OpenStack Cloud Application Development

5 Improving on the Application

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?                   

• Understanding the types of failure scenarios that can affect applications running in the cloud
• Providing access into the application and understanding how hostname and IP addresses play an important role
• Methods for scaling an application to multiple instances and regions and adapting to events in the environment
• Improving the basic application

It is common for applications to be initially developed for the cloud in a very simple manner. The developer may start with deploying the application as a single instance in the cloud. If the application has different types of functions, such as a web front-end and a database back-end, these functions can be broken into a couple different instances.

This chapter discusses what you as the developer need to do next. You need to know what kind of failures occur in the cloud and how those failures could affect the application. You also need to understand the application components and how they relate to failures in order to build a more robust and reliable application.

Different techniques are examined on how to scale the application in the cloud. The chapter also takes a look at performance and why it is important to know when and where performance issues occur. Often, scaling the application in the right places can mitigate performance issues when they occur.

The chapter also takes a look at data protection. How important is the data to the application? Is it important ...