Evolution of Web Application Architecture: From Single‑Server to Microservices
This article traces the progressive evolution of website architecture—from the early single‑server model through application‑data separation, caching, clustering, read‑write splitting, CDN deployment, distributed and NoSQL databases, and finally microservice architectures—illustrating each stage with diagrams and explaining the motivations behind each architectural upgrade.
Modern technology evolves rapidly, and system architectures continuously upgrade from traditional monolithic designs to today's microservice‑based distributed systems; this article reviews that evolutionary process.
NO.1 Early Website Architecture
In the initial stage of website construction, limited traffic and data allowed a single server to host the application, files, and database together.
NO.2 Application and Data Separation
As the site grew, a single server could no longer meet demand; traffic and data increased, prompting separation into distinct application, file, and database servers.
NO.3 Caching to Improve Performance
Rising user numbers increased database load and latency; caching frequently accessed or rarely changed data accelerated response times.
NO.4 Application Cluster
During traffic peaks, a single application server becomes a bottleneck; deploying a cluster with a load balancer distributes requests and reduces pressure on individual nodes.
NO.5 Database Read‑Write Splitting
Continued data growth and request volume require multiple databases with separate read and write responsibilities.
NO.6 Deploying CDN Nodes
Geographically dispersed users benefit from Content Delivery Networks that serve content from the nearest edge server, reducing latency.
NO.7 Distributed Database
When a single table becomes extremely large, a distributed database is used; otherwise, business‑level sharding across multiple physical servers is more common.
NO.8 Using NoSQL Databases
When data reaches petabyte scale, relational databases hit performance limits, prompting the adoption of NoSQL solutions.
NO.9 Microservice Architecture
As business lines expand, separating functionalities into independent services managed by different teams becomes necessary; microservices enable this modular communication.
The most popular Java EE framework, Spring, has long been a mature solution; to keep pace with rapid development, Spring Cloud provides a microservice solution that enables easy deployment of high‑performance, highly available microservice systems.
Source: CSDN Blog
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