A-Z Popular Blog Cloud Search »
Technology
 Advertisements
Related Guides
Information Technology

Integration

What is Vertical Scale?

 , updated on
Vertical scale is the ability to move a service, application or system to a machine that has more resources.

Vertical Scale & Cloud Computing

Vertical scale applies at the instance level. If you have the ability to move an instance to a more powerful machine, you have vertical scale. Infrastructure as a service and platform as a service vendors typically provide tools to vertically scale an instance quickly.

Vertical Scale vs Horizontal Scale

Vertical scale is the ability to move a single instance to a more powerful machine. Horizontal scale is the ability to add more machines to a service, system or application. Vertical scaling is far more limited than horizontal scaling because there is a limit to the size of a single machine. Moving to more powerful instances can also be expensive as compared to adding many cheap instances. In theory, software can be infinitely scaled using horizontal scaling. In order to be horizontally scaled, your software must be designed to work in parallel with many instances. Cloud computing platforms support both vertical and horizontal scale.

Example

A firm wants to increase the capacity of a mobile app backend running on a 16-cpu cloud server. They use a management tool provided by the cloud vendor to take an image of the server and launch the image to a 64-cpu instance. They perform a few configuration changes on the new instance to take advantage of increased memory capacity and test the new server on a new IP address. When the test is successful, they release the old server and use its IP address on the new server. The mobile app backend has been scaled to significantly improved hardware. Despite the manual changes and testing, a process such as this might take less than an hour. This process could also be fully automated such that it might run in a minute or so.

Notes

Another key difference between vertical and horizontal scale is that vertical scale tends to be one way. It is easier to scale a small machine to a large machine. The reverse has a tendency to be problematic. Some vendors may not support reverse vertical scaling. Horizontal scale lends itself well to both scaling up and down.
Overview: Vertical Scale
Type
Definition
The ability to move a service, application or system to a machine that has more resources.
Related Concepts

Computing

This is the complete list of articles we have written about computing.
Coding
Compression
Computing Platform
Cryptography
Gamification
Hexadecimal
IT Examples
IT Infrastructure
Networking
Operating Systems
More ...
If you enjoyed this page, please consider bookmarking Simplicable.
 

Cloud Computing

A list of cloud computing terms.

Cloud Scaling

The definition of cloud scaling with examples.

Horizontal Scale

The definition of horizontal scale with examples.

Edge Computing Definition

The definition of edge computing with an example.

Technology Platform

The definition of technology platform with examples.

Transcoding

The definition of transcoding with examples.

Electronic Business

The definition of electronic business with examples.

Software Examples

An overview of software with real-world examples.

Business Software Examples

A list of common types of business software.

Systems Technology

An overview of systems technology with examples.

Computing Platform

A list of the basic types of computing platform.

Types of IT Service

The definition of information technology service with examples.

IT Architecture

The definition of IT Architecture with examples.

Solution Architecture

Examples of common solution architecture diagrams.

System Architecture

Examples of system architecture diagrams.

Consumerization

The definition of consumerization with examples.

Software as a Service

Common examples of software as a service.

IaaS Definition

The definition of infrastructure as a service with comparisons.

Networking Basics

A list of basic computer networking concepts.

Reverse Proxy

An overview of reverse proxies with examples.
The most popular articles on Simplicable in the past day.

New Articles

Recent posts or updates on Simplicable.
Site Map