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What are my options for horizontally scaling a live website which is running slowly

Posted on August 27, 2020

I have a website that is live running on a single droplet (CPU-Optimized / 8 GB / 4 vCPUs) but with 800+ users currently accessing the site it is running very slowly.

From bits I’ve read on here, it would seem that I need to add additional droplets and a load balancer? Is that correct.

Basically I’m looking for a way to increase resources as quickly as possible! Any help or advice would be gratefully received!



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Hi there @FishFash,

I could suggest a couple of things:

  • Move your database to a separate database server or a Managed Database cluster - that way you will offload the load from your webserver
  • As you mentioned spin up another copy of your Droplet and use a load balancer to distribute the traffic
  • Add a caching solution like Redis for example. You can either install Redis on a separate Droplet or use the managed Redis clusters
  • Add a CDN like Cloudflare to cache your static files and reduce the overall load on your servers

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby

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