2023-04-25 API infrastructure improvements

ROR API usage has increased dramatically over the past 3 years, from ~1 million requests per month to over 17 million. We made some tweaks along the way to keep it up and running, but we knew that a more significant overhaul was needed to put ROR in a good position to handle further API traffic increases. This is why API infrastructure updates and scaling were included as a major project on our 2023 Roadmap.

As of 25 Apr, we have completed the following updates and rolled them out to production:

• Updated Elasticsearch software from 6.3 to 7.10 (the latest version supported by AWS; in the future, we will migrate to AWS OpenSearch)
• Added nodes in the AWS Elasticsearch cluster, which are now distributed across 2 availability zones
• Re-configured Elasticsearch sharding
• Added more ROR API application containers, with auto-scaling as needed

With these changes, API users should see speedier performance for all API requests, particularly at peak traffic times. That said, updating to a new major version of Elasticsearch involved significant changes to underlying code. If you notice any issues, please let us know in the ROR Tech Forum or at [email protected] .