Axis scaling

Axis scaling can be best represented through three dimensions of a cube; X-Axis, Y-Axis, and Z-Axis. Each of those dimensions describes a type of scaling:

• X-Axis: Horizontal duplication
• Y-Axis: Functional decomposition
• Z-Axis: Data partitioning

  Figure 2-1: Scale cube 

Let's go through the Axes, one at a time.

X-axis scaling

In a nutshell, x-axis scaling is accomplished by running multiple instances of an application or a service. In most cases, there is a load balancer on top that makes sure that the traffic is shared among all those instances. The biggest advantage of x-axis scaling is simplicity. All we have to do is deploy the same application on multiple servers. For that reason, this is the most commonly used type of scaling...