Question

I’m starting to build a community website from the site up and my web framework will be Asp.net and Mysql.

I want to start planning some scalability into the infrastructure early because I’m anticipating high traffic when the site goes live.

Are there any case studies which you recommend reading where asp.net or mysql has been scaled and which demonstrates good scaling techniques?

Answer 1

I think it could be a challenge to find reference materials for that particular combination. Many .NET shops stick to SQL Server, and fewer use MySQL (at least at scale).

In general it would be appropriate to:

• Follow general .NET practices for scalability. Weed out what is not appropriate for you.
• Learn about database performance and implications of various design strategies such as denormalisation (when and why).
• Consider out-of-process caching like memcached.
• Review books on MySQL performance. Most of these are focused on UNIX platforms. Windows users may have problems applying some of these practices.
• Read up on how other people are scaling their sites (Building Scalable Sites and The Art of Capacity Planning)
• Consider how you might optimise your web design to be more scalable. Are you using AJAX? Work out what the impact of excessive polling may be etc.
• Learn how to measure the performance of your application and database (starting points ASP.NET and MySQL).
• Develop a plan for scaling your architecture (1 server to 2 servers, to multiple servers etc) so that you have some frame of reference for making decisions about building things in your system.