Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites, Safari

This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

In their successful first book, The Art of Scalability, AKF Partners cofounders Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher drew on their unparalleled experience managing some of the world's highest transaction volume Web sites to cover everything IT and business leaders need to know to build smoothly scaling technology infrastructures. Now in Scalability Rules the authors tackle scalability once again, this time breaking it down into 50 rules that must be followed for effective and manageable growth. Few people have effectively scaled their Web platforms to the size of Amazon, Google, eBay, and Facebook. Scalability Rules takes a direct approach by presenting fundamental principles in an easily read and digestible format for rapid application to almost any technical environment. It will be useful to all readers as a primer, a refresher, and as a reference. Its principles can be used to form the basis of architectural strategy for just about any company dealing with hypergrowth in the Web 2.0 world. **This book is currently available in Rough Cut format; as the authors write chapters they will be added here. Subscribers will be notified as more chapters become available.

Preface     viii

Acknowledgments   xiii

About the Authors     xiv

1 Reduce the Equation     1

2 Distribute Your Work     23

3 Design to Scale Out Horizontally    35

4 Use the Right Tools    53

5 Don’t Duplicate Your Work    71

6 Use Caching Aggressively     87

7 Learn from Your Mistakes     113

8 Database Rules     129

9 Design for Fault Tolerance and Graceful Failure    147

10 Avoid or Distribute State     167

11 Asynchronous Communication and Message Buses    179

12 Miscellaneous Rules     193

13 Rule Review and Prioritization     213

Index     247