Vertical vs. Horizontal Scaling Tradeoffs¶
Scaffold
This MicroSim has been scaffolded from its specification. The interactive implementation has not been built yet.
Learning Objective¶
TBD
- Bloom Level: TBD
- Bloom Verb: TBD
- Library: p5.js
Preview¶
Specification¶
The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 15: Performance Engineering and Scaling.
Type: Interactive simulation
**sim-id:** scaling-tradeoff-explorer<br/>
**Library:** p5.js<br/>
**Status:** Specified
**Purpose:** Side-by-side comparison of vertical and horizontal scaling strategies showing cost curves, capacity ceilings, and fault isolation properties under different workload models.
**Controls:**
- Workload type selector: stateless, stateful, database-write-heavy
- Growth rate slider: 5%–50% monthly
- Current load slider
- Parallelizable fraction slider (Amdahl's p): 0.5–1.0
**Display:**
- Left panel: vertical scaling — instance size vs. cost curve with saturation point
- Right panel: horizontal scaling — nodes vs. throughput curve with Amdahl's wall
- Bottom: time-to-saturation for each strategy at current growth rate
- Recommendation panel: "given these parameters, horizontal scaling hits Amdahl's wall at N nodes"