Dukaan’s Bold Move: From Cloud to Bare Metal
Architectural decisions, and outcomes of Dukaan's shift from cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) to a self-hosted, bare metal infrastructure.
In a startup ecosystem dominated by AWS, GCP, and Azure, one company chose to go against the tide. Dukaan, the Bengaluru-based e-commerce enabler, made the audacious decision to move off the cloud and rebuild its entire infrastructure on self-hosted bare metal servers.
At first glance, it sounds counter-intuitive. But when you look deeper, this story isn’t just about saving costs—it’s about real engineering, performance at scale, and questioning the “default cloud” mindset.
1. Why Dukaan Left the Cloud
The decision wasn’t made lightly. Several factors pushed Dukaan to rethink its infrastructure:
- Escalating Costs
Monthly cloud bills had ballooned to $8,000–$9,000, a heavy burden in a price-sensitive Indian market where customers often pay as little as ₹999/year. With dollar-denominated billing and multi-year commitments, the economics didn’t add up. - Disk I/O Bottlenecks
The biggest performance hit came from storage latency. Cloud storage relies on replication across multiple servers and zones, which improves reliability but slows down IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).
On bare metal, direct NVMe access delivered 10x–20x higher throughput—249K IOPS vs. 10K–25K on cloud. The result? Instant, tangible speedups for database-driven storefront operations. - Profitability Pressures
With cost efficiency as a key lever, reducing infra spend was directly tied to improving the bottom line. - Deep Infrastructure Expertise
Founder-CTO Subhash Chaudhary brought years of experience managing critical infrastructure for banks, hospitals, and police networks. That background gave Dukaan the confidence to pull off what few modern startups would dare attempt.
2. How Dukaan Built Its Bare Metal Infrastructure
Leaving the cloud didn’t mean giving up modern practices. Dukaan engineered a cloud-like experience on metal:
- Hybrid Cloud for Disaster Recovery
Real-time and periodic database backups are still replicated to GCP GCS and Wasabi. If disaster strikes, Dukaan can spin up critical systems in the cloud within 7–30 minutes. - Anycast Networking for Global Reach
By owning its IP space and advertising routes globally, Dukaan ensures <50ms TTFB worldwide. If a server in New York goes down, traffic reroutes instantly to London or Amsterdam—with no packet loss. - Kubernetes Everywhere
All applications run on self-hosted Kubernetes clusters, orchestrated through IaC (YAML, Git), GitHub CI, and Argo CD. With ~47 deployments/day, their DevOps practices remain cutting-edge. - Self-Hosted Stack
PostgreSQL, Redis, Elastic Stack, Apache Druid, and SigNoz—all run in-house, tightly optimized for performance. - Bare Metal Leasing, Not Data Center Management
Dukaan leases servers from providers like PhoenixNAP (US) and Uptime (India), offloading racking and cabling while retaining full control. On-demand bare metal from Vultr provides cloud-like elasticity (new servers in ~7 minutes). - Lean SRE Team
Astonishingly, this infrastructure is run by two interns, one SRE, and Subhash (CTO) himself. Developers use Kubernetes tools like Lens UI for debugging and scaling, flattening the learning curve.
3. The Results: Cheaper, Faster, Smarter
The outcomes have been nothing short of transformative:
- Cost Savings: Infrastructure spend dropped from $9K to ~$1.5K/month.
- Performance Boost: Databases enjoy 10x–20x better I/O throughput.
- Global Reliability: Anycast routing provides resilience without expensive load balancers.
- Full Control: Vendor lock-in is eliminated, and optimization opportunities abound.
But perhaps the biggest win is perspective. Dukaan’s team learned that:
- Extreme redundancy from cloud vendors is not always necessary.
- Code failures often cause more downtime than infra failures.
- Bare metal is now cloud-like in provisioning speed—a far cry from the painful setups of the past.
- For startups that understand their traffic patterns (6–12 months in), bare metal can be a viable, cost-efficient option.
Rethinking the Cloud “Default”
Dukaan’s move is not a call for everyone to abandon the cloud. For many, cloud remains the right choice. But it is a reminder that engineering is about context, trade-offs, and courage.
The real question is:
“Do I really need the reliability that cloud providers sell, and at what performance cost?”
For Dukaan, the answer was no—and their story challenges every founder and CTO to at least ask the same question.
Final Thought: Bare metal isn’t old-school anymore. With modern providers, automation, and orchestration, it may just be the hidden superpower for startups chasing profitability and performance.