Chapter 1: Introduction to scalable systems
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What does throughput refer to in the context of systems processing?

  • The frequency of system errors.
  • The speed at which a system operates.
  • The total amount of data stored.
  • The number of requests a system can process in a time period. (correct)

    • Which method is NOT mentioned as a way to increase throughput?

  • Replication of resources.
  • Improvement in user interface design. (correct)
  • Optimization of existing processes.
  • Expansion of hardware.

    • What is one advantage of cloud-based software systems regarding replication?

  • Replication requires significant hardware investments.
  • It always results in increased system errors.
  • It can be done instantly with minimal effort. (correct)
  • It limits the number of resources to a fixed size.

    • How did Sydney increase the capacity of its harbor crossings?

    <p>By building the Sydney Harbour Tunnel.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    The Sydney Harbour Tunnel's impact on traffic capacity can be likened to what in software systems?

    <p>Adding more processing resources through replication.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What major issue prompted the construction of the Sydney Harbour Tunnel in the 1980s?

    <p>Increased traffic volume beyond the bridge's capacity.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a representative parallel in software systems to the 'Nippon clip-ons' used in Auckland?

    <p>Replicating processing resources to handle more requests.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is one potential risk when replicating processing resources?

    <p>Bottlenecks can still occur if not managed properly.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What significant scale of data storage is mentioned as being commonplace today?

    <p>Exabyte</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In what year did the first video get uploaded to YouTube?

    <p>2005</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following companies is mentioned in relation to managing large amounts of data?

    <p>Amazon</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What type of report is considered a source of insights into internet scale services?

    <p>Annual usage reports</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What data volume is speculated to be managed by Google services currently?

    <p>Yottabytes</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Why are concrete data volumes from major internet sites often difficult to obtain?

    <p>Commercial confidentiality</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which platform's usage statistics from 2019 provided insights into massive-scale systems?

    <p>Pornhub</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a common challenge posed by exascale applications according to the content?

    <p>Processing difficulties</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the risk of not designing a system for scalability from the beginning?

    <p>It may incur massive downstream costs.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a key characteristic of hyperscale systems?

    <p>Exponential growth in capabilities with linear cost growth.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which example illustrates the consequences of poor scalability?

    <p>Oregon's health care exchange encountering problems.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How can software systems be effectively scaled according to the principles mentioned?

    <p>By utilizing scalable architectures and technologies.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the fundamental challenge in software architecture regarding quality attributes?

    <p>Trade-offs between quality attributes are often necessary.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What would happen if a system's architecture does not account for future scalability?

    <p>It would require costly overhauls to support growth.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What principle helps systems to scale effectively?

    <p>Modularity in design.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Why might an analogy between a suburban home and a high-rise building be inappropriate?

    <p>A high-rise requires a different infrastructure than a single-family home.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the main purpose of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol?

    <p>Encryption, authentication, and integrity</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What type of cryptography is used for in-flight data encryption once a TLS connection is established?

    <p>Symmetric cryptography</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is one effect of excessive logging in a system?

    <p>It introduces overhead that negatively impacts performance.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a performance drawback of establishing a TLS connection?

    <p>Higher latency due to multiple message exchanges</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How does improving performance generally affect scalability?

    <p>It creates more capacity in the system.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How can connection establishment overheads in TLS be minimized?

    <p>By reusing connections whenever possible</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following methods can optimize performance without increasing resource usage?

    <p>Removing unnecessary object copying.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which feature of popular database engines provides efficient protection for files?

    <p>Transparent data encryption (TDE)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a potential downside of keeping large amounts of state in memory?

    <p>It may reduce scalability due to higher resource usage.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the term 'performance' primarily target?

    <p>The average duration to process individual requests.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What aspect does 'availability' refer to in the context of the CIA triad?

    <p>Reliability of a system under attack</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following is a potential benefit of optimizing individual requests?

    <p>It often speeds up processing by lowering database access.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the estimated performance overhead associated with secure data at rest?

    <p>5-10%</p> Signup and view all the answers

    When designing for scalability, which attribute must be carefully balanced?

    <p>Quality attributes such as performance, availability, and manageability.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How do security measures generally affect system performance?

    <p>They introduce performance degradation</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What could be a consequence of a heavily loaded system maintaining state in memory?

    <p>A potentially higher resource demand leading to reduced capacity.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following is NOT a technique for achieving scalability?

    <p>Data Encryption</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Vertical scalability involves adding more machines to a system.

    <p>False</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the purpose of caching in scalability techniques?

    <p>To reduce latency by storing frequently accessed data in memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    _____ is the technique of dividing a database into smaller parts to allow for parallel processing.

    <p>Sharding</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Match the scalability technique to its description:

    <p>Load Balancing = Distributing incoming requests across servers Microservices Architecture = Breaking applications into smaller, independent services Replication = Maintaining multiple copies of data Asynchronous Processing = Handling tasks through queues</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which scalability technique improves system response times by processing tasks in a non-blocking manner?

    <p>Asynchronous Processing</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Content Delivery Networks (CDN) help reduce latency by serving content from geographically closer servers.

