Scale-up vs. scale-out architecture

scale up:

yeah right, try telling management they need to spend $40K on a server instead of $6K

or if it's already on a high end server and need to be a higher end server good luck on mirgrating the 37 apps running on the server, sneakernet abounds to the desktop reinstalling all those apps.

scale out:

yeah right, try getting a high end management system in place to manage all those servers. Try telling management you need to hire more people to manage those scaled out servers.

why am I so negative ?

4 years ago my company had 11 servers and 2 people to manage. today 90 servers and 2 people to manage. all we do all day is play crisis management.

we didn't scale up because services became too critical, rebooting a server took down 8 other parts of the business, that and we couldn't justify to management that we needed to grow into a $40K server.

time to put out another fire, I hear one of my servers calling

I suggest that the terms "Scale Up" vs "Scale Out" be replaced with "Efficiency" vs "Redundancy," to better define the problem.

Scaling Up is concentrating, which is more efficient than the more robust Scaling Out or sharing the job among many redundant units.

It's an old problem, and there's no definitive answer to which approach is best. Go for the more efficient approach of putting all your eggs in one big basket, or spend a fortune on a bulletproof distributed network with its administrative headaches?