinkedIn with one of IT Svit's representatives - Nick.

Describe the project in detail.

Preparing Terraform manifests Migration to Kubernetes Deployment automation Creating dev/staging environments:

Setting up CI/CD processes (Jenkins, travis, GitLabCI etc.) Setting up logging/monitoring/notifications Testing stage/dev environments Creating a prod environment Setting up backups/restore Testing Switch to prod environment Documentation

What was the team composition?

From our side - product owner (myself). from IT Svit's side - DevOps engineer Vladimir, Project Manager Alex.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We've got efficient and redundant infrastructure that is easy to scale and deploy. Automated a lot of processes to speed up development. Thanks to the Terraform infrastructure now is very easy to manage.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

As I'm a technical person, it was easy to communicate and understand the IT Svit team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

IT Svit has solid expertise in DevOps and Cloud area, these guys really know their stuff. Proactive position is also what sets them apart from other companies.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They have areas to improve. I think they could offer support packages.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Dmitriy, CEO @ Global-DJ Ltd. The world's first wearable MIDI, DJ, Vocal, PC, CAD, Game Controller with Sensors, Keyboard & Video Effects with Gestures for Live Show and Active Video Games - Tornado Gloves Controller were created.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

Our infrastructure architecture was varied and when something stops working, it’s hard to identify the issue and react immediately. We decided to implement the next features Zabbix-server Prometheus operator Grafana

What were your goals for this project?

The system should afford the following algorithms: Automatic monitoring of diverse cloud infrastructure measurable parameters like CPU usage, bandwidth usage, disk volume usage. Timely alerts if any issues occur Informative notifications with screenshots to simplify troubleshooting

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Google it

Describe the project in detail.

We simply wanted to be better informed of the various processes within our IT infrastructure in order to be able to identify and solve the issues faster: Automatic monitoring of the infrastructure must be performed by Zabbix Timely alerts sent to Telegram Informative screenshots with the trouble description to simplify troubleshooting

What was the team composition?

DevOps Engineer, DevOps architect

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

With installed monitoring, comprised of Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana, we always receive alert notifications in Slack and know when something is going wrong with our Linux server or Kubernetes cluster. It permits us to respond instantly and resolve issues swift. Also it allows to save time, as we know where is the issue and could pretty well define it at once.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Their Team lead guided me from the first touch base. He performed a rigorous audit to the system's entire stack and elaborated with a thoroughly designed road map. He was responsible for overseeing the project until completion and participated in all calls and demos.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Communicating with the IT Svit team I had very clear and transparent communication, they supplied me with particular information with every next step. It was a fixed project involving many carefully arranged parts and complicated in design and planning.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I assume more compliant support offering, concerning part time engagement. However I understand this is not their priority this time.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Rodion, Senior software developer. AI helps everyone at a company write with the same style, terminology, and brand voice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

We were on a look up for a team of DevOps engineers to optimize Prometheus+Grafana monitoring to identify slow MongoDB queries, use this data to optimize Kubernetes cluster performance and automating backup/restore operations for MongoDB.

What were your goals for this project?

Optimize Prometheus + Grafana monitoring to identify slow MongoDB queries: Use this data to optimize Kubernetes cluster performance. Automating backup/restore operations for MongoDB. Enabling archiving and retrieval for historical MongoDB data. Building a staging environment that runs in parallel. Minimizing the expenses of the system operations.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Linkedin search. Plus recomendations

Describe the project in detail.

After IT Svit performed a rigorous audit to the inventory entire stack and negotiations with all our stack holders, they assigned a dedicated DevOps Engineer to fast track a proof of concept to demonstrate how the system should work and move from there. The first step was obviously configuring the backup and restore for MongoDB.

Luckily, IT Svit has developed our own solution for automated MongoDB backup/restoration in AWS using Terraform and Jenkins, which worked just fine for this project. This ensured the data was safe and could be recovered in case of any contingency. The next step was to optimize the MongoDB performance.

We suggested using the database sharding and either reupload all the data to an existing collection after MongoDB and Kubernetes cluster optimization or starting the new collection afresh. We have tested several sharding keys to match different workloads. Another solution was to use specific nodepools for specific workloads (one for monitoring, one for staging, one for prod, one for MongoDB). We have also configured limits to resource requests. This helped reduce resource usage and lower costs.

