When the API becomes the basis of a product and begins to process tens of thousands of requests per second, it is critical to scale it horizontally. This means adding new instances without stopping the service and distributing the load between them using balancers.
We design and implement a scalable API architecture that can grow flexibly and withstand any peak load.
How horizontal scaling works
| Component | What does |
|---|---|
| Load balancer | Distributes inbound traffic between API servers (HAProxy, Nginx, AWS ELB) |
| API instances | Independent copies of API application processing requests in parallel |
| Shared Data Store | Centralized database or cache available to all instances |
| Health-check и auto-recovery | Monitoring instance availability and automatic recovery |
Why do you need it
Robustness in case of sharp growth of requests
Fault tolerance - failure of one node does not affect API operation
Support for wide scaling without changing application logic
Ability to roll out updates in stages (rolling update)
Cost optimization through dynamic scaling
What we use
Load balancers: HAProxy, Nginx, AWS ELB, GCP Load Balancer
Orchestrators: Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, ECS
Кеш и shared state: Redis, Memcached, S3
Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog
CI/CD: Automatic dumping of new instances by load
Where critical
Financial and banking APIs
Realtime games and streaming services
E-commerce during sales and peak loads
Products with global coverage and GEO distribution
Horizontal scaling is the architectural foundation for growth. We will ensure that your API will work on any volume of traffic, with high fault tolerance, dynamic scaling and constant availability.