How HCode Is Embracing
The Serverless Computing
When digital platforms grow, so do their challenges. As user numbers increase and applications become more complex, the infrastructure that once seemed sufficient can start showing serious limitations. Systems slow down, downtime becomes more frequent, and costs begin to rise—especially when built on traditional, server-based architectures.
One of our clients, a growing EdTech company, relied on a single AWS EC2 instance to power their platform. While this setup worked initially, it quickly became a bottleneck as user traffic increased. Scaling required manual upgrades, which led to downtime and rising costs, especially during off-peak hours when resources sat idle.
To address these limitations, we introduced a modern architecture built on containerization and serverless computing. This shift enabled the platform to scale dynamically, reduce operational overhead, and maintain high availability. At HCode, we’ve guided many clients through similar transitions—unlocking more efficient, resilient systems that are easier to scale and maintain.
In this blog, we’ll explore what serverless computing actually is, how we implemented it in this particular project, the tools and services we used, and the tangible benefits it delivered. Whether you’re facing similar challenges or simply exploring modern architecture options, this story will offer insight into how serverless computing can be a practical, impactful solution.
A Closer Look at Serverless Architecture
Serverless computing is a cloud-native development model that allows you to build and run applications without the need to manage servers manually. While the term “serverless” might seem misleading—servers still exist—the key distinction lies in who operates and maintains them.
In a traditional model, your team is responsible for provisioning infrastructure, scaling resources, applying updates, and monitoring availability. With serverless computing, cloud providers like AWS take over those responsibilities. This frees up engineering teams to focus entirely on writing application logic and delivering business features, instead of worrying about infrastructure.
Here’s what cloud providers manage in a serverless environment:
- Server provisioning and maintenance: No need to manually set up or manage physical or virtual servers.
- Automatic scaling: The system automatically scales based on the number of incoming requests or events—no need for manual configuration.
- High availability and fault tolerance: Serverless services are distributed by default, minimizing the risk of downtime due to single points of failure.
- Security patches and updates: The platform stays secure and up-to-date without intervention from your team.
Another important characteristic of serverless systems is that they are event-driven and on-demand. That means functions or services are invoked only when needed—whether that’s in response to an HTTP request, a file upload, a database change, or a scheduled job. You only pay for the compute time used while the function is executing, which is especially cost-effective for applications with variable traffic patterns.
Why Choose Serverless?
Let’s break down some of the core benefits that make serverless computing an appealing architecture for modern applications:
1. Scalability Without Effort
Serverless applications scale automatically in real time. Whether you’re serving 10 users or 10,000, the underlying platform ensures that each request is handled efficiently. There’s no need to guess traffic patterns or pre-provision infrastructure.
2. Cost Efficiency
With serverless, you’re only billed for actual usage—down to the millisecond in some cases. Unlike traditional servers that run continuously (and cost money whether in use or not), serverless functions run only when needed, reducing idle time and operational expenses.
3. Reduced Operational Complexity
Because infrastructure management is abstracted away, your developers spend less time configuring environments or troubleshooting scaling issues, and more time building useful features and improving product quality.
4. Built-in Resilience and High Availability
Cloud providers design serverless services with distributed availability zones and failover capabilities. This means your application benefits from robust uptime and can automatically recover from infrastructure failures without additional configuration.
5. Faster Development and Deployment
With integrated CI/CD tools and simplified deployment models, serverless systems allow faster iteration. Features can be shipped and tested more frequently without lengthy infrastructure changes.
While the benefits of serverless architecture are clear, understanding its impact becomes even more meaningful when applied to a real-world scenario.
That’s exactly what we experienced while working with one of our EdTech clients. They had a live platform with thousands of users and growing traffic, but their infrastructure was still built around a single EC2 instance. It worked at first—but as their user base grew, so did the problems.
Let’s take a look at the challenges they faced and how those limitations pointed us toward a smarter, serverless-driven solution.
Let’s Break Down the Core Challenges
A fast-growing EdTech platform approached us as they began facing serious scaling challenges. Their application, hosted entirely on a single AWS EC2 instance, had worked fine in the early days but struggled as user numbers surged. What started as a simple, cost-effective setup quickly became limiting—unable to keep up with the platform’s growing demands.
Downtime During Scaling and Updates
Every time the platform needed to be upgraded to handle more traffic or new features were pushed to production, the single EC2 instance had to be stopped, reconfigured, and restarted. This meant scheduled (and sometimes unscheduled) downtime, which directly impacted user experience. For a live EdTech platform offering real-time sessions and assessments, any interruption—even brief—can lead to user frustration and a loss of trust.
Resource Inefficiency
The single server was sized to accommodate peak traffic loads. However, during low-usage periods, the vast majority of those resources sat idle—CPU cycles unused, memory underloaded, but still incurring the full cost of operation. This created a wasteful spending pattern, where the platform was paying for capacity that wasn’t consistently needed. With more efficient scaling strategies, this cost could be significantly reduced.
