Server Architecture

Designing for Scale

As applications grow, architecture decisions become critical for performance, reliability, and maintainability.

Architectural Patterns

• Monolith: Single deployable unit (good for starting)
• Microservices: Independent services with specific responsibilities
• Serverless: Function-as-a-Service (AWS Lambda, Vercel Functions)
• Event-Driven: Services communicate via events/messages

Scaling Strategies

• Vertical: Bigger servers (limited)
• Horizontal: More servers behind load balancer
• Database: Read replicas, sharding, caching

Key Components

• Load Balancer: Distributes traffic (nginx, HAProxy)
• Message Queue: Async processing (Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka)
• Cache: Reduce database load (Redis, Memcached)
• CDN: Edge caching for static assets

Reliability Patterns

• Circuit breakers for failing services
• Retries with exponential backoff
• Health checks and graceful degradation
• Blue-green or canary deployments