Systems that look healthy under normal load often fail silently during traffic spikes because state management doesn't scale the same way stateless compute does. Distributed caching helps offload centralized databases, but introduces its own bottlenecks: cache stampedes, hot keys, and excessive data motion between cache and app tiers. Active caching addresses these by running application logic directly inside the distributed cache, eliminating serialization overhead and network round trips. The post outlines a checklist for measuring peak performance, emphasizing load testing with contention, tracking data motion per user action, and keeping the database off the critical path during surges.
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