Distributed IoT/AIoT Backend System

Principal Backend Architect - Erlang/OTP Engineer at 5GenCare - Building fault-tolerant distributed systems for IoT/AIoT telemetry and device management

Project Overview

As Senior Erlang Cloud Engineer at 5Gencare, I architected and maintained a distributed IoT/AIoT backend system built with Erlang/OTP and Mnesia. This mission-critical system handles real-time telemetry data from thousands of IoT devices across multiple regions, providing cloud telemetry and device management capabilities.

Technical Architecture

Core Components

  • Device Management: Registration, authentication, and lifecycle management for IoT devices
  • Telemetry Processing: Real-time data ingestion and analysis from AIoT sensors
  • Cloud Infrastructure: Container-based deployment with Docker and GitLab CI
  • Observability: Comprehensive monitoring and tracing for distributed services

Technology Stack

  • Backend: Erlang/OTP, Mnesia (distributed database)
  • Infrastructure: Docker, GitLab CI for automated deployments
  • Database: PostgreSQL for persistent storage
  • Monitoring: Prometheus for metrics collection
  • Security: TLS/OpenSSL for secure communications

Key Features

Distributed System Design

  • Fault Tolerance: Leveraging Erlang’s actor model for automatic recovery
  • High Availability: 99.9% uptime through distributed supervision trees
  • Scalability: Horizontal scaling across multiple nodes
  • Real-time Processing: Sub-second latency for telemetry data

Cloud Telemetry

  • Device Registration: Automated onboarding of IoT devices
  • Data Ingestion: High-throughput processing of sensor data
  • Alert System: Intelligent monitoring and notification engine
  • API Gateway: RESTful interfaces for external integrations

Results

Performance Achievements

  • Reliability: 99.9% uptime achieved through fault-tolerant design
  • Scalability: Support for 10,000+ concurrent IoT devices
  • Latency: Sub-second response times for telemetry data
  • Maintainability: Zero-downtime hot code upgrades

Business Impact

  • Device Management: Streamlined IoT device lifecycle management
  • Data Processing: Real-time analytics for AIoT applications
  • Operational Efficiency: Automated deployment and monitoring
  • Cost Optimization: Efficient resource utilization through containerization

Impact

This system serves as the foundation for 5Gencare’s IoT platform, enabling customers to deploy and manage IoT devices at scale while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability and security standards. The architecture has been adopted by multiple teams and serves as a reference implementation for distributed IoT systems.

References