A Comprehensive, Proven Approach to IT Scalability from Two Veteran Software, Technology, and Business Executives   In The Art of Scalability, AKF Partners cofounders Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher cover everything IT and business leaders must know to build technology infrastructures that can scale smoothly to meet any business requirement. Drawing on their unparalleled experience managing some of the world’s highest-transaction-volume Web sites, the authors provide detailed models and best-practice approaches available in no other book.   Unlike previous books on scalability, The Art of Scalability doesn’t limit its coverage to technology. Writing for both technical and nontechnical decision-makers, this book covers everything that impacts scalability, including architecture, processes, people, and organizations.   Throughout, the authors address a broad spectrum of real-world challenges, from performance testing to IT governance. Using their tools and guidance, organizations can systematically overcome obstacles to scalability and achieve unprecedented levels of technical and business performance.   Coverage includes Staffing the scalable organization: essential organizational, management, and leadership skills for technical leaders Building processes for scale: process lessons from hyper-growth companies, from technical issue resolution to crisis management Making better “build versus buy” decisions Architecting scalable solutions: powerful proprietary models for identifying scalability needs and choosing the best approaches to meet them Optimizing performance through caching, application and database splitting, and asynchronous design Scalability techniques for emerging technologies, including clouds and grids Planning for rapid data growth and new data centers Evolving monitoring strategies to tightly align with customer requirements

Table of Contents:
Foreword xxi Acknowledgments xxiii About the Authors xxv   Introduction 1   Part I: Staffing a Scalable Organization 7   Chapter 1: The Impact of People and Leadership on Scalability 9 Introducing AllScale 9 Why People 10 Why Organizations 11 Why Management and Leadership 17 Conclusion 20   Chapter 2: Roles for the Scalable Technology Organization 21 The Effects of Failure 22 Defining Roles 23 Executive Responsibilities 25 Organizational Responsibilities 29 Individual Contributor Responsibilities and Characteristics 32 An Organizational Example 35 A Tool for Defining Responsibilities 37 Conclusion 41   Chapter 3: Designing Organizations 43 Organizational Influences That Affect Scalability 43 Team Size 46 Organizational Structure 55 Conclusion 60   Chapter 4: Leadership 101 63 What Is Leadership? 64 Leadership–A Conceptual Model 66 Taking Stock of Who You Are 67 Leading from the Front 69 Checking Your Ego at the Door 71 Mission First, People Always 72 Making Timely, Sound, and Morally Correct Decisions 73 Empowering Teams and Scalability 74 Alignment with Shareholder Value 74 Vision 75 Mission 78 Goals 79 Putting Vision, Mission, and Goals Together 81 The Causal Roadmap to Success 84 Conclusion 86   Chapter 5: Management 101 89 What Is Management? 90 Project and Task Management 91 Building Teams–A Sports Analogy 93 Upgrading Teams–A Garden Analogy 94 Measurement, Metrics, and Goal Evaluation 98 The Goal Tree 101 Paving the Path for Success 102 Conclusion 103   Chapter 6: Making the Business Case 105 Understanding the Experiential Chasm 105 Defeating the Corporate Mindset 109 The Business Case for Scale 114 Conclusion 117   Part II: Building Processes for Scale 119   Chapter 7: Understanding Why Processes Are Critical to Scale 121 The Purpose of Process 122 Right Time, Right Process 125 When Good Processes Go Bad 130 Conclusion 131   Chapter 8: Managing Incidents and Problems 133 What Is an Incident? 134 What Is a Problem? 135 The Components of Incident Management 136 The Components of Problem Management 139 Resolving Conflicts Between Incident and Problem Management 140 Incident and Problem Life Cycles 140 Implementing the Daily Incident Meeting 141 Implementing the Quarterly Incident Review 143 The Postmortem Process 143 Putting It All Together 146 Conclusion 148   Chapter 9: Managing Crisis and Escalations 149 What Is a Crisis? 149 Why Differentiate a Crisis from Any Other Incident? 150 How Crises Can Change a Company 151 Order Out of Chaos 152 Communications and Control 157 The War Room 158 Escalations 160 Status Communications 160 Crises Postmortems 161 Crises Follow-up and Communication 162 Conclusion 163   Chapter 10: Controlling Change in Production Environments 165 What Is a Change? 