How to effectively scale your web application

With the ever-developing nature of the technology industry, you need a web application that can seamlessly handle explosive growth. Your website should be adaptable to the dynamic nature of the market and absorb the most efficient models of expansion.

However, not everyone can hit the bull’s eye on the first shot. It takes time for some website development companies to build a strong web application and make it more sustainable for growth.

Hence, you need a good application scaling model that can develop web architecture and manage your growth in a controlled manner.

What is application scalability?

Application scalability is the capability of your web application and its potential to handle more requests per minute (RPM) over time. Each interaction that your user initiates while using your application generates a request. The more requests your application can attend to in a minute, the better.

It is a vital aspect that checks the efficiency to incorporate new changes and adapt with developing technologies.

It’s not an overnight task that can be achieved with a few simple tweaks. It’s a long time process where you have to develop the software, as well as the hardware of your web application.

Most web developers keep adding new CPUs to extend their memory limits and find a temporary solution to the problem. However, there will come a limit when you can’t add any more CPUs. Increasing the CPUs will only provide you more throughput, whereas you need to improve your application’s performance.

Why is scaling necessary

Website scaling has proven to be a profitable move for all website applications that have implemented it. It gives you a more sustainable solution to your problems and opens your door to future expansion.

Other benefits of scaling include:

● Higher ROI: You will get higher returns on your investment. While you only need a considerable amount to purchase software and hardware upgrades, the profits that can be earned by doing that are exponential. You will be able to increase your user base and create a better standard for your company in the industry.

● Exponentially increase your performance: With a good scalable application, you can exponentially increase your performance. You will be able to cater to more clients, without hampering or lagging your interface.

● Improves customer relationship and goodwill: A smooth functioning web application can communicate better with the users. By doing so, you develop a stronger customer relationship and maintain goodwill in the industry.

● Optimizes your efficiency: You can also optimize your efficiency by improving your web application. You won’t have to rely on your web development company to fix your glitches and customizing the application as per your needs.

● Provides a better standard in the market: With a good customer relationship and high functioning application, users will be attracted to your web application. This will increase your sales and show an upward graph in your growth.

Problems faced while scaling your web application and how to solve them

Web server overload

One of the most initial problems that we had to face with is the overloading of your server. Numerous clients used to face the problem of server overload where their web applications would crash. That is because as your flow of concurrent clients will gradually increase, eventually, all your resources will run out.

In this case, you need to increase your server resources. The best way to achieve that is by incorporating vertical scaling wherein your upgrade your CPU, as well as the RAM capacity.

Inefficient database engine

A common mistake that we used to make is that we only incorporated one server for a particular job. This backfired at us as it introduced a single point of failure for the entire web infrastructure.

To prevent this, You need to incorporate multiple database servers that can create backups.

The best technique to achieve that is replication. Replication doesn’t only create copies of your application’s data; it also replicates the activities of the user. Every query that is executed on the master database will automatically be executed on the backups. This way, if your master database passes out, one of the backups can be used as the master database.

Issues with distributing traffic

We introduced multiple servers to distribute our traffic, but we started to observe a new problem brewing. Many times, the servers would jumble up the IP addresses of your users and show unexplained errors. Often, one of your servers will get overflowed with data and shut down.

To overcome this problem, we installed a load balancer that would help us invigilate the traffic. While you have introduced multiple servers to help you distribute your traffic, there still needs to be someone to invigilate the traffic. And load balancer fulfills that task.

It works as an intermediary between the users and your server and helps to organize the data in each server. The load balancer knows the IP addresses of all your servers, so it can efficiently distribute the traffic amongst the servers.

Factoring out sessions

In the initial phase of our website development, we used to employ sessions to identify returning users. However, we observed that it posed a functional problem in the case of multiple servers.

After analyzing the situation, we discovered that sessions are by default stored in individual servers. When the load balancer takes your user to a different server, he/she will have to log in again.

To solve this problem, we used a Redis server that can decouple the sessions to an entirely different storage solution.

Insufficient cache engine

The cache engine is one of the most essential elements when it comes to speeding up your page loading time and first-byte response. It stores the previously accessed content locally and saves it for the next user who might need it. This way, the user can easily and quickly access the resources.

However, if your cache engine is not capable enough to handle extensive server loads, it can limit your range and user capacity. And in a scaling model, that can be a major setback. You can use Amazon Elastic Cache, Memcached, or Redis, which have repetitively shown excellent results.

https://www.netguru.com/blog/how-to-effectively-scale-your-web-application

Conclusion

While there are thousands of other intricate problems that your web application might have, these are the few major problems that can significantly improve your performance. They will help you deal with the major hassles that can hamper your application’s growth and help it prosper to its full capacity.

If you can properly implement these changes, you can considerably expand your user base and provide them with the most optimal user experience. This will in turn help you effectively scale your application and improve your company’s stand in the market.