Description: Vertical scaling, in the context of cloud autoscaling, refers to the ability to increase the resources of an existing machine or instance. This involves boosting processing power, RAM, or storage of a server without the need to create new instances. This approach is particularly useful in situations where workloads fluctuate, allowing organizations to quickly adapt to changing demands without incurring the costs and complexity of managing multiple instances. Vertical scaling can be implemented either manually or automatically, depending on the system configuration and the cloud management tools used. It is often combined with horizontal scaling, which involves adding more instances instead of increasing the resources of existing ones. However, vertical scaling has its limitations, as each machine has a cap on the amount of resources that can be allocated. Despite this, it is a valuable technique for optimizing the performance of applications and ensuring that services remain available and efficient during demand spikes.
