Challenge
 

A leader in skill assessment industry was facing the following key challenges in coding simulators:

• Shared Environment Risks: Candidates received template-based assessments in a shared environment, requiring root access for certain packages. This exposed the entire cloud infrastructure to potential security breaches.

• Limited Simulator Capabilities: The simulators could only support predefined libraries, unit tests, and templated projects, limiting the depth and effectiveness of the assessments.

• High Resource Costs: Running assessments in a shared environment led to inefficient resource usage, driving up operational costs.

Approach

• Dockerization of Simulators: Xponentium migrated the simulator application to a Dockerized environment, providing each candidate with an isolated testing environment. It helped horizontal scaling of the system in a robust manner and also eliminated shared environment risks and allowed candidates to work on more complex, real-life projects rather than simple template-based ones.

• Dynamic Access Authorization: Implemented low-level Kubernetes APIs to enable real-time dynamic access authorization, enhancing the security of the simulator environment by removing the need for root access.

• Custom Resource Configurations: Enabled custom configurations for CPU and memory based on the specific requirements of each test, optimizing resource utilization and reducing costs. The use of container limits ensured that inefficient code could not consume excessive resources, keeping operational expenses under control.

Xponentium Impact
 

• Cost Reduction: The modular test environments and optimized resource usage led to a significant reduction in costs, particularly by eliminating the need for a shared environment.

• Increased Scalability: The system's capacity expanded from handling 1,200–1,500 concurrent sessions to 10,000, supporting the company’s growing demand for large-scale assessments.

• Enhanced Security: By eliminating the need for root access, Xponentium significantly improved the security of the simulators, protecting the client’s infrastructure from potential vulnerabilities.