The Art of Scalability

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

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Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher are founding partners of AKF Partners, where they advise companies on scaling technology platforms, organizations, leadership, and processes. Previously, Marty was COO of the advertising technology startup Quigo, where he was responsible for product strategy and management, technology, and client services. Marty also spent nearly six years at eBay, most recently as SVP of Technology and CTO. Mike spent two years as CTO of Quigo, serving as President during the transition following its acquisition by AOL. Prior to that, Mike led a development organization of more than two-hundred engineers as Paypal¡¯s VP of Engineering and Architecture.

Introduction

Part I: Staffing a Scalable Organization
Chapter 1: The Impact of People and Leadership on Scalability
Chapter 2: Roles for the Scalable Technology Organization
Chapter 3: Designing Organizations
Chapter 4: Leadership 101
Chapter 5: Management 101
Chapter 6: Making the Business Case

Part II: Building Processes for Scale
Chapter 7: Understanding Why Processes Are Critical to Scale
Chapter 8: Managing Incidents and Problems
Chapter 9: Managing Crisis and Escalations
Chapter 10: Controlling Change in Production Environments
Chapter 11: Determining Headroom for Applications
Chapter 12: Exploring Architectural Principles
Chapter 13: Joint Architecture Design
Chapter 14: Architecture Review Board
Chapter 15: Focus on Core Competencies: Build Versus Buy
Chapter 16: Determining Risk
Chapter 17: Performance and Stress Testing
Chapter 18: Barrier Conditions and Rollback
Chapter 19: Fast or Right?

Part III: Architecting Sca...Introduction

Part I: Staffing a Scalable Organization
Chapter 1: The Impact of People and Leadership on Scalability
Chapter 2: Roles for the Scalable Technology Organization
Chapter 3: Designing Organizations
Chapter 4: Leadership 101
Chapter 5: Management 101
Chapter 6: Making the Business Case

Part II: Building Processes for Scale
Chapter 7: Understanding Why Processes Are Critical to Scale
Chapter 8: Managing Incidents and Problems
Chapter 9: Managing Crisis and Escalations
Chapter 10: Controlling Change in Production Environments
Chapter 11: Determining Headroom for Applications
Chapter 12: Exploring Architectural Principles
Chapter 13: Joint Architecture Design
Chapter 14: Architecture Review Board
Chapter 15: Focus on Core Competencies: Build Versus Buy
Chapter 16: Determining Risk
Chapter 17: Performance and Stress Testing
Chapter 18: Barrier Conditions and Rollback
Chapter 19: Fast or Right?

Part III: Architecting Scalable Solutions
Chapter 20: Designing for Any Technology
Chapter 21: Creating Fault Isolative Architectural Structures
Chapter 22: Introduction to the AKF Scale Cube
Chapter 23: Splitting Applications for Scale
Chapter 24: Splitting Databases for Scale
Chapter 25: Caching for Performance and Scale
Chapter 26: Asynchronous Design for Scale

Part IV: Solving Other Issues and Challenges 409
Chapter 27: Too Much Data
Chapter 28: Clouds and Grids
Chapter 29: Soaring in the Clouds
Chapter 30: Plugging in the Grid
Chapter 31: Monitoring Applications
Chapter 32: Planning Data Centers
Chapter 33: Putting It All Together

Appendices

Appendix A: Calculating Availability
Appendix B: Capacity Planning Calculations
Appendix C: Load and Performance Calculations

Index