A method includes configuring worker services to operate in a stateless manner and providing support services that enable the worker services to operate in the stateless manner. The support services include (i) a management service for providing notifications of server removal and addition, (ii) a state maintenance service for maintaining state information in a central location, and (iii) a load balancer service for distributing requests among worker services. The method includes altering a number of servers allocated to at least one worker service, responsive to a notification from the management service. A private protocol is used between the worker services and load balancer service (a) to send, from the worker services to the load balancer service, a respective pointer to the state information associated with the requests, and (b) to include the respective pointer in the requests when any of the requests are forwarded to any worker service.