Which scaling approach increases capacity by adding more identical instances rather than resizing existing ones?

Which scaling approach increases capacity by adding more identical instances rather than resizing existing ones?

• A. Vertical Scaling
• B. Horizontal Scaling
• C. Diagonal Scaling
• D. Lateral Scaling

Answer: (B)

Horizontal scaling means adding more identical instances to handle higher load, rather than resizing a single instance. This is scale-out behavior: you increase capacity by running additional replicas (pods, containers, or machines) and distributing work among them. In Kubernetes, you’d typically scale the number of pods up or down to match demand, often with an autoscaler. This approach offers easier fault tolerance and flexible capacity growth, since you can add more instances without altering the resources of any one instance. Vertical scaling, by contrast, would be increasing the resources (CPU, memory) of a single instance, which has practical limits and can involve downtime. The term lateral or diagonal scaling is less standard for describing this particular strategy; the most precise and widely used term for adding identical units to grow capacity is horizontal scaling.

Horizontal scaling means adding more identical instances to handle higher load, rather than resizing a single instance. This is scale-out behavior: you increase capacity by running additional replicas (pods, containers, or machines) and distributing work among them. In Kubernetes, you’d typically scale the number of pods up or down to match demand, often with an autoscaler. This approach offers easier fault tolerance and flexible capacity growth, since you can add more instances without altering the resources of any one instance.

Vertical scaling, by contrast, would be increasing the resources (CPU, memory) of a single instance, which has practical limits and can involve downtime. The term lateral or diagonal scaling is less standard for describing this particular strategy; the most precise and widely used term for adding identical units to grow capacity is horizontal scaling.