Scaling Parse Server | back4app blog 11/28/17, 9)42 PM

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Scaling Parse Server

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Its been a while since Parse closed down completely in Jan 2017. We take pride in the num-
ber of Parse.com users who have subsequently decided to put their trust in Back4Apps Parse
Server Platform. We want to share with the community some of the lessons weve learned
since this journey begun.

Parse Server was launched as an Open Source version of Parse.com but it has proved a valu-
able resource in many other ways. It provides an excellent NodeJS framework for building
and scaling your App. The app scaling in question is of the major variety at Back4App
weve scaled some apps up to 10.000 Req/s (about 80.000 simultaneous users). All of this is
possible while staying in total control of your backend and avoiding the kind of locks and limi-
tations that come with Black Box solutions.

This experience proves how Parse Server can scale to much more than the 600 req/s that
Parse.com announced on its pricing page (see below), far beyond the limits imposed by
some other black box backends. A number of valuable features ensure that Parse Server is
your best app scaling option. I want to emphasize some of the most important of these
elements.

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Scaling Parse Server | back4app blog 11/28/17, 9)42 PM

1-Scale without major re-engineering

Flexibility to add new modules: As soon as your app grows you need new features to
keep users engaged, or even to improve acquisition, and sometimes a complete backend
platform might not be available. Because Parse Server is an open source solution it allows
you to install a bunch of npm(NodeJS) modules and integrate new APIs accessing more ad-
vanced features.

Vertical x Horizontal Scaling: Parse Server is designed to support trouble-free horizontal

scaling, for example, to share a state between the instances. It allows you to simply create
new identical Parse Server instances to share your app requests processing. This helps you to
find the best balance between vertical scaling that just increases your machine configs, and
horizontal scaling to optimize your performance and costs. For example, you could start with
one instance of Parse Server on a single machine and scale vertically onto a Cloud Platform
while constantly monitoring cost and performance. As soon as your app grows you can create
a copy of these servers and add a load balancer to better distribute the requests.

On the database side, MongoDB also solves the scaling problem. It allows you to start with a
single structure of Mongo DB, and as soon as your app scales you can add a replica set and
then go to a sharded cluster if your app reach unicorn levels.

Optimize your query performance: You can use Parse Server custom app requests to get
the best performance for each app type. If your apps features use a lot of geo-points you can
set these queries to be processed on the secondary machine of your MongoDB structure.

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Scaling Parse Server | back4app blog 11/28/17, 9)42 PM

2-The Parse Server stack is solid

It may look like a challenge at first glance, but the combo Node.js + MongoDBs scalability is
actually quite impressive. Even with Javascripts single threaded nature, Node can take ad-
vantage of multiple cores using the cluster module this allows a developer to create a net-
work of processes with shared ports. To scale-out across multiple machines the developer can
use nginx to load balance received requests across multiple Parse Server instances. In addi-
tion, Nodes site authentication can be efficiently executed using the connect-auth library.
This process avoids some of the common development mistakes and speed is another major
advantage.

MongoDBs scalability is widely questioned, but it has many features that support easy scal-
ing. For example, MongoDB Ops Manager allows the developer to deploy and scale sharded
clusters across multiple data centers (using only one click). Furthermore, MongoDB Ops Man-
ager is really useful to track and measure your performance as it triggers when metrics go out
of range.

If you take MongoDB + Node.js stack in its entirety it becomes clear that it covers all the met-
rics of scalability: cluster scale, performance scale and data scale. Leading companies like EA
Sports, Square Enix and McAfee use the combo, and it is easy to understand why.

3-Deploy Parse Server anywhere

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Scaling Parse Server | back4app blog 11/28/17, 9)42 PM

You can install Parse Server on servers of your choice. This allows you to avoid problems such
as latency, and to use the best infrastructure to fit your needs. If you have the skills you can
build your own infra optimized to your app and host Parse Server. You can also opt for a
Cloud solution if you think it will perform better.

We conclude that the open source model is the key to Parse Servers success. This model re-
ally ensures that you can do wherever you want with the framework as soon as you scale your
app. This goes a long way to explaining why Parse Server has become the most popular
open source framework for building app backends. Currently, the git repository has more
than 26000 stargazers, and the community includes more than 100.000k developers.

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Im a computer engineer passionate about Startups.

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