--- title: Basic Web Application Architecture — Design Explanation description: A learner walks through a basic web application architecture consisting of a frontend load balancer, two frontend servers, an application load balancer, two... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Basic Web Application Architecture — Design Explanation | daily.dev og:description: A learner walks through a basic web application architecture consisting of a frontend load balancer, two frontend servers, an application load balancer, two... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Z6gDpIaXZ.png og:image:alt: Basic Web Application Architecture — Design Explanation og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Basic Web Application Architecture — Design Explanation **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A learner walks through a basic web application architecture consisting of a frontend load balancer, two frontend servers, an application load balancer, two backend servers, a database layer, and a storage solution. The piece explains why redundancy and horizontal scaling justify running multiple servers at each layer, discusses single points of failure in the database and storage tiers, outlines basic security measures like TLS and restricted inter-layer communication, and closes with a cost versus performance comparison between a single-server setup and the proposed multi-server design. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why would I use two frontend servers and two backend servers instead of just one of each? Using two servers at each layer provides redundancy and horizontal scaling: if one server fails, the other continues handling requests, avoiding full application downtime. Load balancers distribute traffic across both servers so no single server bears the entire workload. This costs more than a single-server setup but improves availability, fault tolerance, and performance as traffic grows. _Anyone weighing server redundancy against cost can find more architecture trade-off discussions on daily.dev._ ### How can I avoid the database becoming a single point of failure in a web app architecture? A single database instance is a single point of failure even when frontend and backend servers are redundant. Mitigating this requires database replication, regular backups, or a highly available managed database configuration, since adding redundant application servers alone does not remove single points of failure at the database or storage layers. _Developers designing resilient data layers can track more system design patterns on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [System Design Explained: APIs, Databases, Caching, CDNs, Load Balancing & Production Infra](https://daily.dev/posts/system-design-explained-apis-databases-caching-cdns-load-balancing-production-infra-jfj7yd9xk) · gitconnected · 209 upvotes · 4 comments - [Layered Architecture for Building Readable, Robust, and Extensible Apps](https://daily.dev/posts/layered-architecture-for-building-readable-robust-and-extensible-apps-ca78tav68) · Towards Data Science · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cloud](https://daily.dev/tags/cloud), [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Basic Web Application Architecture — Design Explanation","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz"},"datePublished":"2026-08-21T19:30:29.890Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:24:39.053Z","description":"A learner walks through a basic web application architecture consisting of a frontend load balancer, two frontend servers, an application load balancer, two...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/21fb31a33226c3b3c8781364750e3635?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/21fb31a33226c3b3c8781364750e3635?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"cloud,career","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Basic Web Application Architecture — Design Explanation"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/basic-web-application-architecture-design-explanation-z6gdpiaxz#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why would I use two frontend servers and two backend servers instead of just one of each?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Using two servers at each layer provides redundancy and horizontal scaling: if one server fails, the other continues handling requests, avoiding full application downtime. 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