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Cloud Computing & DevOps vocabulary · Scaling and Performance

Scale out

Meaning in cloud computing & devops, with examples

phrasal verbCommon term

In cloud computing & devops, scale out means: To handle more load by adding more servers, containers or instances that share the work, rather than making one machine bigger.

In Turkish: yatay ölçeklemek, sunucu sayısını artırmak

How it is used

Also called horizontal scaling. The opposite, removing servers when load drops, is 'scale in'. Stateless services scale out easily; databases are harder. Autoscaling usually scales out and in automatically.

Example sentences

  1. During the campaign we scaled out from four to twenty web servers.

  2. The service keeps sessions in memory, so we can't scale out until we move them to Redis.

Common collocations

  • scale out horizontally
  • scale out and in
  • horizontal scaling
  • scale out the web tier
  • scale upTo handle more load by giving one machine more power, such as more CPU or memory, instead of adding more machines.
  • autoscalingAutomatically adding servers or containers when demand rises and removing them when it falls, based on rules such as CPU use or number of requests.
  • scalabilityThe ability of a system to handle more users, data or traffic by adding resources, without a big drop in performance or a full redesign.
  • load balancerA service that receives incoming traffic and spreads it across several servers, sending requests only to the ones that are healthy.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Scaling and Performance

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