Jo is a co-founder, Vice President of Engineering, and Infra Team leader at Bisonai. He has witnessed and participated in the development of internet services from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0. Now, he tackles complex challenges in the DevOps and Data Management space, ensuring that Bisonai products are highly stable, secure, and cost-effective.
M: Hello Jo, can you please introduce yourself?
J: Hi, I’m Shinmyung Park, but most folks just call me Jo. As the VP of Engineering at Bisonai, I’m all about diving deep into the world of DevOps. While I’ve had my fair share of transitions in the past, landing at Bisonai has been like finding my true calling. Now, I’m laser-focused on leading the charge and driving innovation in the DevOps space.
M: Thank you for your introduction! What inspired you to pursue a career in DevOps, and how has your journey led you to your current role?
J: To be honest, I didn’t initially have a strong interest in DevOps. I started my career in web development using ASP, PHP, and the like, mainly focusing on projects related to e-commerce and systems integration. I’ve been involved in numerous projects, including setting up servers and migrating databases for a dental facility in Alaska, USA, as well as installing various remote access applications and studying Hypervisor virtualization and high availability (HA). It was during this time that I began to delve deeply not only into application development but also into understanding the environments needed to run them.
Being part of a startup like Bisonai has brought with it numerous challenges and rapid changes, along with the need to adapt to new technologies at an accelerated pace. Technological trends seem to be evolving much faster in recent years than they did over decades. Despite being the most senior in terms of experience at Bisonai, I’ve made continuous efforts to keep up with the latest trends and not be afraid to learn and apply new things. One of the things that truly makes me happy about being at Bisonai is that the company is not negative about trying new things. The company culture is very supportive of pivoting towards the most suitable technological trends for the current situation.
Working alongside highly skilled developers at Bisonai has undoubtedly provided me with the steepest learning curve of my career. While there are still many areas where I can improve, I am highly satisfied with the fact that the co-founders always engage in discussions and debates, which contributes significantly to how the company is managed.
M: It’s impressive how you’ve seamlessly transitioned from web development to deeply understanding the intricacies of DevOps. Could you share a specific project or challenge you faced at Bisonai that really pushed you to apply your expertise and learn new technologies?
J: I have worked on many projects at Bisonai, but one particularly challenging task stands out: the cost-saving initiative and migration from AWS to GCP for Klaytn Finder (Klaytn Blockchain Explorer). It was quite a shift moving from the familiar territory of AWS to GCP. We received support from the Google Asia team through their onboarding program, followed by building the system according to best practices and even open-sourcing it. Throughout this process, I naturally gained a deeper understanding of the differences and structures between the two platforms. Alongside the challenges in the cloud realm of DevOps, parsing on-chain data according to contracts in the blockchain was another hurdle.
Perhaps mastering new tools or trends in application comes from a solid understanding of the problems we face or the results we aim to achieve. It’s not just about using what’s popular; it’s about daring to embrace change and apply tools that solve our project’s challenges and improve upon them. In that sense, projects at Bisonai have been immensely helpful in my growth journey.
M: That sounds like a complex and rewarding project! Could you elaborate on some of the specific strategies or techniques you employed during the migration from AWS to GCP, and how those experiences have influenced your approach to future projects?
J: During the migration from AWS to GCP, utilizing GCP’s Database Migration Service for live migration was crucial. With a vast amount of data and the need to migrate without compromising the performance of live services, making it a key focus. Additionally, due to the nature of blockchain explorer, it wasn’t just about migrating databases; it involved parsing and storing blockchain data, ensuring its integrity, validating it, and even developing new backend applications to fill in any gaps. Collaborating as a team with shared knowledge of blockchain was also vital. The gained experiences will greatly assist in extracting, transforming, and managing on-chain data more effectively and seamlessly in future projects.
M: Your approach to handling the migration and the complexities of blockchain data integration is fascinating! You mentioned that team collaboration was vital to success. Could you please share how you approach collaboration at Infra team?
J: There are several teams overseeing blockchain products at Bisonai. Simply moving systems is not enough to achieve migration and cost reduction. Understanding the overall content of the actual service is necessary. Accumulated knowledge from past projects collaborating with blockchain team with on-chain knowledge was immensely helpful for parsing NFTs and tokens and aggregating information for this service. Additionally, support from product team was crucial in understanding and operation of blockchain nodes, as well as handling large-scale data processing using tools like Kafka and Scala. Perhaps the Infra team doesn’t stand out in this sense, but it’s not insignificant either. We support developers and ensure quality of production services, and it naturally leads to communication with all teams and mutual growth.
M: You sound very humble! I believe that the Infra team is foundational for the success of every product. So far, we have learned about what cloud providers have been used by your team. Could you please share more about the infra tech stack at Bisonai?
J: Our team has adopted a variety of tech stacks tailored to the design and scale of each project, rather than adhering to standardization. Thus, we always deliberate together at the outset of a project to research which stack to use and strive to find and implement the best practices.
For MBX Marketplace, we utilized AWS EKS, Redis Cluster, and RDS, and created a data state management system using Graph Node and PostgreSQL procedures for parsing on-chain data. The CI/CD setup consists of GitHub Actions and Argo CD. Additionally, we incorporate a variety of other technologies to enhance the service. When setting up infrastructure for Orakl Network, we constructed a deployment pipeline using GKE centered around GCP, incorporating Git, Helm, and Argo CD. All systems are monitored and alerted using Grafana. As mentioned before, we migrated Klaytn Finder from AWS to GCP. Additionally, we utilized Kafka, Dataproc, Redis, and GKE. Currently, we are setting up our own data center with Proxmox and Ceph, along with services such as Tailscale and CrowdSec, which will be used by our new products.
M: Recently, you decided to set up our own IDC for the new product. Could you please share the reasoning behind this decision?
J: While it’s true that we recently transitioned from the cloud to an IDC, the primary objective was actually to utilize a hybrid approach. The cloud offers numerous advantages in terms of usage and management; however, the primary challenge frequently arises from cost considerations. To address this, we are adopting a hybrid approach by combining our own servers with cloud services. Although this is still a work in progress, the aim is to significantly reduce costs and leverage the synergy between cost-effective cloud services and our self-managed servers.
M: Who do you think would fit well at Bisonai?
J: In my opinion, the ideal candidate should, first and foremost, be someone who is open-minded toward diverse cultures and languages. Given the presence of people from various nationalities and religions, a greater level of understanding is necessary. One should not expect Bisonai to be a typical startup in South Korea. It is important to have an open mind that respects each individual’s background and knowledge.
Secondly, the ideal candidate should possess a mindset that perseveres when faced with hard technical challenges. Whether related to infrastructure or not, it would be great if the candidate could find satisfaction in solving numerous new issues and challenges instead of becoming fatigued by them.
Thirdly, since Bisonai’s culture is based on autonomy, responsibility, and trust, one must take responsibility for their time and work to grow. While each team has its leaders and the company’s direction and goals are clear, there is a lot of openness regarding work hours and utilization of experience in various circumstances. Therefore, if one is not prepared themselves, it may be difficult to grow. On the other hand, I believe those who are passionate and eager to learn will grow very fast.
