Horizontal vs. Vertical Scalability

Scalability, in the cloud computing field, can be simply defined as the ability of a system to increase its workload by accommodating the growth of demand for work. AWS provides both horizontal and vertical scalability. The specific interest includes architects and developers who aim at providing assurance to them that the system developed is functional, low-cost, and capable of meeting the demand of users. This scalability ensures that applications can handle increasing loads smoothly without compromising performance or user experience.

Horizontal scalability

Horizontal scalability, sometimes called scaling out or in, adds more instances or nodes to a pool to handle increased load or remove from it. This is similar to adding new lanes to a road to carry more traffic. It’s pivotal for applications that experience variable workloads, allowing them to maintain performance during peak times without incurring the cost of idle resources during off-peak times.