Scaling

Question 1

What are the two types of scaling?

Answer 1

• Vertical Scaling: increasing the power of a computing unit (RAM, CPU, GPU, STORAGE)
• Horizontal Scaling: increasing the number of computing units and distributing load across multiple units.

Question 2

What are the pros/cons of Vertical Scaling?

Answer 2

• Pro - Does not require a change in software architecture.
• Pro - Low latency between parts as not done over network.
• Con - hardware resources have limitations and become very expensive/even impossible to a point.
• Con - Risk of creating a single point of failure.

Question 3

What are the pros/cons of Horizontal Scaling

Answer 3

• Pro - Easy to add/remove resources on demand
• Pro - Redundancy, making the system more fault tolerant.
• Con - More complex software as distrubuting workload/communicating becomes a concern.