Are your application users encountering delays in response, experiencing higher latency, or facing frequent timeouts? Does your application struggle to cope with growing demands regularly? Do you find your application lacking stability and reliability? If you answered with a “yes” to any of the above-mentioned questions, it indicates that your application requires an infrastructure upgrade.
At Mallow, we have a deep understanding of the challenges that can arise in application performance and stability. With over 12 years of experience, we have helped many clients with problems like slow response, high latency, and unstable applications.
By reading this article, you can identify the warning signs that suggest an infrastructure upgrade is necessary for your Ruby on Rails application. You will become familiar with typical problems like decreased responsiveness, heightened latency, and application instability, which might necessitate infrastructure improvements.
If you are interested in learning more about the common methods for verifying the effectiveness of your Ruby on Rails application, take a look at this article on how to validate the performance of your Ruby on Rails application. However, even after conducting these validations and implementing the necessary measures, if you still feel that your application’s performance has not improved, this article will guide other pertinent areas that require your attention.
So, what exactly does well-optimised application infrastructure mean?
Right-sizing of an application’s infrastructure encompasses a broader meaning as it involves a lot of moving pieces. It’s more than allocating the appropriate computing power, storage, and network resources.
Proper sizing means adjusting infrastructure resources to match changes in workload, user demand, seasonal increases, and future growth predictions. It involves adjusting infrastructure resources to match changes in workload, user demand, seasonal increases, and future growth predictions. It requires continuous monitoring and analysis to optimise the application’s infrastructure resources. This ensures that they meet the evolving needs of the business.
By adjusting the infrastructure, organisations can ensure their applications run well, avoid wasting resources, and optimise their infrastructure investment. This method improves the application’s performance, cost, scalability, and user experience, enhancing its effectiveness.
What benefits come from having the right infrastructure for my application?
1. Improved performance
Choosing the right size for your instances and configurations helps your application work better, with faster response times and improved performance. By allocating adequate resources, you can avoid bottlenecks and ensure smooth operation during peak usage periods.
2. Scalability
Choosing the right instance size and configuration allows your application to scale seamlessly. It enables your application to accommodate increasing user demands without sacrificing performance. Whether it’s handling a sudden surge in traffic or scaling to support a growing user base, properly sized instances and configurations provide the scalability needed to meet evolving requirements.
3. Optimal resource utilisation
Correctly sizing your instances and configurations ensures optimal resource utilisation. To avoid excessive costs or performance issues, provide resources based on your application’s needs. Over-provisioning and under-provisioning can lead to these problems. Optimising resource utilisation not only enhances performance but also minimises infrastructure expenses.
4. Stability and reliability
The right size instances and configurations promote stability and reliability for your application. By allocating sufficient resources, you can prevent performance degradation, system crashes, and outages. Properly sized instances provide the necessary processing power, memory, and storage to ensure your application runs smoothly, minimising downtime and user dissatisfaction.
5. Cost optimisation
Optimising instance size and configuration leads to cost optimisation. By accurately provisioning resources based on your application’s requirements, you can avoid unnecessary over-provision expenses. Right-sized instances and configurations prevent performance issues, saving you money and keeping your customers happy.
When should I consider upgrading instances and adjusting their configurations?
1. Detect, Diagnose, and Resolve Performance degradation
Performance degradation can occur due to various factors, such as increased load or outdated hardware. If the application’s performance drops significantly and persists despite optimisation efforts, it’s time to consider upgrading the infrastructure to improve overall efficiency. Performance issues may manifest as slower response times, increased latency, or frequent timeouts. By identifying the root cause and making necessary adjustments, you can restore optimal performance and ensure a positive user experience.
For instance, consider a payroll application that accumulates historical data over time. To ensure optimal performance, it’s crucial to design the application’s infrastructure in a way that can handle the increasing volume of historical data without degradation. As the system processes and stores employee data over time, it’s essential to implement efficient database management and data storage practices. By utilising a scalable database solution, such as a NoSQL or cloud-based database, the application can easily accommodate the growing historical data without experiencing performance bottlenecks.
2. More Clients, More Traffic: What You Need to Know
Let’s imagine you are the owner of a B2B SaaS application. Any new client addition is expected to bring a significant increase in user traffic, according to the size of the new client. To ensure your application can handle the increased user traffic without any hiccups, you should take proactive measures to enhance your instances and configurations.
By examining past data or employing predictive analysis, you can accurately evaluate the expected rise in traffic. This foresight will allow you to make necessary adjustments and optimise your application’s performance, ensuring a smooth and satisfying user experience even during peak times.
3. Anticipate Scalability Needs
Imagine you own a newly launched social media application. You must be thrilled to witness its increasing popularity in the market. As your user base grows steadily, you understand that application’s user traffic will see a notable upward slope. To ensure the continued success of your platform, it is paramount that your application remains highly scalable and capable of handling any exponential increase in traffic without disruptions.
