Vertical scaling

Make one machine bigger: more vCPUs, more memory. It is simple and needs no code change, but it hits a ceiling, costs more per unit at the top and keeps a single point of failure.

Where it shows up in real systems

  • Virtual machine

    Throughput grows with vCPUs and depends on the runtime: Go serves several times more requests per core than Python. If memory is below what the runtime needs, the machine swaps and slows down sharply. Several instances behind a load balancer survive the loss of one.

    In production: Amazon EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine, OVHcloud Public Cloud

See it break, then fix it

Build an architecture, send it a day of traffic and outages, and learn why it holds or fails. Free to start.

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