What is a Scale Up Server?

A scale up server increases its workload capacity by adding memory and processing power, i.e., building “up” rather than “out,” which would mean adding server units.

Scale up server definition

There are two fundamental approaches to addressing increasing workloads: "Scale up" meets the challenge through a bigger, more powerful server with added memory and compute capacity. This vertical building "up" of the server contrasts with the “scale out” approach, which adds server units to the workload horizontally. A scale up server is one that is designed to enable the simple and cost-effective addition of system resources to itself, enabling the "scale up" approach to work.