The next step was improving the efficiency of cluster monitoring. We configured an automated deployment process using Helm charts to build and update Prometheus and Grafana operators to the latest versions and configure their interaction with AlertManager. This helped visualize the workloads and gave the customer a clear view of the system performance.

What was the team composition?

One full-time dedicated DevOps Engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The system is running on a Kubernetes cluster with automated backup and restoration capabilities, as well as with in-depth monitoring and smart alerting. By sharding the database they helped lower the system workload and decrease the expenses. We are now working to further enhance system performance and lower its costs.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I was leading all our goals and expectations. So I oversee the project in general and particularly. IT Svit works closely with me and our VPE and engineering teams to architect solutions that support your current needs and strategic initiatives. They promote efficient collaboration with as little management overhead as possible.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Very consistent in their actions and operations.

Are there any areas for improvement?

This is always a challenge. I'm not sure what I can advise here.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Igor, CTO at an IT services provider company. We help our customers build innovative digital products by providing consulting and assistance in designing and managing the infrastructure needed for MVP development and ongoing growth.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

We needed to move our IT operations from Heroku to AWS. While Heroku is a great tool for MVP development, it lacks many features more mature cloud platforms provide, so the customers had to migrate to AWS or Google when their product took off. We decided to move to AWS altogether and provide services there from the get-go.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted our technology partner to asses our existing IT ecosystem and to migrate or replicate our software development environments and testing/staging/release processes. We also had to enable in-depth monitoring and alerting for our future AWS ecosystem.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were looking for an experienced DevOps services provider with a thorough AWS expertise and shortlisted 6 companies based on their announced technology stack, expertise, external ratings and customer reviews.

IT Svit stood out due to being ranked as a top-performing agency on Clutch and boasting 30+ positive customer reviews there. We had technical calls with all the companies from our shortlist, and IT Svit managed to positively impress us with their expertise and attitudes, so we decided to work with them.

Describe the project in detail.

Heroku is a cost-efficient and user-friendly platform providing everything you need to write, debug and deploy code in Python, Java, Ruby, Scala, Go, Node.JS, etc. We were using its features like Heroku CI and Pipelines to build automated software delivery workflows for our customers — but Heroku lacks serverless computing features, Kubernetes cluster management, monitoring, Big Data analytics and other features that were often required by our customers.

Instead of building the product on Heroku and then transferring it to AWS to enable the needed functionality, we decided to move our development and infrastructure management operations to AWS altogether. IT Svit helped us create the roadmap for this transition, configured the AWS replacements for Heroku services we used, and then IT Svit team moved our projects to AWS seamlessly.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 2 DevOps engineers and a Team Lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The transition was done literally overnight and went smoothly. IT Svit prepared all the tutorials our team needed to pick up the pace with AWS at once. Due to configuring the AWS infrastructure and processes correctly, they ensured we spend the absolute minimum, so our services remain cost-efficient and competitive.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had weekly calls discussing the project progress and they provided daily reports on the tasks delivered. This helped us always stay informed without micromanaging all the aspects of the project, so we were able to concentrate on our tasks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They really know what to do and they fulfilled all their promises on time. We understand it was not the most complex of projects, yet it was very satisfying to get all tasks done on time and without issue

Are there any areas for improvement?

I am fully satisfied with the outcome of our partnership.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Co-Founder of a job portal. Our platform provides a wide range of features for job applicants and recruiters.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

As the scope of our operations grew and our platform gained new features, the then-existing infrastructure began to be slightly underwhelming for our purposes. We wanted to implement analytics and Big Data processing.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted IT Svit to help us do the following: - Hadoop implementation - Kafka - Zookeeper - Druid

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found them as IT provider in Ukraine and were impressed with their in-depth Big Data expertise, which was further proven during technical calls with their team.

Describe the project in detail.

IT Svit was able to provide everything we need. They've implemented Big Data best practices and helped us to vet and collect incoming data from our job portal.

What was the team composition?

