Hosting applications

Components of hosting

Quickbase is a no-code application platform as a service (aPaaS). This is possible through a distributed, multi-tenant runtime engine. For customers and IT teams, this means there is no infrastructure to provision.

Runtime engines

Quickbase has a unique approach to application development:

Developers describe the different components that applications need and how they interact.
At the same time, metadata is generated. The runtime engine uses metadata to "run" or "execute" the application. No code is generated and no executables or containers are created.
The runtime engine uses the metadata to produce a solution/application with a full UI and all the underlying functionality.

Quickbase runs and manages an entire fleet of runtime engines, with each instance identical to the others.

Think of this as the Quickbase cluster. The fleet is controlled by the Quickbase control plane. It monitors the runtime engines and ensures that they are healthy and available at all times. It also ensures there are enough runtime engines to handle the current traffic load.

Routing

The final component of hosting is routing. This means any instance of our runtime engine can run your application. Here's how it works:

The ingress service schedules applications to run on a specific instance for a set period of time. Applications are assigned to different instances using a dynamic routing engine.
As requests come in for an application, the ingress service determines which instance of the runtime engine is currently hosting the application.
Once that information is retrieved, the request is forwarded to the appropriate runtime engine instance.

What this means for you is there is no need to manage the details of cloud technology. Quickbase has that covered.

Platform hosting

The Quickbase platform is currently built on top of three cloud providers, matching our services to the best fit:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts our runtime engine fleet, control plane, ingress, and auxiliary platform services (including sending webhooks, processing audit logs, and managing sandboxes).
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) hosts the Quickbase Pipelines integration capabilities.
Microsoft Azure hosts the FastField product.

Cluster components definitions

Ingress

Load Balancer: This is the entry point into cluster. It distributes requests using a reverse proxy with dynamic routing logic.

Data plane

Runtime engine: Core logic of the Quickbase platform
Machine: Bare metal machines that host runtime engines.
Network file storage: A file storage tier keeping app data at rest
SQL: A database holding customer metadata (no app data)

Control plane

Health: Responsible for the provisioning and monitoring of runtime instances
Router: Maintains routing tables for app locations