Freecharge, a subsidiary of Axis Bank, is a payment app with over 100 million users in India. It has evolved into one of the top financial services and investment apps in the country, offering safe and seamless UPI payments, bill payments, recharges, and more. To handle traffic spikes, Freecharge migrated its Identity Management System to Amazon DynamoDB, a serverless NoSQL database that can scale efficiently.
The IMS at Freecharge manages tokens for user requests and stores user data. It uses Aerospike for token management and caching. The IMS processes around 1 million requests per day, making user authentication crucial for the business’s success. Freecharge’s IMS architecture is built on asynchronous messaging with independent microservices for scalability.
Initially, Freecharge used Aerospike for its IMS workload, but encountered challenges related to scaling, operational tasks, and costs. To address these issues, Freecharge switched to DynamoDB, which provided consistent performance at scale, simplified data modeling, auto-scaling capacity, and serverless management.
The migration to DynamoDB involved a phased approach to minimize downtime and ensure operational continuity. By consolidating data into a single table and leveraging DynamoDB’s features, Freecharge experienced operational ease, increased scalability, and cost optimization. DynamoDB’s pay-as-you-go pricing reduced costs by 60% compared to using Aerospike.
Overall, the migration to DynamoDB from Aerospike improved efficiency, reduced operational burden, and optimized costs for Freecharge. DynamoDB’s features like auto-scaling, serverless management, and pay-as-you-go pricing made it a suitable choice for managing the IMS workload. The successful migration showcased the benefits of using DynamoDB for high-performance and scalable applications.
The authors of this post, Vikalp Singh, Kapil Saneja, Shubham Sharan, and Dharam Thakkar, shared their insights on the migration process and the benefits of using DynamoDB. They highlighted the operational advantages, scalability improvements, and cost savings achieved by transitioning to DynamoDB from Aerospike.
Article Source
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/freecharge-lowered-their-identity-management-system-cost-and-improved-scaling-by-switching-to-amazon-dynamodb/
