A cloud administrator notices a spike in web traffic during the holiday season. What is the most effective solution to handle this temporary increase without downtime?

The most effective solution to manage a temporary spike in web traffic during the holiday season is to implement an outward horizontal scaling solution. This approach involves adding additional instances of resources to distribute the load, ensuring that more requests can be handled simultaneously without overwhelming a single resource.

Horizontal scaling is well-suited for cloud environments as it allows for flexibility and elasticity—resources can be added or removed based on demand. By deploying more web servers or instances, you can accommodate increased traffic efficiently while maintaining application performance. This method is particularly beneficial during peak periods, such as the holiday season, where traffic is typically unpredictable and significantly higher than normal.

Vertical scaling, whether upward or downward, involves adding more power to a single instance (like CPU or RAM) or reducing it, but this approach can lead to potential downtime as resources are reallocated. Furthermore, it does not provide the same level of redundancy and failsafe as horizontal scaling, making it less ideal for handling sudden traffic surges. In contrast, outward horizontal scaling allows for a more robust and responsive architecture that can better serve user demands.