Handles the grunt API work, authentication and providing API <-> Cache <-> Database link.
As a second layer of caching in front of Cloudfront CDNs and our own API responses. Quite frankly, without Cloudflare's support we'd be bankrupt.
Provides a super-fast cache layer between our API and database, allowing us to handle surprise bursts of users without overloading database. Response time on a cached request is usually <20ms processing, compared to ~500ms on a heavy database request.
Region-specific image caching and content-delivery to speed up page loads and increase responsiveness.
Server-side code, newer code is ES6 and most old code converted to use the better features.