Big Data Dictionary
Scalability Options
When the application workload increases, there are two main options for achieving scalability at the database tier and make the application able to cope with more client requests :
- Scaling up: aims at allocating a bigger machine to act as database servers.
- Scaling out: aims at replicating and partitioning data across more machines.
In fact, the scaling up option has the main drawback that large machines are often very expensive and eventually a physical limit is reached where a more powerful machine cannot be purchased at any cost. Alternatively, it is both extensible and economical - especially in a dynamic workload environment - to scale out by adding storage space or buying another commodity server which fi ts well with the pay-as-you-go philosophy of cloud computing.