Understanding Scaling: A Guide to Handling Increased Demand

Scaling refers to how a system adapts to increased demand by adding or modifying resources. There are three primary types of scaling: horizontal, vertical, and diagonal. Horizontal scaling involves adding more machines or instances to handle traffic, while vertical scaling upgrades server resources. Diagonal scaling replicates servers to handle more users without overloading a single machine.

In practice, scaling can be achieved through various means, such as adding more application servers behind a load balancer or sharding databases across multiple servers. Popular examples of scaling in action include Netflix's use of horizontal scaling to serve millions of users globally and a small e-commerce site using vertical scaling during peak shopping seasons.

Source: https://dev.to/gnanee/have-you-ever-wondered-what-on-earth-is-scaling-45gj