Stability - Design Tactics - Beware Anti-Patterns

Every integration point will eventually fail in some way

One server down jeopardizes the rest

Stop cracks from jumping the gap

Users consume memory (users sessions) and do wild things

The Blocked Thread antipattern is the approximate cause of most failures (e.g. gradual slowdown, hung server)

Keep the lines of communication open (flash mobs, traffic spikes)

Examine production versus QA environments to spot Scaling Effects

Examine server and thread counts (e.g. the ration of front-end to back-end servers)

Dogpiles force you to spend too much to handle peak demand

Ask for help before causing havoc (infrastructure management tools can make very large impact very quickly)

Slow Responses trigger Cascading Failures

Use realistic data volumes (typically development and test data sets are too small)