Inside UNiDAYS' Three-Week AWS Expansion: Lessons in Fast, Global Scalability
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2025 6:50 pm
Delivering fast, secure, and consistent digital experiences to a global user base is no small task—especially when time is short. UNiDAYS, the student-focused platform offering exclusive deals to over 29 million verified members, recently tackled this challenge head-on. Faced with the need to expand globally within weeks, the team pulled off an impressive AWS Region rollout with smart architectural decisions, not a ground-up rebuild.
The Problem: Global Growth vs. Legacy Limits
As UNiDAYS saw increased traffic from around the world, the limits of its legacy AWS setup became apparent. Built around a monolithic structure, the platform wasn’t equipped for active-active multi-Region operation—something essential for lowering latency and ensuring high availability across continents.
But rebuilding the system wasn’t realistic under tight deadlines. Instead, UNiDAYS focused on augmenting its setup with modular, Region-friendly services designed for rapid deployment and seamless integration.
The Fix: A Flexible, Multi-Region Approach
UNiDAYS introduced services that allowed them to scale quickly and consistently across the globe. Here’s what powered their success:
Amazon CloudFront with Route 53 latency-based routing, to ensure requests were always sent to the fastest Regional endpoint
Amazon ECS, which made deploying containerized applications quick and scalable
Amazon DynamoDB global tables, handling data replication and consistency automatically
Amazon EventBridge, enabling event-driven communication between old and new systems
This setup allowed for seamless Region activation while preserving performance and reducing downtime risk.
Students interested in accessing this new high-speed platform can join instantly by buying Cheap Unidays Accounts.
Deployment at Speed: Terraform + CloudFormation
Time was critical, so the UNiDAYS team used Terraform to deploy core infrastructure and paired it with customized CloudFormation scripts for apps. Infrastructure was organized into tiers—platform, global, and Regional—streamlining rollout by making it easy to duplicate environments.
CloudFormation’s limitation on Region-specific exports posed a hurdle. The solution? A custom macro that made cross-Region sharing of outputs possible, enabling smoother, more coordinated deployments.
Performance, Security, and a Bit of Ingenuity
To prevent slow start-up times caused by cross-Region container image pulls, UNiDAYS turned to Amazon ECR’s private image replication. This brought container images closer to the action, reducing latency during both scaling and updates.
Security measures were just as sharp. CloudFront was paired with AWS WAF and Application Load Balancer rules, restricting access to traffic from intended CloudFront distributions only.
The payoff was immediate: in some areas, client latency dropped from 200ms to just 50ms, creating a noticeably smoother user experience.
Want to benefit from a faster and more responsive platform? Join millions of students already enjoying exclusive perks with a verified Unidays Account. Z2U.COM not only provides you with professional game strategies, but also Unidays Accounts for Sale, up to 10% cheaper!
The Problem: Global Growth vs. Legacy Limits
As UNiDAYS saw increased traffic from around the world, the limits of its legacy AWS setup became apparent. Built around a monolithic structure, the platform wasn’t equipped for active-active multi-Region operation—something essential for lowering latency and ensuring high availability across continents.
But rebuilding the system wasn’t realistic under tight deadlines. Instead, UNiDAYS focused on augmenting its setup with modular, Region-friendly services designed for rapid deployment and seamless integration.
The Fix: A Flexible, Multi-Region Approach
UNiDAYS introduced services that allowed them to scale quickly and consistently across the globe. Here’s what powered their success:
Amazon CloudFront with Route 53 latency-based routing, to ensure requests were always sent to the fastest Regional endpoint
Amazon ECS, which made deploying containerized applications quick and scalable
Amazon DynamoDB global tables, handling data replication and consistency automatically
Amazon EventBridge, enabling event-driven communication between old and new systems
This setup allowed for seamless Region activation while preserving performance and reducing downtime risk.
Students interested in accessing this new high-speed platform can join instantly by buying Cheap Unidays Accounts.
Deployment at Speed: Terraform + CloudFormation
Time was critical, so the UNiDAYS team used Terraform to deploy core infrastructure and paired it with customized CloudFormation scripts for apps. Infrastructure was organized into tiers—platform, global, and Regional—streamlining rollout by making it easy to duplicate environments.
CloudFormation’s limitation on Region-specific exports posed a hurdle. The solution? A custom macro that made cross-Region sharing of outputs possible, enabling smoother, more coordinated deployments.
Performance, Security, and a Bit of Ingenuity
To prevent slow start-up times caused by cross-Region container image pulls, UNiDAYS turned to Amazon ECR’s private image replication. This brought container images closer to the action, reducing latency during both scaling and updates.
Security measures were just as sharp. CloudFront was paired with AWS WAF and Application Load Balancer rules, restricting access to traffic from intended CloudFront distributions only.
The payoff was immediate: in some areas, client latency dropped from 200ms to just 50ms, creating a noticeably smoother user experience.
Want to benefit from a faster and more responsive platform? Join millions of students already enjoying exclusive perks with a verified Unidays Account. Z2U.COM not only provides you with professional game strategies, but also Unidays Accounts for Sale, up to 10% cheaper!