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Software Engineering vocabulary · Release and Maintenance

Scale up

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

phrasal verbCommon term

In software engineering, scale up means: To handle more load by giving one machine more power, such as more CPU or memory, instead of adding more machines.

In Turkish: dikey ölçeklemek, kaynakları büyütmek

How it is used

Also called vertical scaling. The opposite is 'scale down'. It is simple but has a limit (the biggest machine available) and often needs a restart. Databases are frequently scaled up before they are split.

Example sentences

  1. We scaled up the database to 32 CPUs, which bought us six more months.

  2. Scaling up is quick, but it doesn't help if the server itself goes down.

Common collocations

  • scale up vertically
  • scale up the database
  • vertical scaling
  • scale down
  • scale outTo handle more load by adding more servers, containers or instances that share the work, rather than making one machine bigger.
  • scalableAble to handle more users, data or traffic by adding resources, without a complete redesign and without becoming much slower.
  • instanceOne running copy of a virtual server or service in the cloud. You choose its size, such as how many CPUs and how much memory it has, and pay while it runs.
  • bottleneckThe one slowest or most limited part of a system, such as the database or the network, that holds back the performance of everything else.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Release and Maintenance

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