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What is multi-dimensional scaling?

Couchbase MDS improves performance and reduces costs by letting you scale your query, index, and data services separately. This separation eliminates resource conflicts, wasted hardware, and unnecessary rebalancing. Plus, you can assign each service to the best hardware for its job – CPUs for queries, SSDs for indexes, and RAM for data. Your apps run faster, customers get a better experience, and your system is easier to manage.

How do database services benefit from isolation?

Fast processors for queries

Queries run faster on dedicated nodes and don’t slow down reads or writes by hogging CPU.

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High-performance SSDs

Indexes on dedicated nodes search faster and don’t slow down writes by overloading disk I/O.

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Data distribution

More nodes mean more data capacity. With isolated data nodes memory use goes up, CPU/disk needs go down, and read/write speed stays consistent.

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Efficiency

Couchbase lets you assign services to specific nodes, maximizing CPU and RAM usage through efficient resource distribution.

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Independent services

You can scale each of these Couchbase services independently and don’t need to run every service on every node.

Data

Storage and key/value access for JSON documents.

Docs
Query

SQL++ query engine can be used with Data and Index services.

Docs
Index

Primary and secondary indexes on data.

Docs
Search

Full-text, geospatial, and vector search for AI.

Docs
Analytics

Real-time workload-isolated analytics and SQL++.

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Eventing

Real-time logic to respond to mutations/times.

Docs
Backup

Full and incremental backups and merges.

Docs

Speed without interference

Dedicated query nodes ensure fast processing without slowing down reads or writes. By isolating query operations, you avoid CPU contention with other services, and you can scale query nodes without rebalancing data. This makes queries consistently fast, even under heavy loads.

High-speed lookup, zero bottlenecks

Index services benefit from SSDs and operate best when isolated. This keeps writes fast since disk I/O isn’t shared with other services. You can scale indexing independently and create as many indexes as needed without affecting data distribution or write performance.

Consistent reads and writes at scale

When data nodes are isolated from query and index workloads, reads and writes stay fast and predictable. You don’t have to rebalance queries or indexes to scale the data layer, and you can prioritize memory while using more modest CPU and disk resources.

What customers are saying

"Switching to Couchbase increased performance while lowering database and operational costs."
Jeremy Badong, Program Director, Yondu
95% reduction in update time
20% reduction in incident reports
Amadeus-server
"What we value a lot is that Couchbase was able to embrace with us our vision to the cloud."
Vincent Bersin, Unit Manager, NoSQL Solutions, Amadeus
20M operations per second
<2.5ms response times
Database scalability

Explore database scalability, its challenges, and how Couchbase scales.

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Explore related resources

Video
Couchbase’s multi-dimensional scaling
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Docs
Planning for and using multi-dimensional scaling for your cluster
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Blogs
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