This refers to the overall ability of a network, application, or system to take care of an increasing number of workloads or to adjust according to a rising workload.

Scalability in cloud computing is of two types. These are vertical and horizontal scalability. With horizontal scalability, more resources such as nodes and servers are added to a system. With vertical scalability, there is the involvement of the growing capacity of already present resources, such as a server’s RAM or CPU.

Some of the most renowned techniques in this regard are clustering, load balancing, and sharding/partitioning data stores or databases.

It is well-known that horizontal scalability paves the way for a better degree of performance via load balancing, enhanced fault tolerance, and the ability to better deal with sudden workload or traffic spikes.

This sort of scalability is also referred to as scale-up. Here, there is an increase in the overall capacity of the already present resources. This includes a server’s storage capacity. It is commonly observed that vertical scalability is ideal for those applications that demand a greater level of memory or processing power but could have limitations with regards to scalability when comparing with horizontal scalability.