Learn/Glossary/Vertical Scaling
Infrastructure

Vertical Scaling

Vertical scaling upgrades a single machine with more CPU, RAM, or faster storage — simpler but capped by hardware limits.

Diagram

  Before:  Server (4 CPU, 16 GB RAM) ──▶ bottleneck at peak traffic
  
  After:   Server (16 CPU, 128 GB RAM) ──▶ handles more load on one machine

In Depth

Vertical scaling (scaling up) means making a single server more powerful by adding CPU cores, RAM, or faster SSD storage — without adding more machines.

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