Server architecture design – best practices
Server Architecture Design It is the process of defining the structure of an IT system that supports applications and services. It includes selecting appropriate technologies, scaling strategies, redundancy, and security measures.
The Golden Triangle of best design practices
High Availability
High Availability It is a system design strategy aimed at ensuring continuity of operations even in the event of failures in some components of the production environment.
This approach involves implementing redundancy in key infrastructure components, such as physical servers, storage drives, and even entire data centers
By using a High Availability downtime caused by system failures is minimized or eliminated entirely.
Infrastructure Scalability
Scalability refers to the ability to adjust IT infrastructure resources to changing system loads (e.g., during marketing campaigns).
Scalability is crucial for ensuring the continuity of your business and must be considered during the solution design process.
There are two models of server infrastructure scaling:
Horizontal scaling involves adding additional physical servers or instances to the system to increase computing power and capacity.
Vertical scaling involves increasing specific resources for a single physical server or instance (e.g., adding more RAM). Vertical scaling is used when applications require more computing power but do not yet need an additional physical server.
Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) of an Application
Collecting an application’s non-functional requirements (NFR) is a crucial process in which data necessary for properly designing the architecture is gathered and analyzed.
Below are some examples of data collected during the NFR process :
Client Interview Area:
- Traffic data (Page Views, Unique Users, number of sessions)
- Number of SKUs
- Peak traffic data – charts (e.g., marketing campaigns)
- Information about external integrations with the application
- Requirements for the Disaster Recovery Plan (desired metrics)
- Special requirements regarding server locations or data storage regulations
Developer Interview Area:
- Contents of the technology stack
- Openness to a High Availability model
- Analysis of application documentation
- Additional services such as CDN, WAF, IDS, IPS
- Non-standard business requirements
Infrastructure Interview Area (if applicable):
- Analysis of full infrastructure documentation
- Analysis of infrastructure telemetry data
- Interview with the SysOps/DevOps team
Meet with our Solutions Architect
A well-executed design process results in a stable, efficient, and cost-effective environment for your business.
At EVILFORK we conduct a comprehensive analysis of non-functional requirements and design dedicated server solutions for your business write tu us!