How To Develop A Scalable Application Using AWS Cloud?

An application's scalability is as vital as its functionality and user interface. It is much more critical if your software will service more than a million users in the future. This blog will teach you how to scale your app to 1 million users on AWS. Assume you've constructed a web application and have a few clients. After some comments and ideas, you will have a fully functional product. Now, your marketing staff promotes your app on product search to gain new clients. Thousands of visitors are suddenly utilizing your app; at one moment, they cannot utilize it.

You've tested your app and found it to be functional. So, what exactly happened?

"This is not a bug, but rather a scalability issue." Your cloud infrastructure is not built to grow as traffic increases."

I've seen a lot of startups that prioritize features above scalability. Developing robust and scalable apps is a crucial component of any application design. Before delving deeper, let's first establish the what and why of scalability.

What is Scalability?

Scalability of an application refers to its capacity to continue working even as the number of users or scope increases. However, scalability may be applied to any system, including companies and teams.

When scalability is done correctly, it can accommodate increased user traffic without causing performance difficulties. We don't even need to make any big modifications to the code or server architecture if we set the groundwork correctly.

Why Scalability Matters?

Consider a favorite app on your smartphone. Consider this app causing you problems such as frequent app crashes, lousy customer support, and unwanted in-app updates. What will you do in this situation? Will you stick with the same app or start seeking better alternatives?

I'm guessing the second one. Scalability issues look something like this. They panic when the app's creators notice that their user base has unexpectedly expanded and need extra servers to meet the increased demand. They attempt every feasible means to close performance differences. If customers have previously encountered several faults, they will remove your app and begin using the competitor's app.

Scalable apps, however, are built to accommodate rapid expansion. They are more user-friendly and provide a competitive advantage over non-scalable programs. They have improved performance, a higher ROI, and satisfied customers.

Steps To Develop A Scalable Application Using AWS Cloud Services

Step 1: Initial Configuration of Cloud Architecture

You are the only one who is using the app on localhost. It is possible to begin by deploying an application in a box. To get started, you must use the AWS services listed below.

●     Amazon Machines Images (AMI)

Amazon Machine Image (AMI) contains the instructions for launching an instance, which is a virtual server in the cloud. You can provide an AMI when launching an instance. An AMI contains a template for the instance's root volume, launch permissions that specify which AWS accounts may use the AMI to launch instances, and a block device mapping that defines the volumes to attach to the instance when it is started.

●     Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud enables the deployment of AWS resources on a virtual network. It provides total control over the virtual networking environment, including IP address range selection, subnet formation, route table and network gateway setup.

●     Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is the AWS cloud's scalable computing capability. This eliminates the need for hardware up front, allowing you to design and deploy apps more quickly.

●     Amazon Route 53

Amazon Route 53 is a scalable and highly available cloud DNS web service. Amazon Route 53 connects user requests to AWS infrastructure such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, and Amazon S3 buckets.

A larger box is required here. Simply select the bigger instance type, which is known as vertical scaling. Vertical scaling is sufficient at first, but we cannot scale vertically endlessly. You'll eventually reach a brick wall. Furthermore, it does not address failover and redundancy.

Step 2: Make Numerous Hosts & Select a Database

As the number of users grows and data is generated, you must first select a database. It is best to begin using SQL Database because of the following reasons:

• Technology that is well-established and well-worn.
• Support from the community and the most up-to-date tools
• We're not going to shatter SQL databases with our first ten million users.

You should utilize a NoSQL database if your users will create a vast volume of data in multiple types. At this point, you have everything in one bucket. In the long run, this design is more difficult to grow and administer. It's time to create multi-tier architecture in order to segregate the database from the application.

Step 3: Store Database On Amazon Rds To Ease The Operations

When users increase to 100, Database deployment is the first thing which needs to be done. There are two general directions to deploy a database on AWS. The foremost option is to use a managed database service such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) or Amazon DynamoDB and the second step is to host your own database software on Amazon EC2.

●     Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS (Amazon Relational Database Service) makes it simple to set up, run, and scale a relational database in the cloud. Amazon RDS supports six well-known database engines, including Amazon Aurora, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB.

●     Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed proprietary NoSQL database service provided by Amazon.com as part of the Amazon Web Services portfolio.

Step 4: To Boost Availability, Create Different Availability Zones

You may encounter availability concerns based on the present architecture. If your web app's host fails, it may go down. So you'll need another web instance in a different Availability Zone to host the slave database for RDS.

• Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
• Multi – Az Deployment

Step 5: To Improve Performance, Move Static Material To Object-Based Storage

You'll need to add extra read replicas to RDS to boost performance and efficiency. This relieves the pressure on the write master database. Moving static information to Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront can also help to lessen the strain on web servers.

• Amazon S3
• Amazon ElastiCache
• Amazon CloudFront
• Amazon DynamoDB

Step 6: Setting Up Auto Scaling To Automatically Meet Shifting Demand

At this point, your architecture is too complicated for a small team to maintain, and without effective monitoring and analysis, it's tough to continue further.

• Amazon CloudWatch
• AWS Cloud Formation
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• AWS OpsWorks
• AWS CodeDeploy

Step 7: For Further Flexibility, Use SOA

When creating big scale online applications, you must employ Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to support more than one million users.

• Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
• AWS Lambda

Conclusion

The decision on how to approach scaling should be determined ahead of time because you never know when you will become famous! Furthermore, crashing (or even delaying) pages makes your users angry and gives your app a poor image. It will eventually have an impact on your revenue.

 Designing scalable websites involves time, effort, and a significant investment. Exato Softwares is the most excellent solution for firms with a requirement and struggling to get it done. We've built scalable web applications for clients with millions of users. Don't hesitate to contact us for a free consultation and price quotation.