Hello, I sent this yesterday around 2PM EDT and it did not seem to go through so I am sending again. Sorry if they both come through.
I have been reading about Twitter having scalability issues lately. This morning I was thinking to myself: "If I had to make a site like Twitter that was scalable, how would I do that?" Then it hit me, I don't really know how to make a site scalable. I have read and heard about things like: Load Balancers, Server Clusters etc... My answer has always been I would work with my hosting company if I ever needed to start dealing with that stuff. They are professionals, they will be able to set that up for me. That may or may not be a good answer for the hardware part of scalability. But really that's only part of it. My coldfusion site needs to be coded to be scalable too.. So I decided to do some research. I googled Scalable Coldfusion: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1045128.html talks about coldfusion being scalable, but is a little outdated. It was published in 2002. http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/6/Using_ClusterCATS/overview.htm talks about Scalability and Availability. It's a good read about the different hardware and software options. I read some other articles about making sure that you cache queries at all costs, make sure not to use Select *, being cautious of links etc, making sure code is organized and modular as possible. This was a good overview: http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=31089&seqNum=1 It is one of Ben Forta's books. It had a lot of cool basics in there. So writing code to be scalable doesn't seem to be all that difficult, writing good efficient code in a modular way seems to be a good start. I am sure there is more to it. The next component is databases. I have read with Mysql that replication is how you can use multiple databases. I haven't done to much research on this, my initial questions would you use a db server for users, a db server for messages, db for each component?? If one DB server goes down, how would CF Server know to switch to another one. I need to do more research. I also have read about geocoded servers. Not sure what the proper term is, but from what I understand it is where you have servers around the country or globe and based on the user's ip address the user would download graphics and other site items from those servers making things quicker. I know a few people on this list have setup Scalable websites, clusters, load balancing etc. Where did you all learn how to do such things? Did you learn based on trial and error? Is there 1 or 2 comprehensive resources that have all this information or did you have to research each piece separately? Thank you to anyone who would like to provide their feedback. I am not asking you to do my research, I am curious to learn how you got started, and any other helpful feedback you may have and any resources that were crucial in helping you create a scalable website solution. Thanks! Randy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:306606 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