Big Data lead, Python engineer, DevOps engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The project is still in progress but we already can see the results. We're working on new features for our platform thanks to new data streams.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We worked with Bid Data lead Denis, who was able to understand our needs and ensure the team implements them in a timely manner. We also met face to face with a team a few times which helped to build strong relationships.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They deliver on time and with quality. Also, act proactively.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I cannot think of any and I would definitely recommend anyone working with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Roman, Founder @ Fixstacks company. We are a software developer and IT services provider from Ukraine/USA.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

For Devops services

What were your goals for this project?

We required a team of professionals to automate setup procedure, remove bugs and errors in deployment flow, using Ansible, Terraform and AWS services such as Lambda, AWS Rekognition.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We wanted to hire a team of DevOps professionals and decided to try looking for them on LinkedIn. IT Svit profile mentioned all the tools we needed and their blog content showed they really have a decent understanding of how to deliver the results we needed.

Describe the project in detail.

IT Svit provided DevOps engineers and helped us do the following: Create Terraform manifests for IaaC Write Ansible scripts to automate the deployment process Create different deployment procedures for different application configurations Create developer documentation on deployment process and technical points

What was the team composition?

We worked with a Team Lead and 2 DevOps engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

After our infrastructure began to operate based on Terraform manifests, we experienced a significant boost in the efficiency of operations, and automating the deployment helped a lot.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Their Team Lead is very proficient with AWS, Terraform and Jenkins, he was able to grasp the core idea of the project at once and offered working solutions from the get-go. It could not have worked better. We communicated regularly in Slack, so we were always abreast of the project progress.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their AWS and Terraform knowledge is profound, and they are able to come up with working solutions at once.

Are there any areas for improvement?

While they were able to field a sufficient team and meet all our project goals so far, the Team Lead Konstantine is not always available as the team carries out multiple projects at once. They could definitely grow a little more.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a music-tech startup. I generally oversee all technical implementations from development to server administration.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

We hired IT Svit to inspect our existing Google Cloud infrastructure, load test it, and make improvements to enable reasonable scalability.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to get a scalable infrastructure in place to support our website and mobile apps to scale effectively without an issues as we onboard more users.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I had some mixed experiences with previous contractors and did extensive research to find some cloud specialists. I had spotted the IT Svit team months before and they seemed to fit the bill but they were fully booked. After further discussions with their team, it was clear that they were specialists and they earned my faith in their abilities. I decided to proceed when they had availability.

Describe the project in detail.

The IT Svit team first inspected our existing GCP setup. They created diagrams and clearly articulated the existing setup. They then performed some initial load testing to assess baseline performance. From there, they identified bottlenecks and provided some recommendations on initial steps to improve scalability and follow best practices.

They cleaned up some existing issues with our implementation and then they explored multiple levels of caching, implemented a CDN among other things. After they made changes they conducted additional load tests. They performance was much improved and they even set up a reusable load testing infrastructure with excellent documentation so we could reuse.

Once we were happy with the new set up, they executed some changes to improve security of the infrastructure and set up some basic monitoring and alerting capabilities.

What was the team composition?

There was one primary project manager and one devops engineer. In addition to them, there were also two business leads (one technical, one operations) that would check in from time to time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Prior to hiring IT Svit, I had wasted about 6 weeks on a team that I had hired to improve our GCP setup and scalability. IT Svit was extremely skilled, efficient and communicated extremely well (like an extension of our team with great project management tools).

While it is hard to recall the exact numbers, the improvement in performance was remarkable and the security of the infrastructure was much improved. In general, I am a lot more at ease now with our infrastructure, because of the work of IT Svit.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was excellent. We used Slack for daily communication and Asana for managing progress on tasks. They managed the process very well and were very diligent.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It is obvious that they are experts in Cloud Computing, DevOps and Server administration. Their skills are impressive and you will not waste your time with them. In addition, they were extremely professional in their management of the tasks and the engineer that I had assigned was excellent. He was extremely skilled, nice and hard-working.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Due to their limited resources we had to primarily work on a full-time basis in spurts. The one thing that I would look for in the future is more flexibility to have their support on a part-time basis for a mixture of continuity and affordability.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I own an affiliate marketing business that operates a network of websites in the financial market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

IT Svit were hired to help improve the efficiency and efficacy of our Kubernetes cluster hosted on Google Cloud Platform.

