What scaling types does MongoDB support?

MongoDB supports two types of scaling:

#1) Vertical scaling (Scale-Up)

Increasing the power of a single server: more RAM, CPU, SSD, and so on. The idea: one machine gets stronger and can handle more load.

#2) Horizontal scaling (Scale-Out)

Adding several servers and spreading the load across them. In MongoDB this is done through two mechanisms:

• Sharding, data is split into parts and stored on different nodes (scales data volume and writes)
• Replication, the same data is stored on several nodes (scales reads and improves fault tolerance)

#Summary

MongoDB scales vertically (strengthening a single machine) and horizontally (adding new nodes via replication and sharding).