On the other hand, imagine you own an e-commerce company planning to conduct a promotional event in the upcoming week. This includes huge discounts to attract users. Naturally, the user traffic will be high as the event day approaches. The application’s scalability should be scalable enough to handle the sudden spike that it will be experiencing during the event and behave normally without any disruptions.
With reference to both the above cases, the user base of the application is either going to increase gradually or could witness sudden spikes as the day of the event approaches. To handle scalability needs, you need to move your infrastructure to a cloud platform like AWS or Azure. This lets you easily adjust resources and settings according to user demands and allocate resources as required.
4. Meet new feature requirements
Does your application require additional memory and processing power to meet its demands? Are there specific features within your application that necessitate specialised infrastructure to function optimally?For example, an auction platform decides to introduce live streaming capabilities to its application as they are planning to increase the horizons of its participants. To support this new feature, they upgrade their instances and configurations to handle the additional processing power and bandwidth requirements associated with real-time video streaming, ensuring smooth playback and a seamless user experience.
5. Technology advancements
One of the crucial factors that prompt the need for updating instances and configurations is when the current infrastructure reaches the end of its support. As the infrastructure gets depreciated, it becomes essential to reassess and update the configurations to maintain a reliable and supported infrastructure.By staying proactive and updating configurations before it gets depreciated, you can ensure continued infrastructure support and mitigate potential risks associated with running on outdated or unsupported infrastructure. This practice helps maintain the stability, security, and longevity of your application while enabling you to capitalise on the latest advancements in technology.
How do I upgrade instances and adjust configurations for my application?
Step 1: Evaluate performance and requirements
Begin by assessing your application’s current performance and identifying specific areas that need improvement. Determine the requirements for resources such as CPU, memory, storage, and network capacity based on your application’s workload and expected growth.
Step 2: Select the right instance type
Based on your evaluation and requirements, choose the appropriate instance type that aligns with your application’s needs. Consider factors such as processing power, memory, storage options, network performance, and any specialised features or configurations required.
Step 3: Plan for downtime or high availability
Determine whether the upgrade process will cause any downtime for your application. If downtime is acceptable, plan a maintenance window accordingly. Alternatively, if high availability is critical, consider implementing strategies like load balancing or using redundant instances to minimise or eliminate downtime during the upgrade process.
Step 4: Back up the data
Before proceeding with the upgrade, it is essential to back up your application’s data and configurations to ensure data integrity and quick recovery in case of any unexpected issues during the upgrade process.
Step 5: Test the upgrade
Set up a test environment or utilise a staging environment to simulate the upgrade process. Perform thorough testing to validate the compatibility of the new instance type and configurations with your application. Test for functionality, performance, and any specific requirements unique to your application.
Step 6: Implement the upgrade
Once you have completed the necessary preparations and testing, proceed with the actual upgrade. Follow the provider’s instructions or use infrastructure-as-code tools to modify instance configurations, allocate resources, or provision new instances as required.
Step 7: Validate application functionality
After the upgrade, thoroughly validate the functionality of your application. Test various features, workflows, and integrations to ensure that everything is working as expected. Monitor performance metrics and check for any anomalies or issues that may have arisen during the upgrade process.
Step 8: Monitor and optimise
Continuously monitor the performance of your upgraded instances and configurations. Utilise monitoring tools to track resource utilisation, response times, and other relevant metrics. Identify any bottlenecks or areas for optimisation and make necessary adjustments to enhance performance and resource utilisation.
Step 9: Update documentation
Keep your documentation updated to reflect the changes made during the upgrade process. Include details about the new system configurations, instance specifications, and any specific configurations or considerations required for ongoing maintenance or future upgrades.
How can I make sure my application is scalable?
Boosting your application’s infrastructure and ensuring scalability go hand in hand when it comes to achieving optimal performance and accommodating growth.
By upgrading your infrastructure, such as increasing server capacity or investing in more powerful processors, you equip your application with the necessary resources to handle increasing demands and maintain responsiveness.
Enhanced infrastructure capability allows your application to scale effectively, ensuring it can accommodate a growing user base, handle higher traffic volumes, and process complex tasks efficiently.
Ensuring scalability enables your application to handle spikes in user activity without experiencing performance bottlenecks or crashes, thus providing a seamless user experience. It also allows your business to scale and expand without worrying about infrastructure limitations, ensuring that your application can support increased workloads and deliver consistent performance. Interested in knowing more about how to ensure the scalability of your Ruby on Rails application? Check out our article on how can I ensure the scalability of my Ruby on Rails application?
Feel as if we could help you out with boosting your Ruby on Rails application’s infrastructure? Get in touch with our team.
