Skip to content

Scalability & Statelessness Strategy

The system is designed for horizontal scaling with stateless components.

Horizontal Scaling Plan

  • Frontend: Multiple instances behind load balancer
  • Backend: Multiple FastAPI pods — stateless, no sticky sessions required
  • Database: Read replicas for read-heavy workloads
  • Background jobs: run in-process; scale with backend replicas (see ADR-010)

Stateless Design Principles Applied

All components are designed to be stateless:

  • Auth is a signed JWT in an httpOnly cookie — no server-side session store, no shared cache required (see ADR-012)
  • User state persisted in database
  • File uploads stored in object storage
  • No local file system dependencies

Load Distribution Mechanisms

  • Load balancers for external traffic distribution
  • Kubernetes service discovery for internal communication
  • Database connection pooling for efficient resource usage

Caching Strategy Overview

Caching is implemented at multiple levels:

  • CDN for static assets
  • Database query caching where appropriate
  • HTTP caching headers for API responses