Understanding the scalability of RShiny apps hosted on ShinyServer

Question

I am building a series of interactive shiny web apps for a project that I am considering turning into a Company. My background is in data science and I don\'t have a lot of expe

Answer 1

Canovice,

I'd recommend you take a look at the following RStudio / AWS support articles. To scale a shiny server you'll need to look at using a load balancer:

• RStudio

  • https://shiny.rstudio.com/articles/scaling-and-tuning.html
  • https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/220546267-Scaling-and-Performance-Tuning-Applications-in-Shiny-Server-Pro
  • https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/217801438-Can-I-load-balance-across-multiple-nodes-running-Shiny-Server-Pro-

• AWS

  • https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/running-r-on-aws/

• Blog Article:

  • http://mgritts.github.io/2016/07/08/shiny-aws/

Shiny is a great platform, their support is fabulous. I'd recommend you ring them up - they'll be sure to help answer your questions.

That said if your plan is to create a scalable website that will support thousands or hundreds of thousands of people then my sense would be to recommend you also review and consider using D3.js in conjunction with react.js or Angular.js, not forgetting to mention node.js.

My sense is that you are looking at a backend database connected to a logic engine and visualisation front end. If you are looking for a good overview of usage take a look at the following web page and git repo [A little dated but useful]:

• https://anmolkoul.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/interactive-data-visualization-using-d3-js-dc-js-nodejs-and-mongodb/
• https://github.com/anmolkoul/node-dc-mongo

I hope the above points you in the right direction.