What Is Vertical Cloud Scaling? Definition, Scaling Process, and Best Practices

Vertical scaling of cloud resources is defined as the enhancement of memory, processing power, networking, and other technical capabilities of an existing cloud server, either by adding or replacing components such as CPUs and HDDs. This article covers the details, step-wise process, and best practices of vertical cloud scaling in detail.

What Is Vertical Cloud Scaling?

Vertical scaling of cloud resources is the enhancement of memory, processing power, networking, and other technical capabilities of an existing cloud server, either by the addition or replacement of components such as CPUs and HDDs. Replacing the entire existing server rack with a more powerful version would also qualify as a ‘vertical scaling up’ of a cloud server.

Vertical Cloud Scaling
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Vertical scaling is also referred to as scaling ‘up’ (or ‘down’). Compared to horizontal scaling (scaling ‘out’ or ‘in’), vertical cloud scaling entails an increase in power and thereby throughput of a single server or other machine. When you scale up, your data and applications continue to exist on a single node. However, the load of processing them spreads through more powerful components, mostly to handle increased workloads.

Organizations leverage vertical cloud scaling to enhance operational bandwidth. Naturally, such capacity enhancement is bound to be maximized eventually, as only so many components can be upgraded within a single machine. Therefore, the ability of any IT infrastructure to scale up is inherently limited.

In cases where vertical scaling is implemented without adequate business continuity measures, the data and applications present on the node that is being scaled up may be unavailable while the upgrade is in progress. However, this is not a common issue in today’s cutting-edge vertical scaling environment, as the advanced components and stellar redundancy measures present in every machine help ensure minimal risk of downtime or data loss.

Leading cloud service providers such as AWS and Azure have many instance sizes available for users. Therefore, vertical scaling of cloud resources is available for several solutions, including RDS databases and EC2 instances.

The importance of scalability cannot be ignored in the post-COVID world. In today’s world, businesses are fast-paced, mostly online, and more dynamic than ever before. Meeting demand as it arises is critical, as even a few minutes of downtime can lead to losses to the tune of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

At the same time, the cloud environment has become bigger than ever before. An increasingly large number of businesses are relying on cloud platforms for their day-to-day business operations. As such, as businesses scale up to meet ever-growing demand, their cloud resources need to keep up parallelly as well.

How does vertical cloud scaling work?

Cloud scalability is primarily of two types: vertical scaling (upgrading of existing remote infrastructure) and horizontal scaling (deploying new infrastructure). In traditional data centers, vertical scaling is normally achieved by purchasing new, powerful servers or components. The old servers or components are replaced and either resold, discarded as scrap, or repurposed for less intensive processing- or memory-based applications.

However, vertical scaling in a cloud environment is much simpler for the end-user. In most cases, all it takes is the modification of instance size on a web portal. Ensuring the availability of adequate infrastructure and resources to meet scalability demands is the cloud vendor’s responsibility.

Why choose vertical scaling?

Compared to horizontal cloud scaling, which is the activation of more servers to enhance technical capacity, vertical scaling maintains the existing number of servers. Essentially, vertical cloud scaling enhances computing and processing prowess without transferring the existing software, code, or applications elsewhere. The same elements now operate on technology with stronger specifications.

Vertical scaling is intrinsically tied to fulfilling customer demand for online resources. Fluctuation of bandwidth needs is a familiar reality for nearly every enterprise in the post-COVID digitalized corporate world. Smaller cloud-enabled enterprises that provide more niche services are likely to face limited fluctuations in demand, making vertical cloud scaling more relevant to their use case. One reason for this is the fact that upgrading existing infrastructure is, in many cases, more economical than provisioning additional infrastructure—particularly in cases where the marginal utility of the new infrastructure is low.

Vertical scalability enables companies to provide only as many cloud resources as they need on a day-to-day basis. When high traffic is expected, bandwidth can be scaled up to meet demand. Vertical scaling can help address performance issues, concerns around business continuity, and loss of revenue due to the inability to meet demand, all without the relatively higher costs associated with horizontal cloud scaling.

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Vertical Cloud Scaling Process: 6 Key Steps

The scaling process differs for every leading cloud platform. However, it is generally easy to understand and implement. The following steps are the most relevant in a cloud environment powered by AWS.

Pro tip: Most cloud platforms feature a robust support ecosystem backed by the vendor and the user community. Consider consulting your cloud provider, the user community, or an experienced third-party consultant whenever in doubt.