166 Change Identification 168 Change Management 170 The Change Control Meeting 178 Continuous Process Improvement 178 Conclusion 179   Chapter 11: Determining Headroom for Applications 183 Purpose of the Process 184 Structure of the Process 185 Ideal Usage Percentage 189 Conclusion 192   Chapter 12: Exploring Architectural Principles 195 Principles and Goals 196 Principle Selection 199 AKF’s Twelve Architectural Principles 200 Scalability Principles In Depth 204 Conclusion 208   Chapter 13: Joint Architecture Design 211 Fixing Organizational Dysfunction 211 Designing for Scale Cross Functionally 214 Entry and Exit Criteria 217 Conclusion 219   Chapter 14: Architecture Review Board 221 Ensuring Scale Through Review 221 Board Constituency 223 Conducting the Meeting 225 Entry and Exit Criteria 228 Conclusion 230   Chapter 15: Focus on Core Competencies: Build Versus Buy 233 Building Versus Buying, and Scalability 233 Focusing on Cost 234 Focusing on Strategy 235 “Not Built Here” Phenomenon 236 Merging Cost and Strategy 237 AllScale’s Build or Buy Dilemma 240 Conclusion 242   Chapter 16: Determining Risk 243 Importance of Risk Management to Scale 244 Measuring Risk 245 Managing Risk 252 Conclusion 255   Chapter 17: Performance and Stress Testing 257 Performing Performance Testing 257 Don’t Stress Over Stress Testing 264 Performance and Stress Testing for Scalability 270 Conclusion 271   Chapter 18: Barrier Conditions and Rollback 273 Barrier Conditions 274 Rollback Capabilities 278 Markdown Functionality–Design to Be Disabled 282 Conclusion 283   Chapter 19: Fast or Right? 285 Tradeoffs in Business 285 Relation to Scalability 289 How to Think About the Decision 290 Conclusion 295   Part III: Architecting Scalable Solutions 297   Chapter 20: Designing for Any Technology 299 An Implementation Is Not an Architecture 300 Technology Agnostic Design 300 The TAD Approach 306 Conclusion 308   Chapter 21: Creating Fault Isolative Architectural Structures 309 Fault Isolative Architecture Terms 310 Benefits of Fault Isolation 312 How to Approach Fault Isolation 317 When to Implement Fault Isolation 319 How to Test Fault Isolative Designs 321 Conclusion 322   Chapter 22: Introduction to the AKF Scale Cube 325 Concepts Versus Rules and Tools 325 Introducing the AKF Scale Cube 326 Meaning of the Cube 328 The X-Axis of the Cube 328 The Y-Axis of the Cube 331 The Z-Axis of the Cube 333 Putting It All Together 334 When and Where to Use the Cube 336 Conclusion 337   Chapter 23: Splitting Applications for Scale 339 The AKF Scale Cube for Applications 339 The X-Axis of the AKF Application Scale Cube 341 The Y-Axis of the AKF Application Scale Cube 343 The Z-Axis of the AKF Application Scale Cube 344 Putting It All Together 347 Practical Use of the Application Cube 349 Conclusion 354   Chapter 24: Splitting Databases for Scale 357 The AKF Scale Cube for Databases 357 The X-Axis of the AKF Database Scale Cube 358 The Y-Axis of the AKF Database Scale Cube 362 The Z-Axis of the AKF Database Scale Cube 365 Putting It All Together 367 Practical Use of the Database Cube 370 Conclusion 374   Chapter 25: Caching for Performance and Scale 377 Caching Defined 378 Object Caches 381 Application Caches 384 Content Delivery Networks 389 Conclusion 390   Chapter 26: Asynchronous Design for Scale 393 Synching Up on Synchronization 393 Synchronous Versus Asynchronous Calls 395 Defining State 401 Conclusion 405   Part IV: Solving Other Issues and Challenges 409   Chapter 27: Too Much Data 411 The Cost of Data 412 The Value of Data and the Cost-Value Dilemma 414 Making Data Profitable 416 Handling Large Amounts of Data 420 Conclusion 423   Chapter 28: Clouds and Grids 425 History and Definitions 426 Characteristics and Architecture of Clouds 430 Differences Between Clouds and Grids 434 Conclusion 436   Chapter 29: Soaring in the Clouds 439 Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing 440 Where Clouds Fit in Different Companies 448 Decision Process 450 Conclusion 453   Chapter 30: Plugging in the Grid 455 Pros and Cons of Grids 456 Different Uses for Grid Computing 461 Decision Process 465 Conclusion 467   Chapter 31: Monitoring Applications 469 “How Come We Didn’t Catch That Earlier?” 469 A Framework for Monitoring 472 Measuring Monitoring: What Is and Isn’t Valuable? 478 Monitoring and Processes 480 Conclusion 481   Chapter 32: Planning Data Centers 483 Data Center Costs and Constraints 483 Location, Location, Location 485 Data Centers and Incremental Growth 488 Three Magic Rules of Three 490 Multiple Active Data Center Considerations 496 Conclusion 498   Chapter 33: Putting It All Together 501 What to Do Now? 502 Case Studies 505 References 509   Appendices 511   Appendix A: Calculating Availability 513 Hardware Uptime 514 Customer Complaints 515 Portion of Site Down 516 Third-Party Monitoring Service 517 Traffic Graph 518   Appendix B: Capacity Planning Calculations 521   Appendix C: Load and Performance Calculations 527   Index 535