Tracing is king: How we sped up our PaaS by 10x

Zerops, a platform built from the ground up and run on bare metal, focuses on optimizing performance across all layers, emphasizing the need for speed and efficiency in operations. Initially encountering latency issues, the team explored various solutions, including incorporating Alpine Linux to reduce container spawn times, but found minimal improvements. They turned to Application Performance Monitoring (APM), part of the Elastic Stack, to gain insights into system operations, revealing critical areas for optimization. This resulted in implementing a custom boot sequence, fast-track mechanisms, and addressing technical debt by replacing Elasticsearch data fetching with SQL queries, significantly enhancing performance. The efforts led to up to 4x faster asynchronous infrastructure processes and 10x faster API responses, improving the overall user experience and operational efficiency. As a result, Zerops now offers optimized deployment experiences with improved responsiveness, encouraging new users to try the platform with promotional credits.