The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise

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The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 31 ratings · 4 reviews

This is the eBook version of the printed book. If the print book includes a CD-ROM, this content is not included within the eBook version. A Comprehensive, Proven Approach to IT Scalability from Two Veteran Software, Technology, and Business Executives In "The Art of Scalability, " AKF Partners cofounders Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher cover everything IT and business leaders must know to build technology infrastructures that can scale smoothly to meet any business requirement. Drawing on their unparalleled experience managing some of the world's highest-transaction-volume Web sites, the authors provide detailed models and best-practice approaches available in no other book. Unlike previous books on scalability, "The Art of Scalability" doesn't limit its coverage to technology. Writing for both technical and nontechnical decision-makers, this book covers everything that impacts scalability, including architecture, processes, people, and organizations. Throughout, the authors address a broad spectrum of real-world challenges, from performance testing to IT governance. Using their tools and guidance, organizations can systematically overcome obstacles to scalability and achieve unprecedented levels of technical and business performance. Coverage includes

Staffing the scalable organization: essential organizational, management, and leadership skills for technical leaders Building processes for scale: process lessons from hyper-growth companies, from technical issue resolution to crisis management Making better "build versus buy" decisions Architecting scalable solutions: powerful proprietary models for identifying scalability needs and choosing the best approaches to meet them Optimizing performance through caching, application and database splitting, and asynchronous design Scalability techniques for emerging technologies, including clouds and grids Planning for rapid data growth and new data centers Evolving monitoring strategies to tightly align with customer requirements (less)

Paperback, 559 pages

Published December 1st 2009 by Addison-Wesley Professional

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Dec 17, 2012 Dave Golombek rated it 5 of 5 stars

There is a huge amount of information in this book. It's broadly broken down into scalability of people, process, and technology, with a very clear and structured approach all the way through. Each section taught me far more than I expected, given that I live and breath this stuff at work every day (helping grow Lookout from 1000 to 30+ million users and 6 to 160 employees in the last 3.5 years). This book isn't intended to provide all the details about every (or even any) subject it talks about...more There is a huge amount of information in this book. It's broadly broken down into scalability of people, process, and technology, with a very clear and structured approach all the way through. Each section taught me far more than I expected, given that I live and breath this stuff at work every day (helping grow Lookout from 1000 to 30+ million users and 6 to 160 employees in the last 3.5 years). This book isn't intended to provide all the details about every (or even any) subject it talks about, but it provides a framework for making sure you are thinking about everything you need to think about and aren't caught unawares. I would've loved more links to where to read more, but those would probably tend to go out of date quickly in any case and this book is clearly designed to try and remain relevant over time.

The people section focuses on organizational structure, leadership, management, and communication. I was greatly amused by the number of things I read about in this book shortly before we started talking about them within the company (it took me ~5 months to read this book, since it's pretty dense and I kept putting it down to read other stuff). I would've loved a discussion around onboarding and culture in the book, since in any high-growth company those become important issues very quickly.

The process section was great. It covers a wide range of types of processes, including incident response, change management, architectural design and review, risk analysis and management, and deployment issues. Some of those may not sound like processes at first, but they provide a way of thinking about them that really makes sense (to me at least). Their 12 architectural principles were great -- I've added them to my crib sheet for things to keep in mind when I design. One minor nit, I felt like their chapter on controlling change in production environments ignored the growth and potential of tools like Chef and Puppet for ensuring that there are never manual tweaks on production servers.

The technology section dives into more depth around a few of the architectural principles laid out in the prior section. It talks a lot about how to design a system such that it can grown smoothly over time and adapt to growth along unexpected axes. Obviously a lot of this is more abstract, since the details are very dependent upon individual circumstances, but they provide some good approaches to thinking about the issues involved.

Overall a highly recommended book for anyone working in a high growth tech company.(less)

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Sep 09, 2011 Daniel Korzekwa rated it 5 of 5 stars

I selected this book because of its content about organizations and processes on technology based companies. I was hoping to find answers and solutions to some issues on technical projects, which didn't have good technical explanations and I must admit that many times, while reading this book, I was catching myself saying 'I wish I read this book earlier'. Great book. I recommend it to every software engineer who wants to know not only how to write some code, but also, how to interact with diffe...more

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Oct 24, 2010 Ahmed Abdel-Aliem rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very good book for those who are interested in scalability in the enterprise.

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May 10, 2012 Rejeev Divakaran rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book talks about other things than Scalability!

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