When VulneraX moved beyond its first dozen scanners, we hit the classic monolith pain points: slow builds, tangled dependencies, and the “one-bug-breaks-all” deploy fear. We needed an architecture that could scale scans, isolate failures, and evolve independently. Enter Go-based microservices.
The three-service split
We decomposed the core into:
- Scanner Service: Runs 155+ vulnerability modules. Stateless, horizontally scalable, with each instance able to handle jobs from the queue.
- Job Queue Service: RabbitMQ as the backbone, handling scan job distribution, retries, and prioritization for high-risk targets.
- Report Service: Consumes completed scan results, generates evidence-rich A4 PDFs, and uploads them to cloud storage with signed URLs.
Why Go?
Go’s concurrency model via goroutines and channels is perfect for network-heavy tasks like scanning. Its small binaries, static typing, and fast startup make it ideal for containerized workloads running at scale.
Scaling strategy
Scanner instances scale up or down based on queue depth. Each module implements a common Scanner interface so new vulnerability checks can ship without touching other services. Reports are decoupled, meaning slow PDF generation never delays scanning.
Operational benefits
- Fault isolation: A bug in one service doesn’t cascade across the system.
- Selective deploys: Patch the Report Service without redeploying scanners.
- Elastic costs: Scale up only when demand spikes, then scale down to save.
The payoff? We can run thousands of scans a day without melting down, integrate new modules in hours, and keep report SLAs tight—even under heavy load. By combining Go’s performance with a clean microservice split, VulneraX built an engine that’s both fast and future-proof.