Friday, August 23, 2024

Web server vs database server scaling

Every user interaction with a website, such as loading a page, clicking a button, or submitting a form, generates a request to the web server. These interactions are frequent and often involve static assets (like images, CSS, and JavaScript files), rendering HTML, and processing logic. As the number of users increases, the web server has to handle a rapidly growing number of these requests.

While many web requests may involve querying the database, they don't always result in database interactions. For example, pages with static content, content cached in memory, or content generated by the web server without requiring a database query won’t proportionally increase the database load. Additionally, many web requests might use the same data that can be cached on the web server, reducing the number of database queries.

Only dynamic content that requires data retrieval or storage will result in database queries. Since not all web interactions require new data from the database, the database load doesn't increase as rapidly as the web server load.

Initially, it's easier and more effective to scale web servers horizontally to handle increased traffic. The database server can handle a significant amount of load on its own due to its ability to manage data consistency, and because you can optimize performance through caching and other techniques. Once the traffic and data operations reach a certain threshold, you will need to consider scaling your database server as well.

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