Why Should Cloud Services Offer Both Elasticity And Scalability?

06 Jan Why Should Cloud Services Offer Both Elasticity And Scalability?

In addition to functioning well, the scaled up application should be able to take full advantage of the resources that its new environment offers. For example, if an application is scaled from a smaller operating system to a larger one should be able to handle a larger workload and offer better performance as the resources become available. When it comes to the adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise, CIOs and other decision makers must evaluate potential cloud solutions on a number of criteria. Things like cost, performance, security and reliability come up often as key points of interest to IT departments. Joining those criteria at the top of the list of importance are the concepts of scalability and elasticity. Tech-enabled startups, including in healthcare, often go with this traditional, unified model for software design because of the speed-to-market advantage.

This is not applicable for all kind of environment, it is helpful to address only those scenarios where the resources requirements fluctuate up and down suddenly for a specific time interval. It is not quite practical to use where persistent resource infrastructure is required to handle the heavy workload. For example, there is a small database application supported on a server for a small business. Over time as the business grows so will the database and the resource demands of the database application. In other words, scale up performance without having to worry about not meeting SLAs in a steady pay-as-you-grow solution. CIOs, cloud engineers, and IT managers should consider when deciding to add cloud services to their infrastructure.

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Then, if you use machine learning and big data analytics, the bots would rapidly query the data and find best-fit responses to relevant questions. One of the most significant differences between on-premise and cloud computing is that you don’t need to buy new hardware to expand your cloud-based operations as you would for an on-prem system. IT administrators and staff are able to add additional VMs on demand and customized to the exact needs of their organization.

Another goal is usually to ensure that your systems can continue to serve customers satisfactorily, even when bombarded by heavy, sudden workloads. But Elasticity Cloud also helps to streamline service delivery when combined with scalability. For example, by spinning up additional VMs in the same server, you create more capacity in that server to handle dynamic workload surges. • Better availability – elastic scaling helps ensure that an instance has the capacity to handle the current traffic demand. With elastic scale, data centers are able to adapt to increases in application traffic by rapidly adding load balancing and application resources.

Know The Difference Between Cloud Scalability And Elasticity

A use case that could easily have the need for cloud elasticity would be in retail with increased seasonal activity. For example, during the holiday season for black Friday spikes and special sales during this season there can be https://globalcloudteam.com/ a sudden increased demand on the system. Instead of spending budget on additional permanent infrastructure capacity to handle a couple months of high load out of the year, this is a good opportunity to use an elastic solution.

The new space allowed it to accommodate 33 more people and install a temporary kitchen. After serving the most customers ever for the entire week, the restaurant decides to keep the extra space they leased. But a month later, the management concludes the space is not profitable enough to keep open around the year save for the conventions’ duration. So they take advantage of the flexible leasing clause and vacate at the end of that month.

Having a predictable workload where capacity planning and performance are stable and have the ability to predict the constant workload or a growth cloud scalability may be the better cost saving choice. With cloud scalability, businesses can avoid the upfront costs of purchasing expensive equipment that could become outdated in a few years. Through cloud providers, they pay for only what they use and minimize waste.

Resilient Architecture On Cloud: Importance Of Elasticity, Scalability And Caching: 3 Aws Services To Know

Elastic resources match the current needs and resources are added or removed automatically to meet future demands when it is needed. Elasticity is the ability to fit the resources needed to cope with loads dynamically usually in relation to scale out. So that when the load increases you scale by adding more resources and when demand wanes you shrink back and remove unneeded resources. Elasticity is mostly important in Cloud environments where you pay-per-use and don’t want to pay for resources you do not currently need on the one hand, and want to meet rising demand when needed on the other hand. It helps you to monitor your application automatically and adjust the capacity in terms of resources and instances and makes sure that your application performs well. Manual scalability begins with forecasting the expected workload on a cluster or farm of resources, then manually adding resources to add capacity.

Scalability can either be vertical (scale-up with in a system) or horizontal (scale-out multiple systems in most cases but not always linearly). Therefore, applications have the room to scale up or scale out to prevent a lack of resources from hindering performance. There are cases where the IT manager knows he/she will no longer need resources and will scale down the infrastructure statically to support a new smaller environment. Either increasing or decreasing services and resources this is a planned event and static for the worse case workload scenario. The ability to increase or decrease IT resources as needed to meet changing demand, scalability enables organizations to increase workload size within an existing infrastructure without impacting performance.

A capability unique to the cloud environment, scalability remains a driving force of its widespread adoption and the evolving dexterity of business infrastructure. Such resources include RAM, input/output bandwidth, CPU processing capability, and storage capacity. Automation built into the cloud platform drives elastic cloud computing.

Elasticity With Software

While these two processes may sound similar, they differ in approach and style. Scalability and Elasticity both refer to meeting traffic demand but in two different situations. Say we have a system of 5 computers that does 5 work units, if we need one more work unit to be done we we’ll have to use one more computer. Also, if a new computer is purchased and the extra work unit is not needed any more, the system get stuck with a redundant resource. Scalability is pretty simple to define, which is why some of the aspects of elasticity are often attributed to it.

Do not fall into the sales confusion of services where cloud elasticity and scalability are presented as the same service by public cloud providers. Scalability includes the ability to increase workload size within existing infrastructure (hardware, software, etc.) without impacting performance. These resources required to support this are usually pre-planned capacity with a certain amount of headroom built in to handle peak demand. Scalability also encompasses the ability to expand with additional infrastructure resources, in some cases without a hard limit.

