Operational security

Infrastructure Architecture

The platform runs in containerized environments with strict service isolation. Each deployment consists of dedicated containers for the application server, database, cache, background workers, and scheduler — each with independent health monitoring and automatic recovery.

If a container fails, it recovers automatically. No manual intervention required.

Deployment Process

Every change follows a controlled pipeline from development to production — nothing reaches production without passing through staging first.

Development → Staging → Production

Code changes are committed to version-controlled repositories on our GitLab instance. Each commit triggers an automated CI/CD pipeline that builds, tests, and packages the application. Production containers contain only compiled assets and production dependencies — build tooling never reaches the live environment.

Environment-specific configuration is managed through environment variables. No production credentials exist in the codebase.

Routine updates deploy during business hours with zero perceived downtime via container-level rolling restarts. Database migrations are scheduled during low-traffic windows with advance notice. Emergency security patches deploy immediately, regardless of schedule.

Monitoring & Observability

The platform ships with structured logging and integrates with enterprise monitoring tools without additional development work.

Built-in logging covers application events, authentication events, and background job operations — with daily rotation and configurable retention. Critical alerts route to Slack for immediate team notification.

A dedicated /up health check endpoint integrates with load balancers and uptime monitoring services. Queue worker and scheduler health is verified through process monitoring, not just HTTP availability.

Supported integrations:

• Sentry — error tracking and alerting

• Grafana + Loki — log aggregation and dashboards

• Papertrail — cloud-based log management

• Slack — real-time critical alerts

• Any syslog-compatible monitoring solution

Background Processing & Reliability

Long-running operations — file processing, email delivery, webhook handling, data imports — run as background jobs with built-in reliability guarantees.

Failed jobs retry automatically up to three times with exponential backoff. Jobs that exhaust all retries are logged in a dedicated failed jobs table for manual review and replay. Each background worker runs in its own container with independent health monitoring.

Users receive real-time WebSocket notifications when operations complete — no polling, no delays, no "did it actually save?" uncertainty.

Data Persistence & Backup

• Database: MariaDB with InnoDB engine, strict mode enabled, foreign key constraints enforced

• Sessions: Stored in the database — not filesystem or memory — allowing horizontal scaling without session stickiness

• Media files: Persistent volumes with CDN-ready path structure, switchable to S3-compatible object storage through configuration

• Cache: Redis with persistent storage volumes for cache warming between restarts

Database backups run through standard MariaDB dump tooling, schedulable via the built-in cron container. Media files on S3 support native versioning and cross-region replication. The full audit log history provides point-in-time recovery context for any data change.

Predictable Cost Structure

No per-seat licensing. No external SaaS dependencies in the critical path — authentication, content management, media handling, and background processing all run on your infrastructure.

The platform runs on any Docker-compatible host: bare metal, VPS, AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-premise. No cloud vendor lock-in. All 14 production dependencies beyond Laravel are open-source with permissive licenses. No proprietary runtime fees.