I’d like to get a better understanding of how horizontal scaling works when you’re not using a basic wsgi (or similar) setup. Does the scaling/load balancing work on any multithreaded or multiprocess applications? And if scaled across multiple containers, can processes communicate with each other via file system/pipes/TCP/UDP?
I’m developing an api where an HTTP handler will fill a job queue. And other processes/threads will get jobs off the queue and do them. The operations require a large amount of computation on set up and so it’s not practical to do that for every request in some sort of wsgi handler.
Does anyone have any idea if the DO horizontal scaling can accommodate this? Thanks in advance.
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
In the case of web service components in App Platform the traffic is distributed across the scaled containers. These do not share file systems, but can communicate over http/tcp.
From the scenario you described horizontal scaling sounds like it could be a good option. As you’ve identified putting this all in one container won’t scale. Here’s what I would recommend:
Create an App Platform app with two components an App and a Worker. The App will handle your web traffic, and when a user submits a task via the http handler it will store that in a database. The worker will periodically call the App via an http call to get the next task to be processed. That task is then processed and values returned to the App for storage on completion. With this design, you can add or remove instances of your Worker to fit your task needs. With this design you only need one small, low cost web server, and can let the workers do the hard work scaling them up or down as needed.
Alternatively, your workers could reach out to your databases directly but this might not scale long term with database connection pooling and locking.
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and AI-native businesses
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.