Policyholders wouldn’t notice any changes in performance whether you served more customers this year than the previous year. You could then release some of those virtual machines when you no longer need them, such as during off-peak months, to reduce cloud spend. If you relied on scalability alone, the traffic spike could quickly overwhelm your provisioned virtual machine, causing service outages. For a cloud to be a real cloud, rapid elasticity is required instead of just elasticity. As long as it can be flexible, it’s always an accurate cloud system. With website traffics reaching unprecedented levels, horizontal scaling is the way of the future.

Think of an e-commerce company where flocks of customers tend to flood the system at a given time – for example, where seasonal use varies greatly. Hotels in the summer or retailers near Christmas will want to have systems that can handle greatly increased user demand whenever it tends to occur. By contrast, businesses that have an extremely stable and productive workload management model will not typically need a lot of elasticity in their services, and may not want to pay for it. The principal of elasticity addresses many of the challenges related to dynamic real-time changes in user demand.

The Data Cloud For Enterprise Analytics

Scalability is the capability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged in order to accommodate that growth. This functionality alongside horizontal scaling, makes sure that your website is classified with High Availability. This framework allows WordPress sites to push millions of views if not hundreds of millions.

Elastic scaling is the ability to automatically add or remove compute or networking infrastructure based on changing application traffic patterns. Elastic load balancer auto scaling is used to automatically adjust the amount of resources that are allocated to deliver an application in response to changes in traffic patterns. Elasticity is a defining characteristic that differentiates cloud computing from previously proposed computing paradigms, such as grid computing.

• Elasticity is a ‘rename’ of scalability, a known non-functional requirement in IT architecture for many years already.
• Over-provisioning leads to cloud spend wastage, while under-provisioning can lead to server outages as available servers are overworked.
• If you are unsure which scaling technique better suits your company, you may need to consider a third-party cloud engineering automation platform to help manage your scaling needs, goals and implementation.
• Meaning, your site will never go down due to increased traffic, leading to happier visitors and an increase in conversions.

To reduce cloud spending, you can then release some of them to virtual machines when you no longer need them, such as during off-peak months. If you rely on scalability alone, a traffic spike can quickly overwhelm your provisioned virtual machine, causing service outages. Because cloud services are much more cost-efficient, we are more likely to take this opportunity, giving us an advantage over our competitors. Let’s say a customer comes to us with the same opportunity, and we have to move to fulfill the opportunity.

I was recently helping at a Azure Fundamentals exam training day and the concepts of elasticity and scalability came up. Both of which are benefits of the cloud and also things you need to understand for the AZ-900 exam. 😉 So I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and try my best to explain those two terms and the differences between them. The hospital’s services are in high demand, and to support the growth, they need to scale the patient registration and appointment scheduling modules. This means they only need to scale the patient portal, not the physician or office portals.

Common use cases where cloud elasticity works well include e-commerce and retail, SaaS, mobile, DevOps, and other environments that have ever changing demands on infrastructure services. Businesses that have a predictable workload where capacity planning and performance are stable and have the ability to predict the constant workload or a growth cloud scalability may be the better cost saving choice. In the context of the public cloud, users are able to purchase capacity on-demand, and on a pay-as-you-go basis. As the traffic then falls away, these additional virtual machines can be automatically shut down. All of the modern major public cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, offer elasticity as a key value proposition of their services. Typically, it’s something that occurs automatically and in real time, so it’s often called rapid elasticity.

Cloud Elasticity Vs Scalability: Main Differences To Know About

This has also been mentioned in the latest edition of Technology Radar from Thoughtworks in Nov 2016. You need to be able to scale it first to then Difference Between Scalability and Elasticity in Cloud Computing be able to automate the provisioning and de-provisioning of resources. Elasticity in the cloud allows you to adapt to your workload needs quickly.

Cost

Here’s how you can migrate your existing WordPress website to 10Web very easily 👍. Businesses need to be able to handle both planned and unplanned traffic spikes. For example, colleges and universities must be able to manage the student portal when grades or test results are released. Alternatively, a pizza company like Papa John’s will need to adjust when they have a special promotion or during an event like the Super Bowl. Office portal – for the accounting department and support staff to collect payments and address queries.

Where Elasticity And Scalability Cross Paths

When traffic subsides, you can release the resource — compare this to letting the rubber band go slack. Achieving cloud elasticity means you don’t have to meticulously plan resource capacities or spend time engineering within the cloud environment to account for upscaling or downscaling. The ability to scale up and scale down is related to how your system responds to the changing requirements. Elastically in the context of cloud computing, it is required that the scaling of the system is quick, and it means the variable demands that the system exhibit. We all make hundreds of decisions every day — personally and professionally. No wonder the big decision about doing business with a cloud service provider can feel so overwhelming.

What Does Cloud Native Mean?

The cost savings can really add up for large enterprises running huge loads on servers. Executed properly, capitalizing on elasticity can result in savings in infrastructure costs overall. Environments that do not experience sudden or cyclical changes in demand may not benefit from the cost savings elastic services offer. Use of “Elastic Services” generally implies all resources in the infrastructure be elastic. This includes but not limited to hardware, software, QoS and other policies, connectivity, and other resources that are used in elastic applications. This may become a negative trait where performance of certain applications must have guaranteed performance.

Moreover, the efficiency you’re able to achieve in everyday cloud operations helps stabilize costs. Cloud elasticity enables software as a service vendors to offer flexible cloud pricing plans, creating further convenience for your enterprise. It allows you to scale up or scale out to meet the increasing workloads. You can scale up a platform or architecture to increase the performance of an individual server. Simply put, elasticity adapts to both the increase and decrease in workload by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomous capacity.