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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T05:02:30+00:00

I’m optimizing a very popular website and since the user base is constantly growing

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I’m optimizing a very popular website and since the user base is constantly growing I’m interested in what matters when it comes to scaling.

Currently I am scaling by adding more CPU power / RAM memory to the server. This works nicely – even though the site is quite popular, currently CPU usage is at 10%.

So, if possible, I’d keep doing that. What I am worried about is whether I could get to the point where CPU usage is low but users have problems connecting because of the number of HTTP connections. Is it better to scale horizontally, by adding more servers to the cluster?

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Eventually just adding more memory won’t be enough. There are concurrent connection limits for TCP rather than IIS (though both factors do come into account, IIS can handle about 3000 connections without a strain).

    You probably won’t encounter what you suggest where the CPU usage is low but number of HTTP connections is high unless it is a largely static site, but the more connections open, the higher the CPU usage.

    But regardless of this, what you need for a popular site is redundancy, which is essential for a site which has a large user base. There is nothing more annoying to the user than the site being down as your sole server goes offline for some reason. If you have 2 servers behind a load balancer, you can grow the site, even take a server offline with less fear of your site going offline.

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