One good resource is http://highscalability.com http://highscalability.com. It's got a number of good stories about scaling up and the architectures decisions u

One good resource is http://highscalability.com http://highscalability.com. It's got a number of good stories about scaling up and the architectures decisions used therein. There are also a number of articles and papers released by Google, Linkedin and Amazon that are worth reading. One thing that I've found incredibly useful is diagramming application architectures, starting with applications you work on. That plus understanding the CAP theorem