Scaling Node.JS across multiple cores / servers

Question

Ok so I have an idea I want to peruse but before I do I need to understand a few things fully.

Firstly the way I think im going to go ahead with this system is to ha

Answer 1

On my front end server, I have 8 cores, what's the best way to scale node so that the load is distributed across the cores?

Try to look at node.js cluster module which is a multi-core server manager.

Answer 2

Concerning your first question: use cluster (we already use it in a production system, works like a charm).

When it comes to worker messaging, i cannot really help you out. But your best bet is cluster too. Maybe there will be some functionality that provides "inter-core" messaging accross all cluster workers in the future (don't know the roadmap of cluster, but it seems like an idea).

For your third requirement, i'd use a low-overhead protocol like NFS or (if you can go really crazy when it comes to infrastructure) a high-speed SAN backend.

Another advice: use MongoDB as your database backend. You can start with low-end hardware and scale up your database instance with ease using MongoDB's sharding/replication set features (if that is some kind of requirement).

Answer 3

Firstly, I wouldn't describe the setup you propose as 'scaling', it's more like 'spreading'. You only have one app server serving the requests. If you add more app servers in the future, then you will have a scaling problem then.

I understand that node.js is single-threaded, which implies that it can only use a single core. Not my area of expertise on how to/if you can scale it, will leave that part to someone else.

I would suggest NFS mounting a directory on the storage server to the app server. NFS has relatively low overhead. Then you can access the files as if they were local.