In order to understand the structure and layout of Couchbase Server, you first need to understand the different components and systems that make up both an individual Couchbase Server instance, and the components and systems that work together to make up the Couchbase Cluster as a whole.

The following section provides key information and concepts that you need to understand the fast and elastic nature of the Couchbase Server database, and how some of the components work together to support a highly available and high performance database.