Building Scalable and Robust Web Applications: Best Practices

Are you developing a web app? Then, ensure you create a web app capable of scaling. It is essential because irrespective of the project (app) you are launching, it is essential that the system is prepared to handle the increase in users after a while. If you are not building scalable and robust web applications, your system will be unable to support heavy load. Thus, be vigilant to create a scalable application from the beginning. Scalable applications have three attributes:

• These web apps can scale to multiple different servers globally providing more capacity, resilience and lower latency.
• They scale in response to the demand of traffic going down or up. 
• They scale in-detail based on particular needs. For instance, they can scale in specific locations or in parts of the app, which are in-demand. 

The best web development company can help you build a scalable web application to process massive data streams with no unexpected breakdowns. This blog discusses the best practices to create a scalable and robust web application. 

Scalable Web Application: Definition

Scalability implies the ability of a web app to control data, user interactions, and traffic without compromising or affecting its performance. For successful web development, scalability is the most important fundamental aspect to follow. It ensures the app can adapt and grow to meet user demand.

Best Practices for Building Scalable and Robust Web Applications

Assess the need for scaling the web app and manage expectations

Before building scalable and robust web applications, assess the needs and manage your expectations. Why? Because scaling is not cheap! Therefore, ensure that the growth you are expecting will justify the expenses. For this:

Collect data and verify if the web app can support your growth strategy.

Evaluate your storage plan to define options for effectively handling the increase in data and user traffic.

• Also, consider the impact on IT costs when it’s off-peak season.
• All this will allow you to determine whether building a scalable web app is the right thing for your business or not.

Define the scalability challenge using metrics.

Determining whether you need to scale your web app is not enough. You also have to decide which scalability issues to focus on. The best web development company uses four metrics for defining the challenges:

Utilization of memory: It’s the amount of RAM used by a specific system at a given unit of time.

• CPU usage: If the CPU usage is high, it indicates the app is having performance issues. It is a critical metric that you can define using app-monitoring tools.
• Disk Output/Input: It implies all operations happening on a physical disk.
• Network Output/Input: It implies time spent on sending data from a tracked process to a different one. Once you verify the instances that consume the most time, you know it is a challenge.

Also Read:  2024 Marketing Ideas And Strategies To Boost Your E-commerce Sales

Do avoid single POFs (points of failure).

Another best practice to follow while building a scalable web app is to identify all dependencies that, if failed, can affect the reliability, performance, and security of the app. Remember, an app cannot scale well if the applications or components it is dependent on are unscalable. If a single dependency causes the app’s performance to have downtime or drop, then it is a single point of failure. Avoiding this in the system architecture is essential. To find a single POF, you can:

• Investigate every component of the app and its broader system, like databases, servers, routers, and other infrastructure.
• Then determine how its failure is affecting the working of your web app.

Things to remember to correct a single POF:

• Include redundancy for every interface, resource, network path, and power supply.
• Ensure to run databases on several servers in different regions and data centers. It will ensure that even if a single backend code misfires, the other codes can handle the load.
• Run your apps on a multi-cloud system to ensure that if one cloud system suffers downtime, it is possible to shift the app traffic to another available cloud.

Ensure to choose the best tools for monitoring app scalability.

For monitoring the web application’s effectiveness, ensure you use the correct tools. Using an APM or application performance management solution will provide insights into the app’s performance, helping identify areas requiring improvement. The top APM solution used by the best web development company include:

• New Relic (Heroku)
• Elastic Beanstalk
• Datadog

Using these tools, you can track key metrics, analyze resource utilization, and do other things.

Ensure the security is top-notch.

While building scalable and robust web applications, follow best practices for security. For any app, security is critical, and when you scale a web app, security flaws in the systems are seen more. Therefore, it is essential to maintain security in your web apps. It is challenging to do so across multiple servers, but crucial. So, ensure you follow these tips for secure web apps:

• Designing secure applications
• Following secure coding practices
• Test the security of the application multiple times.
• Audit the platforms and clouds to identify vulnerabilities and secure them.
• Deploy a scalable web app and API protection feature to protect against external threats and monitor communications and traffic.

Choose the correct framework.

The framework you use impacts web application scalability. Every framework has different performances, features, and characteristics. For instance, Sprint Boot can create scalable Java apps, while Node.js is excellent for JavaScript-based apps. So, when choosing a framework, keep in mind the requirements of your app. That will help you choose an ideal framework for your web app.

Select the right database

For scaling purposes, choosing the correct database is essential. Choosing the best database depends on what data types you are storing. It implies whether it is relational or unstructured. 

Conclusion

These are the best practices for building scalable and robust web applications. There are challenges and things you should consider to create a working, scalable application. Scalable web apps are necessary to ensure your startup’s success while developing a successful product that meets the demands of the growing market. Partner with a reliable and best web development company to create a scalable web app and enjoy success.