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One-off project · 5 days

RAG Pipeline for AI Startup: From 28s to 1.1s Latency

An AI startup with 12,000 active users faced a critical issue: their RAG system took 28 seconds to respond, and users were churning. In 5 days, we deployed production infrastructure that reduced latency by 25x — and moved the models inside the client's own cluster, so legal documents stopped leaving for a third-party API.

5
days to launch
25×
latency reduction
99.97%
uptime in 3 months
−62%
inference cost

Context & Problem

The client is a B2B SaaS startup building an AI assistant for legal teams. The core product is a RAG system that searches 50,000+ legal documents and generates answers with citations.

At the time they reached us: the model ran on a single GPU server without load balancing, the vector database shared a host with the API, no caching, no monitoring. At peak load, latency reached 28 seconds.

Initial Stack

  • 1× GPU server (A10G, 24 GB VRAM)
  • LLM: Mistral-7B via llama.cpp
  • Vector DB: Chroma (in-process)
  • Embeddings: OpenAI text-embedding-3-small
  • Deployment: Docker Compose on single host
  • Monitoring: none

What We Did in 5 Days

Day 1

Audit & Architecture

Conducted a full infrastructure audit, measured bottlenecks (70% of time — embedding generation, 20% — vector search, 10% — LLM inference). Designed target architecture: service separation, dedicated embedding service, Qdrant instead of Chroma.

ProfilingArchitecture DesignQdrantvLLM
Day 2

Kubernetes Cluster & Networking

Deployed a 3-node Kubernetes cluster (2× CPU, 1× GPU A100 80GB). Configured Ingress, cert-manager, namespace isolation. Migrated vector database to Qdrant with re-indexing of 50,000 documents.

KubernetesQdrantHelmcert-manager
Day 3

LLM & Embedding Services

Replaced llama.cpp with vLLM using PagedAttention — throughput increased 4x. Deployed dedicated embedding service based on bge-large-en-v1.5 (local, no OpenAI API). Added semantic caching via Redis for repeated queries.

vLLMbge-largeRedisPagedAttention
Day 4

CI/CD & Monitoring

Set up GitHub Actions → ArgoCD pipeline with automatic rollback on metric degradation. Deployed Prometheus + Grafana with custom dashboards: latency percentiles, GPU utilization, cache hit rate, vector search QPS.

ArgoCDPrometheusGrafanaGitHub Actions
Day 5

Load Testing & Handoff

Ran load testing up to 500 RPS. Final metrics: p50 latency — 0.8s, p95 — 1.1s, p99 — 1.8s. Delivered full documentation, runbooks, Terraform code, and trained the client's team.

k6TerraformDocumentationRunbooks

Results After 3 Months

Before

  • Latency p95: 28 seconds
  • Uptime: ~94% (frequent crashes)
  • OpenAI embedding cost: $1,200/month
  • No monitoring or alerts
  • Deployment: manual via SSH

After

  • Latency p95: 1.1 seconds (−96%)
  • Uptime: 99.97% over 3 months
  • Embedding cost: $460/month (−62%)
  • Grafana dashboards + PagerDuty alerts
  • GitOps: ArgoCD auto-deploy in 4 minutes

"We spent 3 months trying to optimize this ourselves. OpsCover solved the problem in 5 days. Now our users don't notice any delay — they just get answers."

A
Alex M.
CTO, LegalAI SaaS (NDA)

This is what private AI infrastructure looks like

The engagement started as a latency problem, but what got built is exactly what we now deliver as our flagship: models running inside the client's cluster, data staying in their perimeter, and the GPU bill under control.

Inference in your own cluster

vLLM with PagedAttention on the client's GPU nodes instead of llama.cpp on a single box — throughput up 4x.

Data stops leaving the perimeter

Embeddings moved from the OpenAI API to a local bge-large-en-v1.5. Legal documents are processed only inside the client's own infrastructure.

GPU spend under control

Semantic caching via Redis plus proper serving cut inference cost by 62%, and the dashboards show GPU utilization in real time.

Operable without us

GitOps via ArgoCD with automatic rollback on metric degradation, Prometheus and Grafana, Terraform code, runbooks and training for the client's team.

This engagement was a fast, focused migration on an existing model. A full private LLM deployment from scratch is a separate offer with a 4–6 week timeline.

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