Growing capacity by making one server bigger, say switching a VM to a larger size that brings extra processors and RAM. The alternative, scaling out, adds more machines or partitions instead.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Scaling up in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Capacity
A reserved block of compute for a tenant whose size is fixed by its SKU; Fabric F SKUs express it in capacity units (CUs). Workspaces assigned to it unlock features like Copilot, and from F64 upwards people with free licences can view Power BI content.
- RAM
Memory, whether that of a physical host or of a virtual machine.
Related terms
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Azure's managed PostgreSQL. It grows by scaling up and by adding read replicas rather than multi-master writes; to spread writes horizontally you use its elastic clusters feature, based on Citus.
- Scalability
Coping with changing demand by growing or shrinking capacity: scaling up makes each resource larger, while scaling out adds extra instances.
- Used Memory Percentage
An Azure Managed Redis metric comparing memory in use with the SKU's limit, which already takes replication into account. If it stays over 75%, think about scaling up.