Scalable System Architectures

For highly critical commercial applications

For large-scale systems with significant traffic

For small, low-priority tools or personal websites

For applications requiring high availability

High cost of scaling

Single point of failure

Complexity of setup

Redundant database connections

Adding more servers to distribute the load

Increasing the capacity of an existing server

Implementing a load balancer to manage traffic

Dividing a database into multiple shards

It requires complex database partitioning.

It is limited by the maximum capacity of a single server.

It cannot handle stateless requests efficiently.

It increases the number of servers to maintain.

Horizontal scaling increases the size of servers, while vertical scaling adds more servers.

Horizontal scaling involves adding more servers, while vertical scaling increases the size of existing servers.

Horizontal scaling reduces server maintenance, while vertical scaling increases it.

Horizontal scaling focuses on database optimization, while vertical scaling focuses on application layers.

Database replicas

A load balancer

A central storage system

An additional web server

To ensure they can share storage efficiently

To allow any server to handle any user request independently

To improve CPU utilization across the system

To minimize database load during high traffic

It reduces system complexity.

It eliminates single points of failure.

It is more cost-effective for small-scale systems.

It requires fewer machines to maintain.

A globally distributed e-commerce platform

A personal website with low traffic

A real-time video streaming service

A high-frequency financial trading application

It limits the ability to add more servers.

It increases the likelihood of server failure.

It introduces more components to maintain.

It restricts redundancy in the system.

Prioritize redundancy regardless of cost.

Build the simplest architecture that meets the requirements.

Always opt for horizontal scaling, even for small systems.

Avoid using load balancers to minimize complexity.