Enhancing Website Scalability with Distributed Systems
Scaling Your Website: Vertical vs. Horizontal Approaches
What happens when multiple clients put requests on a website at the same time? The app doesn't process these requests from multiple clients in a single instance. It can process these requests one by one and send a response. This is how the app starts getting a lot of traffic. With increased traffic, the number of requests made to a single server increased so much that it crashed. To solve this problem, there are two scaling methods. Let's discuss them in brief:
Vertical Scalling
To handle traffic, you can buy a bigger server with more RAM, CPU, and storage. This bigger server can handle more requests. However, Vertical Scaling works only for a while. The traffic on your server may keep increasing, and you keep buying bigger servers until one day there is no bigger server available. To overcome the drawbacks of Vertical Scaling, there is Horizontal Scaling. Let's learn about that in the next section.
Horizontal Scaling
In Horizontal Scaling, you can add more servers and spread the incoming requests among them. This creates a distributed system where multiple computers work together to achieve a common goal. These computers can be in the same location or in different places, connected through the internet. But how are these requests handled by the distributed servers? When a request comes in, any of the servers can respond. These servers can be located anywhere in the world. The requests are allocated to the servers based on their geographical location. Who manages this allocation of requests? The answer to this question will be in the next blog.
Vertical Scaling vs. Horizontal Scaling
| Feature | Vertical Scaling | Horizontal Scaling |
| Scaling Limit | Has a limit; you can only upgrade to a certain point | No limit; you can keep adding more servers |
| Fault Tolerance | Low; relies on a single machine, hence a single point of failure | High; if one machine fails, others continue to work |
| Latency | Higher latency due to a centralized server location | Lower latency by distributing servers geographically |
Conclusion
In conclusion, scaling your website is essential for handling increased traffic and maintaining performance. While vertical scaling offers a quick fix, it has its limits. Horizontal scaling provides a more sustainable solution by distributing the load across multiple servers. By using these strategies, you can improve your website's scalability and reliability, ensuring a smooth experience for users even during high traffic. Stay tuned for our next blog on how request allocation is managed in distributed systems.