Vertical Cloud Scaling Process

Step I: Forecast and plan for demand

Before you get into the technicalities of vertical cloud scaling, it is important to understand the scalability and flexibility that your organization needs. This is best achieved through in-depth research to understand past demand and forecast future demand trends.

Once you have a fairly accurate idea of what the demand for your product, service, or solution will look like over the short, medium, and long term, devise a strategy to meet it. This strategy should involve stakeholders from across the organization, your cloud vendor(s), and consultants (if necessary). Together, work to identify all your cloud resource needs, as well as the metrics and constraints that are critical for success with vertical scaling.

Step II: Set a perpetual number of instances

Now that you have a fair idea of your expected demand levels, related scalability, and flexibility requirements, it is time to set your vertical cloud scaling parameters accordingly. Begin by configuring the auto-scaling feature to preserve a fixed number of instances perpetually.

EC2 auto scaling scans the health of running instances routinely and replaces bad instances if it detects any. This way, you will have the number of instances you need to scale up or down whenever required. AWS will automatically manage the creation and termination of instances to ensure that stable capacity is maintained according to the fixed value specified. This enables the maintenance of a minimum and maximum capacity for automatic vertical scaling.

Step III: Become familiar with manual scaling

Even though the auto-scaling that you’ve set up (step II) is reliable in most cases, ensure that your IT team is familiar with manual scaling as well. Of course, there is no need to employ this scaling tactic as the primary method for vertically scaling cloud resources due to its obvious drawbacks. However, it is helpful to keep this information handy if the need to regulate performance without the help of scaling rules arises.

Manual vertical scaling is straightforward in the case of RDS or EC2 servers; simply change the size of the instance. To scale up, pick a larger instance type—like going from t3.medium to t3.large. To scale down, choose a smaller instance—perhaps t3.nano. Be warned, however, that this is just a contingency step with some drawbacks, including the need for manual intervention, potentially higher costs due to architecture being left larger than required, and downtime during the changing of instance size.

Step IV: Set scaling as per a fixed schedule

Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with the basics of the vertical scaling process, it’s time to put this knowledge to use. As long as your demand forecast from step 1 is accurate, you should be able to scale instances automatically at fixed dates and times whenever required. For instance, during the launch of a new product or a seasonal shopping event. This will enable all stakeholders to predict the availability of resources at any given moment in advance and even increase the number of perpetual instances if required.

Step V: Ensure demand is driving scalability

It is wise to check back often to ensure that your cloud platform scales as per demand, even if your demand forecast is not perfect. The demand-based scaling capabilities of leading cloud vendors are comfortably responsive to fluctuations in traffic. If everything is set up correctly, traffic spikes that you haven’t scheduled for according to step 4 should still be addressed. After all, one of the key benefits of automatic vertical scaling is its ability to address demand that cannot be predicted.

Familiarizing yourself with setting CPU utilization will help ensure the smooth vertical scaling of cloud operations. This feature instructs AWS to remain at a fixed operational percentage (for example, 50%) in case of a shift in application load. This can help increase the efficiency of the automated response to spikes in traffic.

Another useful feature is predictive scaling. To use this, begin by exploring load forecasting, which analyzes traffic history for up to two weeks, and forecasts demand for the next two days. These forecasts are updated daily and reflect findings at hourly intervals.

The next step to implement predictive scaling is through scheduled scaling actions, which enhances or contracts resources based on load forecasts. This way, resource utilization is maintained at a stable level based on predefined values.

The final step is using maximum capacity behavior to set a maximum and minimum capacity for all resources. This enables flexible operations within set parameters. The limit can be modified in cases where forecasted demand is expected to cross maximum capacity.

Step VI: Remember to scale back down

It is critical to keep this final step in mind, not only in manual intervention but also otherwise. Familiarize yourself with the pricing structure of your cloud provider, especially the bits specific to vertical scaling (or scaling in general). Generally speaking, scaling beyond a limit will cost you, even if it is fully automatic. Keep an eye out for opportunities to scale back down whenever feasible.

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Top 10 Best Practices for Vertical Cloud Scaling Implementation in 2021

As businesses move to the cloud to keep up with post-COVID trends such as remote work and end-to-end digitalization, vertical cloud scaling is witnessing increased adoption across industries. Here’s a list of the best practices for the implementation of vertical cloud scaling in 2021.

