Building Scalable Systems: A Practical Approach

Scalability is one of the most important aspects of modern software architecture. But what does it mean? It's the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system.

Vertical vs. Horizontal Scaling

Vertical scaling (scaling up) means adding more power (CPU, RAM) to an existing machine, while horizontal scaling (scaling out) means adding more machines to your pool of resources.

For most modern web applications, horizontal scaling is preferred due to its flexibility and redundancy capabilities.

Key Strategies

• Load Balancing: Distributing traffic across multiple servers to prevent any single server from becoming a bottleneck.
• Database Sharding: Splitting a large database into smaller, more manageable pieces called shards.
• Caching: Storing frequently accessed data in memory to reduce database load and improve response times.