Over the past few months, KeepTrack has experienced unprecedented growth in daily traffic. While this growth is exciting, it has exposed limitations in my previous hosting infrastructure that necessitated significant changes to better serve the community.

Why I’m Making This Change

My previous hosting solution could not scale up to meet KeepTrack’s current traffic demands. Several critical limitations emerged:

• The Virtual Private Server could only process API requests sequentially (one at a time)
• Recent incidents, including database scraping attempts from Taiwan, resulted in server crashes
• The JSON file-based database system, while enabling portability for offline solutions, became a significant bottleneck for updates and API service

The New Architecture

To address these challenges, I’ve implemented a completely new serverless architecture running on Cloudflare’s impressive technology stack:

Serverless Workers

• Migration to Cloudflare Workers for serverless operation
• Automatic scaling to handle every request independently
• Significantly improved response times and reliability

Advanced Database Solution

• Transition from JSON files to Cloudflare’s D1 solution
• Incredible performance gains when looking up small chunks of data
• Enables parallel, near-simultaneous updates
• Maintained support for offline functionality

Backend Restructuring

To make this transition possible, I’ve had to split my single large catalog management backend script into dozens of small workers that can run in a serverless setup. While this restructuring has improved overall system performance, it has temporarily impacted some features.

Impact on API Users

The migration has necessitated some changes that affect the API:

• Some V1 API features have been deprecated
• Most functionality has been restored
• Work is ongoing for V2 API development

I apologize to users affected by these changes. While I understand this may cause temporary inconvenience, this migration is crucial for KeepTrack’s long-term stability and growth.

Looking Forward

This infrastructure upgrade positions KeepTrack to better serve our growing community and pursue exciting new partnerships with non-profits, academic institutions, and government organizations. This will help further my mission of making space environment visualization accessible to everyone.

The migration to Cloudflare represents a significant step forward in my ability to serve the space visualization community. While I recognize the short-term impacts on some users, particularly those utilizing the V1 API, these changes were necessary to address our rapidly growing user base and prepare for future expansion.

I will continue to:

• Restore and improve deprecated features where possible
• Develop and document the V2 API
• Keep the community updated on my progress

Contact & Support

If you’re experiencing issues with the API or would like to request features for V2 (including previously available features that were removed), please email me at admin@keeptrack.space. I value your input and want to ensure the V2 API meets the needs of the community.

Thank you for your continued support as I work to make KeepTrack more robust and capable for all users.