Personnel requirements

Specialists who maintain Altcraft, administer and support the infrastructure must have the following knowledge and skills:

Mandatory requirements

• Technical education;
• Knowledge of TCP/IP protocols, ability to configure firewalls and diagnose network issues;
• At least one year of Linux administration experience (Ubuntu/CentOS/Debian);
• Command-line skills: process management, file permissions, system limits (ulimit, systemd);
• Knowledge of Altcraft platform functionality (see Architecture Overview and Component Description);

Databases and storage

The platform administrator works with the following databases and storage systems:

MongoDB

• Installation, configuration, running as a systemd service;
• User and access rights management;
• Index creation and management;
• Replica set configuration;
• Backup and recovery (mongodump/mongorestore);
• Performance diagnostics (slow query log, profiler);
• MongoDB is used for Control DB (system settings), FileDB (files and media), and each account's databases (subscribers, campaigns, templates, segments, etc.);

ClickHouse

• Installation and basic configuration;
• User and database management;
• Understanding table structure and partitions;
• Backup and recovery;
• ClickHouse is used for analytics, event history, segmentation, and caching external SQL queries;

Kvrocks (Redis-compatible storage)

• Installation, running as a systemd service;
• Basic redis-cli commands (keys, memory, connections);
• Backup (RDB/AOF);
• Kvrocks is used as a system cache, for campaign deduplication, workflow cache, and loyalty program cache;

SSDB

• Installation from source code, running as a systemd service;
• Configuration management (tab indentation in config files);
• Managing multiple instances (hardbounces, notifications, MTA statistics);
• SSDB is used for email stop lists, notifications, and hourly statistics;

RabbitMQ

• Installation, running as a systemd service;
• User, vhost, and permissions management (rabbitmqctl);
• Queue monitoring via web interface (port 15672);
• Disk free limit configuration;
• RabbitMQ is the main message broker for communication between all platform services;

PostgreSQL (optional)

• Installation and basic administration;
• PostgreSQL is used for the Market module (products, orders) and as DataDB for accounts;

Web servers and proxies

• Nginx — understanding configuration structure, SSL termination, reverse proxy;
• The platform automatically generates Nginx configurations via akd, but the administrator must be able to diagnose proxy issues;

Object storage (optional)

• S3-compatible storage (MinIO, AWS S3, Yandex Cloud Storage, or others) — basic understanding of the S3 protocol (buckets, access, endpoint);
• Used for storing platform files (attachments, media, import/export);

Platform tools

• akd — platform service management: start, stop, restart, status, list;
• aktool — administrative utility: database migrations, account management, segments, licenses, MTA nodes;
• Understanding the main.json configuration file structure and ability to make changes;

Monitoring and diagnostics

• Prometheus — collecting metrics from platform processes (each service exports metrics on a separate port), Push Gateway configuration;
• Monitoring key indicators:
  • Disk space (MTA spool, logs, segments, databases);
  • RabbitMQ queues (length, consumption rate);
  • Kvrocks (memory, connections);
  • MongoDB (pool connections, query time);
  • ClickHouse (insert speed, table size);
  • SMTP (delivery, bounce rates, complaints);

Authentication (optional)

• LDAP — configuring connection to an LDAP server for admin panel authentication;
• Keycloak — configuring Keycloak integration for alternative authentication;

Containerization (optional)

• Docker / Docker Compose — running the platform in a container, volume management, image updates;
• The platform is delivered as a monolithic Docker image; databases and brokers are deployed separately;

System utilities

• cutycapt + xvfb — HTML email preview generation (headless rendering);
• Understanding system limits (nofile, memlock) and their impact on performance;

note

Elimination of software errors in the platform operation is carried out only by specialists of Altcraft LLC, after the collected diagnostic information is provided to them.