What were your goals for this project?

1. Reduce server costs
2. Improve server infrastructure
3. Implement cluster monitoring
4. Documentation and education of those tasks

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We reached out to a number of companies through the Upwork platform. IT Svit responded quickly and were able to demonstrate a great deal of understanding about our project and its goals. Their particular experience with Google Kubernetes Engine helped with the selection.

Describe the project in detail.

The project required proper allocation of resources for a dozen+ workloads in our Google Cloud Platform k8s cluster. The vendor was responsible for analysing potential allocation issues and appropriately reducing wasted resources. The vendor was also responsible for implementing monitoring services for the k8s cluster using Prometheus and the Grafana GUI. The vendor reported twice weekly to help keep us informed at all times.

What was the team composition?

The vendor provided a project manager, devops engineer and a senior member of the team who was very fluent in English and the technicalities of the project. All 3 members of the team joined each call where every possible question could be answered an discussed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The project with IT Svit improved our management of our GCP cluster to no end. With proper alerting, our team is now able to detect issues before they arise and cluster monitoring allows us effectively diagnose and resolve issues. Resource limiting was setup to ensure that each workload would not soak up memory or CPU while also alerting us if issues were detected.

Total costs were not reduced, however, it transpired in the project that our machines were already the minimum that were viable. Instead, we were able to improve all other aspects of the cluster infrastructure whilst keeping ongoing server costs the same.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow was mostly done through Trello and web calls. It worked very effectively.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The company felt like a well-oiled machine. At no point did I have any concerns that the project wasn't moving at the correct speed. I was kept informed at all times and this fact gave me reassurance that the team would deliver effectively (and they did).

Are there any areas for improvement?

I would have preferred to have more time devoted to education around the changes that were made and helping with my own understanding of some of the technical aspects of the work they were doing.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Andrew, the DevOps manager of a company known for our product — a CreatorIQ media platform. This is one of the leading products of the marketing services domain, which provides SaaS solutions for enterprise business. CreatorIQ is used by industry-leading companies like Disney, CAA, Edelman and 20th Century Fox, who use our product to empower their marketing campaigns.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

IT Svit was able to provide everything we needed, from deployment, autoscaling, security, k8s maintenance to troubleshooting, monitoring, routing, network configuration, etc. We required high-skilled DevOps to maintain and improve our application and infrastructure. We were searching for the following expertise:

• Good knowledge of Linux Good knowledge of the network configuration (routing, load-balancing, security, etc)
• Good knowledge of CI/CD processes and hands-on experience with one or more of CI tools (Jenkins, Gitlab-CI, etc)
• Good knowledge of Docker and hands-on experience with Swarm/ESC/EKS/K8s
• Hands-on experience with scripting (Bash/Python/Groovy)
• Hands-on experience with one of configuration management tools like Ansible
• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud
• Hands-on experience with cloud provisioning tools (CloudFormation, Terraform)
• Hands-on experience with automation tools like Vagrant, Packer
• Hands-on experience with monitoring tools (CloudWatch, Grafana, Prometheus)
• Hands-on experience with logging tools (Cloudwatch, ELK)

What were your goals for this project?

Migrate our old infrastructure to containerized platform

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

One of our R&Ds is also located in Kharkiv, Ukraine, so it was quite easy to meet IT Svit in person. They showcased an impressive stack of technologies and lots of successfully completed projects, so we decided they were perfect for the job.

Describe the project in detail.

IT Svit was able to provide everything we needed, from deployment, autoscaling, security, k8s maintenance to troubleshooting, monitoring, routing, network configuration, etc.

What was the team composition?

IT Svit Team Lead was our point of contact and there were DevOps engineer in the team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

IT Svit team has helped us update and optimize our AWS infrastructure and software delivery pipelines. We are able to implement new features twice as fast as before and have not experienced downtime even once since IT Svit is in charge of our infrastructure.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We worked with a very competent CTO/Team Leader, who were able to understand our needs quickly and ensure the team implements them quickly and flawlessly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were pleasantly surprised with their expertise. They excel in AWS and Terraform management, as well as deep knowledge of the rest of DevOps services.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I cannot think of anything, they are good.