Brown - Getting Started with Couchbase Server

Youve just launched your new web application, and by happy accident, its gone viral and your usage has exploded from the few thousand users you originally expected to hundreds of thousands. If you are lucky, it will expand to millions within a few days.

If you are lucky, you designed your application with flexibility and expandability in mind. Depending on what environment youve chosen, you may have had to plan for a replication environment, using masters and slaves, or an application environment that allowed you to write to a central database, while reading from one of the replicated servers to aid performance.

With a little further planning, you may have decided to employ some kind of caching layer that allows you to store information in the RAM of your servers so that you dont have to make so many queries to the database for information that hasnt changed.

Surely theres an easier way?

Couchbase Server addresses many of these problems. It has a caching layer built in, and a built-in distribution system that doesnt require changes to your application. You can also expand your database system on the fly, without taking your application down, changing the configuration, or restarting it.

In this book, weve tried to distill down the key elements you need to get going with Couchbase. Youll get to know the internal architecture and how this affects the way you build and deploy your database system. Ill also show you how to perform key admin tasks, such as expanding your cluster and creating backups.

Ive also provided a quick guide to building applications using the core protocol and document-based architecture of Couchbase Server.

Combined, all of these different sections should tell you everything you need to know to use Couchbase Server, from sizing and constructing your cluster, to deploying and expanding it. This way, when your application goes viral, youll know what to do. Good luck!