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09/07/2026 3:25 pm
TL;DR: As data volumes grow, legacy, vertically scaled architectures create bottlenecks, with read-heavy Command Center calls taking 30 seconds or more until a read-optimised Entity Lookup Service reduced responses to under 3 seconds, according to Commvault. The architectural shift matters because identity and access controls for modern platforms must now assume distributed services, independent scaling, and a centralized control plane.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Commvault: an architectural analysis of horizontal scaling, microservices, and the Global Command Center
By the numbers:
- Some API calls were taking 30 seconds or more to respond.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should teams govern identity and access in horizontally scaled platforms?
A: Teams should treat horizontal scaling as a governance redesign, not a capacity upgrade.
Q: Why do microservices change the way IAM teams think about platform risk?
A: Microservices change risk because they distribute responsibility across more services, more interfaces, and more execution paths.
Q: What breaks when a control plane becomes the only way to manage the environment?
A: What breaks is resilience and governance at the same time.
Practitioner guidance
- Map single-instance governance dependencies Identify where one server, one console, or one admin workflow still carries multiple operational responsibilities.
- Separate read-heavy administrative queries Move high-volume visibility requests onto a read-optimised path so operational teams can inspect state without fighting transactional workloads.
- Standardise shared services across microservices Make authentication, logging, error handling, and request lifecycle management common services rather than per-team reinventions.
What's in the full article
Commvault's full article covers the architectural detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The evolution from vertical to horizontal scaling across MediaAgents and core platform services.
- How the Entity Lookup Service uses a denormalized data model to improve command-center read performance.
- How the CVDotnetContainer standardizes authentication, logging, error handling, and service hosting.
- Why the Global Command Center changes administration across distributed CommCell environments.
👉 Read Commvault's analysis of horizontal scaling and the Global Command Center →
Horizontal scaling and control planes: what it means for IAM teams?
Explore further
09/07/2026 3:45 pm
Horizontal scale is now an identity governance problem, not just an infrastructure problem. Once platforms move beyond a single machine, the administrative model changes as much as the compute model. Access paths, oversight points, and service boundaries all multiply, which means governance has to address how trust is distributed across the platform, not just how workloads are hosted. Practitioners should treat scaling decisions as control-plane decisions.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, according to the 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
- 69% of security leaders agree identity management must fundamentally shift to address agentic AI systems.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do security teams decide whether a central command center is helping or hurting governance?
A: Security teams should measure whether the central command center improves visibility without creating a single point of privilege or failure. If it is the only practical route for monitoring, job control, and response, then it may be simplifying operations while increasing governance dependency. The test is whether oversight remains available, timely, and attributable at scale.
👉 Read our full editorial: Horizontal scale and control planes are reshaping data infrastructure
