Subject: Cloud Infrastructure and Services
Semester: BE Computer Sem-8
Question: What is Elasticity in Cloud?
Answer:
- Elasticity covers the ability to scale up but also the ability to scale down.
- The idea is that you can quickly provision new infrastructure to handle a high load of traffic.
- But what happens after that rush? If you leave all of these new instances running, your bill will skyrocket as you will be paying for unused resources.
- In the worst case scenario, these resources can even cancel out revenue from the sudden rush.
- An elastic system prevents this from happening. After a scaled up period, your infrastructure can scale back down, meaning you will only be paying for your usual resource usage and some extra for the high traffic period.
- The key is that this all happens automatically.
- When resource needs meet a certain threshold (usually measured by traffic), the system “knows” that it
- needs to de-provision a certain amount of infrastructure, and does so.
- With a couple hours of training, anyone can use the AWS web console to manually add or subtract instances.
- But it takes a true Solutions Architect to set up monitoring, account for provisioning time, and configure a system for maximum elasticity.
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