Performance Optimizations in a Cloud-Centric World

Chapter 3. Minimizing Performance Risks

The performance risks described previously can be minimized using the following five strategies:

1. Use a best-of-breed DNS provider
2. Cache content as close to the user as possible
3. Understand the nature of cloud services
4. Apply the same good practice to the cloud as you would to any other system
5. Ensure you can handle any failure

Use a Best-of-Breed DNS Provider

DNS is your first point of contact with an end user; without it, your user will never access your site. So it is essential that it is reliable, performant, and flexible.

Providers, such as cloud providers or CDNs, often prefer (or require) that they also manage your DNS, but this can create a single point of failure (SPOF); if a provider experiences problems with its own system, it may also have issues with its DNS provision, making it difficult to use DNS as a defense against that failure.

Having an independent DNS provider allows you to have policies that favor different cloud providers/CDNs in different circumstances, such as location, speed, SLAs, etc. This allows you to optimize your systems based on the output from the monitoring solutions.

Therefore, it’s good practice to use a managed DNS solution that is provider-independent and to ensure that it offers the services described in the following sections.

A Low-Latency Network

It is essential that the DNS provider you select operates a low-latency network, allowing fast resolution of DNS records wherever your users are situated. ...