PADI Axelerant
padi.com Enterprise Architecture
v1.1 · 6 November 2026
Work in progress · Version 1.1, last updated 6 November 2026
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Executive summary

The architecture of the new padi.com: what each system does, how they connect and how they are run.

5
platforms: Cloudflare, Acquia, AWS, Datadog, Crowdin
21
languages across 3 content regions
235
countries served (5 blocked plus Crimea and Sevastopol, 4 on their own sites; Russia and Belarus blocked on account.padi.com only)
~5,700
dive shops and about 130,000 shop courses in the finder
17
automated pipelines from Git to production

Summary

  • Every system is deployed to production. The new frontend runs on web-prod.padi.com and the CMS on cms-prod.padi.com; www.padi.com serves the legacy site until cutover.
  • Pages are cached at the edge and keep serving when the CMS fails. Cloudflare caches HTML for up to 24 hours and serves stale copies during origin errors. A publish clears affected pages within 8 minutes.
  • Datadog is the single observability tool, collecting telemetry in production only. The website, Drupal and the finder have live SLOs, monitors and synthetic checks. See Observability and SLIs.

Document control

Field Value
Title padi.com Enterprise Architecture
Version 1.1
Date 6 November 2026
Prepared by Axelerant
Audience PADI technology leadership, engineering teams, platform and product owners
Classification Confidential: prepared for PADI
Approvers To be named by PADI
Sources Code and configuration of the padi.com repositories in the PadiWW GitHub organisation, live platform settings and monitoring data, and the delivery team's design records, as of 6 November 2026
Version Date Change
1.0 5 Nov 2026 First issue for review
1.1 6 Nov 2026 Consolidated into an architecture reference

The estate at a glance

Figure 1. Platforms and owners. Containers and connections are in [System context](context.html) and [Containers](containers.html).
Figure 1. Platforms and owners. Containers and connections are in [System context](context.html) and [Containers](containers.html).

How to read this document

  • Start here sets scope, principles, quality targets and environments.
  • Architecture gives the C4 system context and containers, the integration catalogue, data architecture and technology versions.
  • Systems describes each system in depth, with sequence, component and entity diagrams.
  • Platform covers Cloudflare, Acquia, AWS and the deployment pipelines.
  • Quality attributes covers performance and capacity, observability, resilience, security and test coverage.
  • Governance holds decisions, the cutover plan, the operating model, open questions and a glossary.

For a one-hour walkthrough, read this page, then System context, Containers, padi.com and Drupal, Finder and search, Localisation, Performance and capacity, Cutover plan and Open questions. The other pages are reference.

In diagrams, dashed outlines and lines mark planned parts.

Scope

In scope: padi.com (Next.js frontend and Drupal CMS), Acquia Cloud hosting, the dive-shop and course finder, website search, Cloudflare, the AWS accounts that run the finder and the pipelines, deployment pipelines, MyPADI and its use of PADI platform APIs, localisation, and the cross-cutting qualities.

Out of scope, except where padi.com depends on them: store.padi.com (commercetools), club, pro.padi.com, PADI Travel internals, the PADI mobile apps, and the other PADI country domains (padi.com.cn, dive.padi.co.jp).