01. Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling
Vertical Scaling (Scaling Up): Adding more power (CPU, RAM) to an existing server. It has hard physical limits and represents a Single Point of Failure (SPOF).
Horizontal Scaling (Scaling Out): Deploying multiple server units. Combats traffic limits perfectly but requires a Load Balancer to split the requests.
02. Load Balancers (LB)
An entry point proxy that forwards client requests evenly to backing application servers. Without a load balancer, even with multiple servers running, only Server 1 receives incoming packets, causing a single instance crash.
03. Redis In-Memory Caching
Databases read from spinning or solid-state disks, which is slow and limited in active IOPS. A cache acts as a temporary memory space (RAM) intercepting standard read commands, directly absorbing up to 80% of database load.
04. CDNs (Content Delivery Networks)
Global edge servers distributing static assets (HTML, images, videos) closer to the physical users. They dramatically cut load speeds (latency) and instantly relieve backend server farms of resource requests.
05. Database Scaling Patterns
SQLite: Ideal for prototyping. Local file-based, collapses immediately under multiple active read/write actions.
Master-Slave Replica Cluster: Separates read/write workloads. Writes hit the master node; reads distribute to slave copies, scaling query capacities.
Sharded Database: Splits records across multiple distinct physical servers using a hash key, allowing massive enterprise scale operations.