    <p>True</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the main trade-off regarding scalability, consistency, and availability according to the CAP theorem?

    <p>The trade-off states that a system cannot guarantee all three properties (consistency, availability, and partition tolerance) simultaneously.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Study Notes

    Data Growth and Exascale

    • In 2008, petabyte datasets and gigabit data streams were considered cutting-edge.
    • Today, exascale is commonplace.
    • Google manages exabytes of data for services like Gmail.
    • It is uncertain how much data Google stores in total.
    • Amazon also manages large amounts of data in AWS data stores for clients.
    • It's difficult to estimate the number of requests DynamoDB processes per second, collectively, for all client applications.

    Scaling Systems

    • Internet companies' technical blogs and websites monitoring internet traffic provide insights into system scales.
    • Pornhub's annual usage report offers detailed information on large-scale system usage.
    • The first video upload to YouTube occurred in 2005.

    System Throughput and Replication

    • System throughput refers to the number of requests a system can process within a given time period.
    • The Sydney Harbor Bridge, opened in 1932, serves as an analogy for scaling physical infrastructure.
    • The Sydney Harbor Tunnel was built to increase the bridge's capacity.
    • The Auckland Harbor Bridge expanded its capacity using "Nippon clip-ons" to add lanes.
    • Software systems can increase capacity through replication, analogous to adding lanes on bridges.

    Resource and Effort Costs

    • Replication can effectively scale processing resources in cloud-based systems.
    • Scalability requires careful resource replication to alleviate bottlenecks.
    • Scaling up a system that isn't inherently designed for it can be costly.
    • HealthCare.gov faced over $2 billion in costs to scale to meet business needs.
    • Oregon's health care exchange, unable to scale rapidly, incurred $303 million in costs.

    Hyperscale Systems

    • Systems that can scale exponentially while costs grow linearly are called "hyperscale systems".
    • Hyperscale systems exhibit exponential growth in storage and computational capabilities with linear growth in resource costs.

    Scalability and Trade-Offs

    • Scalability is one of many quality attributes in software architecture.
    • Optimizing for one attribute can affect others negatively or positively.
    • Logging, while useful, can introduce overheads and impact performance and cost.
    • Software architects balance quality attributes to achieve optimal results.

    Performance

    • Performance aims to meet desired metrics for individual requests.
    • Improving performance generally benefits scalability.
    • Optimizing code for speed can improve performance without increasing resource usage.
    • Keeping commonly accessed data in memory can enhance performance, but potentially reduce scalability.

    Security

    • TLS protocol provides encryption, authentication, and data integrity.
    • TLS connection establishment involves performance overheads due to key generation and certificate exchange.
    • Reusing connections minimizes these overheads.
    • Data at rest encryption methods ensure data security in storage.
    • Security measures often introduce performance degradation.
    • The CIA triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) highlights security considerations.
    • DDoS attacks aim to overload systems and make them unavailable.

    General

    • security and scalability often clash as security measures impact performance.

    Scalability Definition

    • The ability of a system to handle increasing load by adding resources.

    Types of Scalability

    • Vertical Scalability (Scaling Up)
      • Adding more resources to an existing machine (CPU, RAM).
      • Simpler to implement but has hardware limitations.
    • Horizontal Scalability (Scaling Out)
      • Adding more machines to the pool for processing.
      • More complex but can handle large-scale applications effectively.

    Scalability Techniques

    • Load Balancing
      • Distributing requests evenly across multiple servers to prevent bottlenecks.
    • Sharding
      • Dividing a database into smaller, more manageable parts (shards).
      • Each shard is hosted on different servers for parallel processing.
    • Caching
      • Storing frequently accessed data in memory to reduce latency.
      • Implemented through various forms (in-memory databases, HTTP caching).
    • Microservices Architecture
      • Application is broken down into smaller, independent services.
      • Allows for independent scaling based on individual service load.
    • Replication
      • Maintaining multiple copies of data on different nodes for redundancy and improved read availability.
    • Asynchronous Processing
      • Handling tasks asynchronously through queues to reduce load on the main application and improve response times.
    • Content Delivery Network (CDN)
      • Distributing content across geographically dispersed servers.
      • Reduces latency for users by serving content from the nearest location
    • Database Partitioning
      • Splitting a database into partitions for separate management based on criteria (user ID, location).
    • Serverless Architecture
      • Automatic scaling based on demand, often through cloud providers.
      • Developers deploy functions without managing server infrastructure.

    Scalability Considerations

    • Cost-effectiveness
      • Balance between performance gains and financial investment.
    • Complexity
      • Increased scalability can introduce system complexity.
    • Consistency and Availability
      • Trade-off between scalability, data consistency, and availability (CAP theorem)
    • Monitoring and Management
      • Continuous monitoring of performance metrics to adapt.

    Conclusion

    • Scalability is crucial for distributed systems to handle variable workloads.
    • Using a combination of techniques is often the best solution.

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    Chapter 1.docx

    Description

    Test your knowledge on the evolution of data growth and the challenges of scaling systems in modern technology. Explore concepts like exascale data management, system throughput, and practical examples from companies like Google and Amazon. This quiz is designed for those interested in data management and system architecture.

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