Question

Does websocket handshake works out of the box with horizontal scaling?

I am in the process of starting a new project with a Node.js app hosted on App Platform for which I will need horizontal scaling.

This app will, among other things, use websockets to communicate with the frontend part.

I saw this post in which the answer state that a correlation strategy must be setup for the websocket communication to work in a multi-instances environment.

Is it still the case? And is there anything particular to do regarding the handshake phase of the connection?

Thanks,


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Jon Friesen
DigitalOcean Employee
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September 16, 2022

👋 @tbordiga

Yes, apps that use websockets will need some sort of correlation strategy if the app is using horizontal scaling.

With websockets once the connection is made you will continue to be directed to the same instance of the app until that connection is broken. So handshakes between instances for established connection isn’t necessary, however, each instance will (likely) need to maintain a list of clients connected to it and use something (eg. pub/sub) to dispatch messages that all of the instances can read and then direct to the appropriate client.s

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