Overcoming scale challenges with AWS & CloudFront - 5 key takeaways

The Ably service handles massive amounts of data throughput and concurrent connections while maintaining high reliability and availability. It has no scale ceiling, which presents unique challenges such as breaching the limits of AWS services. To resolve these issues, a strong working relationship with providers like AWS is crucial. This article outlines an incident where Ably faced increased errors due to maintenance work that was routing traffic from one legacy CloudFront distribution to a new one. Through collaboration with AWS support and understanding the root cause, they were able to prevent future instances of the issue. The 5 key takeaways emphasize the importance of engaging with providers for issue resolution: establishing communication channels, leveraging support plans and escalation procedures, collaborating with technical experts, engaging in feedback loops, and exploring opportunities for joint problem-solving and co-innovation through partnership programs.