Scalability Limits
There’s a natural ceiling with vertical scaling. You can only add so much memory or processing power to a single machine before you hit the hardware limits. Once those limits are reached, you can’t scale any further without changing the architecture entirely. This introduced a rigid growth constraint, which made it difficult to plan for user growth without risking system failure or degraded performance.
Single Point of Failure
The biggest risk of all: everything was tied to a single machine. If the EC2 instance crashed—whether due to overload, hardware issues, or deployment errors—the entire platform would go down. No matter how fast the team responded, users would be locked out until the server was brought back online. In a sector like education, where users depend on reliability and real-time access, such outages can be incredibly costly in terms of reputation and retention.
Why This Was a Turning Point
The signs were clear: the platform had outgrown its initial infrastructure. What once worked as a lean and simple backend had become a bottleneck to growth, scalability, and reliability.
But instead of continuing to patch the system with larger servers or workarounds, we proposed a more future-ready solution: re-architecting the platform using a combination of containerization and serverless computing.
This would not only solve the current challenges but also provide the flexibility and efficiency needed to support continued growth—without overhauling the system again in the near future.
Related: Microservices Architecture: The Cornerstone of Scalable Software Development
HCode’s Approach: Modernizing with Containers and Serverless
To overcome the constraints of a monolithic setup and single-server dependency, the EdTech platform required an architectural shift—one that could not only handle current user load but also support future scalability with minimal friction. This led to the adoption of a distributed system, built around microservices, containers, and serverless technologies.
Containerization with Docker & Amazon ECS
The transformation began with the introduction of Docker-based containerization. By packaging the application code along with its dependencies into isolated, portable containers, the system gained consistency across environments and improved deployment flexibility. These containers were orchestrated using Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service), allowing the application to run across a cluster of EC2 instances. ECS enabled automatic horizontal scaling, allowing the system to handle traffic fluctuations more efficiently. Fault isolation was also improved, with individual services capable of restarting independently without impacting the entire platform.
Automated CI/CD for Faster Delivery
To streamline deployment and reduce manual overhead, a fully automated CI/CD pipeline was introduced using AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild. This allowed for seamless integration, automated testing, and blue/green deployments with zero downtime. Frequent updates could now be rolled out without service interruption, empowering the product team to iterate more confidently and frequently.
Intelligent Traffic Management
Handling traffic effectively was critical. The platform’s DNS routing was shifted to AWS Route 53, while an Application Load Balancer (ALB) distributed incoming traffic evenly across ECS containers. This ensured stable performance even during spikes in usage and prevented overloading any single service.
Caption: Benefits of Adopting a Serverless Architecture
Upgrading the Data Layer with DynamoDB
The legacy PostgreSQL database hosted on AWS RDS was struggling under high transaction volumes. Scaling required expensive instance upgrades with limited flexibility. Migrating to Amazon DynamoDB brought immediate advantages—its serverless, auto-scaling NoSQL model handled varying workloads smoothly and allowed for evolving data models without downtime.
Serverless Backend with Lambda & EventBridge
The application’s backend logic was restructured using AWS Lambda and Amazon EventBridge. This event-driven architecture allowed services to operate independently and asynchronously. For example, when a user submitted a quiz or accessed content, an event would trigger background processing without delaying the user experience. Decoupling services in this way significantly enhanced system responsiveness and maintainability.
Addressing Serverless Design Considerations
While adopting serverless introduced new advantages, it also required careful handling of common concerns like cold starts and execution limits. These were mitigated by optimizing memory and concurrency settings, using provisioned concurrency where necessary, and implementing fail-safe retries for reliability during unpredictable loads.
Centralized Monitoring with CloudWatch
To maintain visibility across the distributed system, Amazon CloudWatch was integrated for unified logging, metrics, and alerts. The team could now monitor ECS, Lambda, and DynamoDB services from a centralized dashboard, enabling faster issue detection and performance optimization.
Altogether, this re-architecture eliminated the bottlenecks of the original system. It also laid the groundwork for a resilient, scalable, and easier-to-maintain platform. With this new foundation, the EdTech company was equipped to grow confidently—onboarding more users and expanding its services without being limited by infrastructure constraints.
Final Thoughts
Serverless computing isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a strategic approach to building better systems. At HCode, our goal is always to deliver solutions that don’t just work today, but are built to grow with the business.
By embracing serverless architecture, we helped our client move beyond the limitations of traditional infrastructure. Into a more flexible, cost-effective, and scalable future.
If your organization is grappling with scaling challenges, infrastructure costs, or deployment headaches, it may be time to consider going serverless. And we’d be happy to help you make that transition smoothly and successfully.