Vertical Cloud Scaling Best Practices

1. Know your capacity needs

In today’s dynamic business environment, fluctuations in demand are all but guaranteed. Therefore, it is critical to be aware of the cloud capacity requirements of your organization at all times. While vertical scaling addresses unpredictable demand, ensuring your SLA is in sync with your demand forecasts is critical for preventing ballooning IT costs or service outages at an inconvenient time.

Conversely, basing your vertical cloud scaling parameters on faulty data might lead to the idle capacity that you’re paying for. Keep checking back to make sure your actual cloud capacity and vertical scaling parameters are as close as possible to the planned needs of your organization while leaving room for contingencies as well.

2. Account for all geographies

The cloud environment has made it effortless for businesses to operate anywhere across the globe. While companies can provide their solutions across many locations as their cloud vendor supports, vertical scaling might not be as straightforward.

Some jurisdictions require data to be stored and processed locally for certain industries such as healthcare, banking, financial services, and insurance. Also, some industries might require their servers to be as close to their end customers as possible for reasons not related to regulatory obligations. Ensure that you have sufficient vertical scaling capacities in all geographies that you might need them in. The best way to do this would be through collaboration with your cloud provider and, if required, a third-party cloud expert as well.

3. Test your ability to meet demand

Another benefit of cloud platforms is the ability to affordably create test environments at the same scale as the expected level of operations. Test your systems to ensure that your cloud platform can scale up to the forecasted levels of demand. This will help all stakeholders to familiarize themselves with the processes and costs associated with vertical scaling. Once testing is completed, decommission the additional cloud resources until you need them.

4. Avoid vendor lock-in

Vertical scaling is undoubtedly a critical benefit for any cloud-powered business. However, sticking to one vendor and vertically scaling using their resources should not lead to your business being locked in with them. Explore whether proprietary APIs and other features that reduce the work you need to put in while scaling your business operations are actually necessary. Consider minimizing your technical debt whenever possible.

5. Stick to automated vertical scaling

All stakeholders need to familiarize themselves with manual and schedule-based vertical scaling. However, leading cloud vendors of today offer cutting-edge automatic scaling. Therefore, it is advisable to stick to automated vertical scaling for your cloud platforms whenever feasible. This will help your business keep cloud costs down while also removing the expenses associated with manual monitoring and intervention.

6. Ensure vertical scalability across components

Most applications that exist today rely on a database on the back end to store and retrieve data. Vertical scaling for your application’s storage and cybersecurity components is as critical as scalability for the processing component. Ensure that your application scales up on all fronts as required, especially if different vendors provide different components. This will help avoid bottlenecks at any delivery stage to end customers and preserve the organization’s security posture.

7. Embrace a dynamic architecture

While vertical scaling is a great solution for the short and medium term, architectural decisions are normally accompanied by long-term implications. As enterprises continue to evolve to address demand digitally, your organization might need more than just vertical scalability to keep up. Ensure that the cloud architecture of your chosen vendor (or your own architecture, in the case of a private cloud) is capable of automation and on-demand design changes to accommodate evolving innovations.

8. Keep integration and delivery continuous

Even the most responsive vertically scalable cloud can fall behind if the rest of your technology landscape is lagging. Explore both continuous delivery and integration to help your organization keep up with demand at a holistic level. This is especially important for applications deployed across various cloud environments, where scalability is likely to be a small facet of a greater cloud ecosystem.

9. Factor in performance data

While automatic vertical scaling is undoubtedly a boon for modern organizations, it does not give management teams a free pass to stop collecting and acting upon performance data and trends. Ensure that the effects of operating within specific scaling parameters at certain demand levels are documented. At a higher level, note down the changes in performance as you scale up vertically using more advanced components, servers, or other technology. Enhance your organization’s operational efficiency and profitability by observing the response of your workload to changes in the way you scale up or down.

10. Ensure perpetual innovation

Finally, remember that the advanced cloud platforms of today have been developed through innovation, and these same innovative processes will lead to bigger and better things in the future. Vertical scaling can only take business growth so far; beyond that, more innovative solutions will be required. Ensure that your leadership team is aware of the latest developments on the vertical scaling front and the cloud front in general. Also, ensure that you act on this knowledge to further the efficiency of your workflows whenever feasible.

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Takeaway

Vertical cloud scaling enhances the technical capabilities of single cloud nodes to allow for higher capacity and the handling of increased workloads. It is normally a result of changes in the instance size or the purchase of new, more powerful technological components to replace old ones. While scaling up has a host of advantages in the short term, it may also be wise to explore beyond vertical cloud scaling for long-term growth and development.

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