In today’s world scalability plays an important role. Software can experience sudden changes in load, and it needs to be able to respond. Scalable architecture ensures that software handle increase in load or users. It also allows software to support increased data and its processing. Building a scalable software architecture is essential to create software that is scalable.

Designing Scalable Software Architecture

If you are planning to design scalable architecture for your software, then the following tips will help you.

Planning Ahead

  • While it is difficult to predict the future, you need to be able to think ahead. This will help you plan your software architecture better.
  • It is important to select the right technology stack. Depending on the type of software being built choose the right platform. (eg: Cordova for cross-platform, Angular for web frontend, and Node.js for backend).
  • The groundwork for future growth of the software needs to be laid at the planning stage. It is important to try and predict the future, so you can plan the architecture accordingly. Using microservices architecture can be a good alternative to traditional designs. Instead of creating a monolith, creating independent services makes it easy to scale. The benefit of this approach is that each microservice can be scaled without affecting other components. It allows for better resource allocation. Fixing faults becomes easy when microservice architecture is used.
  • While planning, it is important to maximize resource availability. This would help in preventing bottlenecks. Some of the ways to do this is through caching that helps store data near to the end user to improve speed. Using load balancing software prevents pressure from building up one node. Using non-blocking IO calls can help in ensuring more requests are served using limited resources.

Plan for Infrastructure

  • Use horizontal scaling and avoid vertical scaling. Adding more nodes to a distributed network is an effective way. Vertical scaling involves adding more resources (more servers or RAM). This is cost-intensive and does not scale well.
  • Avoid the use of physical servers and instead get the benefits of cloud storage. Companies will not be burdened with infrastructure costs and can pay only for what they use. Scaling is also easier and most importantly ROI can be achieved faster.

Follow the right principles

  • Distribute work away from the core. This is a key principle that ensures there are no bottlenecks while scaling.
  • The software development process need to be streamlined. This will allow you to deploy new features faster without having to put in too much effort. Using the right tools will help make this happen.

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