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Challenges.md

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⚠️ Project Challenges

Given the resource and time constraints, this project is not yet fully complete. The challenges faced demonstrate that this project required not just infrastructure expertise but also a deep dive into application architecture, cloud-native adaptations, and service orchestration. Time and resource constraints meant prioritizing core functionality over polish, but the insights gained form a solid foundation for future improvements.

🔹 Broader Scope Beyond Infrastructure

Provisioning infrastructure (VPC, EKS, RDS, IAM, etc.) was only the starting point. The true complexity lies in adapting application-level requirements—such as schema initialization, Helm charting, and service exposure—to a secure, production-ready cloud environment.

🔹 Lack of Supabase Experience

This project involved working with Supabase for the first time, both in its self-hosted form and outside of its managed SaaS platform. The learning curve was steep due to:

  • Gaps in understanding Supabase internals.
  • Unfamiliarity with its dependencies and service structure.
  • Minimal guidance available beyond code inspection.

🔹 Supabase Maturity & Documentation

Supabase is still a young and evolving project. This means:

  • Frequent changes and evolving best practices.
  • Limited official documentation.
  • Reliance on reading the source code or community discussions for answers.
  • Incomplete or outdated references for Kubernetes-based deployments.

🔹 Application Exposure on AWS

Making the Kubernetes-hosted application securely accessible on the public Internet required integrating several AWS services:

  • Route53 for domain management.
  • AWS Load Balancer Controller (ALB Controller) for ingress management.
  • AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for TLS/SSL certificates.

Each component requires careful configuration and IAM permissions, making it a non-trivial challenge under time constraints.

🔹 Migration from Docker Compose to Kubernetes

Supabase is primarily distributed as Docker containers orchestrated via Docker Compose. Transitioning this stack to Kubernetes required:

  • Breaking apart tightly coupled containers.
  • Writing custom Helm manifests and values files.
  • Adapting persistent storage and secrets to Kubernetes-native resources.
  • Overcoming differences in service discovery and networking models.

🔹 Lack of Maintained Community Charts

While community Helm charts exist, many are outdated or abandoned. This results in:

  • The need to fork or write custom charts from scratch.
  • Extra testing and validation to ensure compatibility with recent Supabase versions.
  • Higher maintenance overhead going forward.