What does horizontal scaling involve?

Horizontal scaling involves adding more servers to a server pool to handle increased load, distributing the traffic across multiple machines rather than relying on a single server's resources. This approach increases the overall capacity and allows for better handling of spikes in demand without overloading any single server. It is particularly useful in cloud environments, where resources can be added on-demand, ensuring that applications can scale efficiently and maintain performance as user demands fluctuate. By leveraging multiple servers, services can improve redundancy and fault tolerance, contributing to high availability.

In contrast, increasing server storage capacity typically pertains to vertical scaling, which focuses on enhancing the capabilities of existing servers rather than adding new ones. Upgrading existing server hardware is also a form of vertical scaling and does not involve the addition of more units. Enhancing network security measures, while important, is distinct from scaling and does not directly relate to managing load through server capacity.