Distributed State Management
Explore using external message brokers (e.g., Redis Pub/Sub, Kafka) to synchronize state across multiple WebSocket servers.
Scaling Challenges: Shared State
You've learned about scaling WebSocket applications by running multiple server instances behind a load balancer. But what happens when a client connects to Server A, and another client connected to Server B needs to send a message to the first client?
This is the challenge of distributed state management: how do your servers share information and coordinate?
Why Centralize State?
Imagine a chat application. If Client 1 is on Server A and Client 2 is on Server B, and Client 1 sends a message, how does Server A tell Server B to deliver it to Client 2?
Without a way for servers to communicate, messages or updates might only reach clients connected to the same server, breaking the real-time experience.
All lessons in this course
- Horizontal Scaling Strategies
- Load Balancing WebSockets
- Distributed State Management
- Pub/Sub Backplane with Redis