Gamend - Game Server Scaling
Both the running instance of gamend, which can be found at https://gamend.appsinacup.com and the README.md now have information about how to deploy the app at scale.
Infrastructure
When scaling, the recommended is to use Postgres database and Redis cache:
+------------------------------+
| Gamend (App Instance 1) |
+------------------------------+
| |
|Database |Cache
v v
+----------+ +-------+
| Postgres | | Redis |
+----------+ +-------+
^ ^
|Database |Cache
| |
+------------------------------+
| Gamend (App Instance 2) |
+------------------------------+
# Etc. to n instances
Tutorial (Docker Compose)
- Clone the gamend_starter repo
- Run the following:
docker compose -f docker-compose.multi.yml up --scale app=2
This will start 2 instances of the gamend app, a Postgres database, Redis cache and a nginx that acts as a load balancer.
- gamend_starter
- nginx-1: Ports 4000:80
- db-1: Ports 5432:5432
- redis-1: Ports 6379:6379
- app-1
- app-2
Now, go to the browser to http://localhost:4000, register with any email and then go to the dev mailbox, at http://localhost:4000/dev/mailbox (Only enabled locally to test, in prod disable it). Accept the registration, then login with magic link. You should now have admin access (first registered user is admin).
Load Balancer
The nginx load balancer will call into either app-1 or app-2. The gamend server has a cache layer, which can be configured in different ways, but for this it’s configured with Redis. The database of choice is Postgres here (for single deployment it can also use SQLite).
Multilevel Cache
The app uses 2 level caching. First local in memory, and then Redis (over network). When something is written to the database or read, the cache is updated both locally and distributed. Read more about Multilevel cache here: