Question

Difficulty: MediumHigh Availability, Scalability, and Elasticity

An online retail platform experiences a predictable surge in traffic every holiday season. To prepare, the IT team manually adds extra compute resources weeks in advance to ensure the system can handle the increased load. Conversely, a ride-sharing application uses a system that dynamically adds or removes virtual machines in real time as user demand fluctuates throughout the day.

Which of the following best describes the difference in cloud characteristics demonstrated by these two scenarios?

  1. The online retail platform illustrates scalability by increasing capacity to handle load, whereas the ride-sharing application illustrates elasticity by dynamically adjusting resources in response to changing demand.Answer
  2. B
    The online retail platform illustrates elasticity by manually scaling out in advance, whereas the ride-sharing application illustrates scalability by automatically scaling resources down to save costs.
  3. C
    The online retail platform illustrates high availability by maintaining constant resources, whereas the ride-sharing application illustrates disaster recovery by automatically spinning up resources after an outage.
  4. D
    The online retail platform illustrates regional replication, whereas the ride-sharing application illustrates high availability by utilizing Availability Zones that span across multiple separate geographical regions.

Answer

The online retail platform illustrates scalability by increasing capacity to handle load, whereas the ride-sharing application illustrates elasticity by dynamically adjusting resources in response to changing demand.
The correct option correctly defines scalability as the capability to increase capacity to handle load (which can be done manually, as in the retail platform scenario) and elasticity as the ability to dynamically and automatically adjust resources to match fluctuating load (as in the ride-sharing application scenario).

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first scenario (online retail platform).
The platform needs to handle an increased load, and the team manually adds resources to do so.
This shows the capability to scale (scalability) to meet higher demand, but it is manual and pre-planned rather than dynamic.
2
Analyze the second scenario (ride-sharing application).
The application dynamically adds or removes resources automatically based on real-time fluctuation in demand.
This illustrates elasticity, which is the automation of scaling resources to closely match demand variations.
3
Compare the two concepts to select the correct definition.
Scalability is the ability of the system to grow to handle demand, while elasticity adds the automated, dynamic component to adjust up and down.
This directly matches the distinction between scalability and elasticity.

Key Concept

Distinction between scalability and elasticity in cloud computing
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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