Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling
More power or more servers, and why databases are the hard part
What you'll learn
- What vertical and horizontal scaling mean
- The cost and limits of bigger machines
- Moving sessions and files out so any server can handle a request
- Why databases are the hard part
In this video, we'll look at what to do when your app slows down because it has too many users. We'll compare the two ways to scale: scaling up, which means a bigger machine with more CPU, memory, and faster disks, and scaling out, which means more machines behind a load balancer.
We'll also look at moving sessions to Redis and files to S3 so any server can handle any request, and why databases are harder to scale than app servers.
By the end, you'll understand the trade-offs between vertical and horizontal scaling, and why most real systems use both.
