Summary

In this chapter you saw that there are two primary ways to scale a technology. The first way is to improve the hardware on which the technology runs. Servers with multiple processors, loads of memory, and high performance disk subsystems are a great way to get a technology to support more users.

You learned that most technologies can be scaled by adding more of the same item and balancing the load across them. By creating these farms, you can scale an application to handle far more users than a single system ever could.

You saw how dedicated hardware devices like accelerators can increase performance beyond the original system's capabilities. Dedicated operating systems can also serve to further scale applications by removing unnecessary services and therefore removing potential security flaws.

Third-party applications can serve not only to extend the functionality of systems like Web servers and Terminal Servers but also they can add scalability by offering load distribution technologies that were not originally present.

By taking advantage of these features and implementing best practices you can scale almost any application to support huge numbers of users and performance loads. By carefully planning the applications, you can scale without falling into the trap of making a system unmanageable.