System and method for horizontal scaling of multi-tenant web applications

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for tangibly storing computer program instructions capable of being executed by a computer processor, the computer program instructions defining steps of:

• determining whether a distributed lock is available for an operation on a shared resource via a coordination server managing locks across a plurality of application servers in a multi-tenant environment;
• acquiring the distributed lock when available by generating a fencing token associated with the distributed lock, the fencing token being a monotonically increasing value managed by the coordination server;
• verifying the fencing token by a given application server prior to performing the operation on the shared resource;
• invalidating cached data across application servers after performing the operation,
• the cache invalidation being triggered by the given application server that performs the operation;
• and
• releasing the distributed lock to the coordination server after the operation, allowing other application servers to acquire the distributed lock.

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a storage medium for tangibly storing thereon program logic for execution by the processor, the program logic comprising steps for:
• determining whether a distributed lock is available for an operation on a shared resource via a coordination server managing locks across a plurality of application servers in a multi-tenant environment;
• acquiring the distributed lock when available by generating a fencing token associated with the distributed lock, the fencing token being a monotonically increasing value managed by the coordination server;
• verifying the fencing token by a given application server prior to performing the operation on the shared resource;
• invalidating cached data across application servers after performing the operation, the cache invalidation being triggered by the given application server that performs the operation;
• and
• releasing the distributed lock to the coordination server after the operation, allowing other application servers to acquire the distributed lock.