Scaling Web Apps with Kamal (From 1 to 1,000,000 users)

Learn how to scale web applications from a single VPS to a global network using vertical and horizontal scaling, Kamal, and more. Thanks to UltaHost for sponsoring this video: https://ultahost.com/

Scaling your web application can be daunting. In this video, we provide a complete roadmap for scaling server-based applications, from your first user on a single cheap VPS to handling massive traffic across a global network of servers. We'll demystify the two core types of scaling—vertical and horizontal—and show you exactly when and how to use each strategy. Finally, we'll dive into a practical, step-by-step tutorial using Kamal, an incredible open-source tool from 37signals, to deploy a full-stack Laravel, Postgres, and Redis application to a fresh VPS with just a few simple commands.

This guide covers the entire journey of application scaling. We begin with the pros and cons of vertical scaling, where you simply upgrade to a more powerful server. Then, we explore how to transition to horizontal scaling by deploying your app on multiple servers and using a load balancer to distribute traffic. To solve the challenge of deploying to many servers at once, we introduce Kamal. I'll walk you through the entire Kamal workflow, including

kamal setup to provision a new server, kamal deploy to push updates, and kamal rollback to instantly fix a bad deployment.

As a Senior Developer Experience Engineer, I'm passionate about finding tools that make developers' lives easier. Kamal is one of those tools that fundamentally simplifies a complex problem, and I'm excited to show you how it works.

▬▬▬▬ Links ▬▬▬▬

👉 Kamal config and secrets: https://gist.github.com/nikolovlazar/...

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▬▬▬▬ Video Chapters ▬▬▬▬
00:00 - Intro
01:10 - Sponsor Segment
02:11 - Vertical Scaling
07:43 - Horizontal Scaling
14:58 - Intro to Kamal
15:58 - Configuring Kamal
32:59 - Kamal Config Recap
33:54 - Kamal Secrets
36:52 - Pulling secrets from 1Password
41:28 - Setting up a fresh VPS
48:15 - Deploying updates
49:56 - Rolling back deployments
53:23 - Outro

#WebApp #DevOps #Laravel #Docker #Kamal #WebDevelopment