Hardware is one of the most important components in the overall design. Without the appropriate memory footprint, CPU power, network, or storage solution, our design will fail before the project even gets off the ground. Another design consideration is how to configure the hardware to obtain the best stability, performance, and scalability. Development servers are typically lower specification machines, but UAT or preproduction environments should be representative of a live environment. We must ensure that there are no surprises when it comes to processing production-like data volumes. Let's take a look at a few options.
The configuration and arrangement of hardware components is known as the system architecture. This section concentrates on the common computer architectures available and discusses their advantages and disadvantages for a distributed database network supporting a web-based application.
The following diagram shows the typical...