What is the difference between scalability and elasticity?

Question

I\'ve heard many people using both terms interchangeably. However, in my opinion there is difference between them:

SCALABILITY - ability of a softwa

Answer 1

_

Scalability: "Increasing" the capacity to meet the "increasing" workload.

Elasticity: "Increasing or reducing" the capacity to meet the "increasing or reducing" workload.

---

Scalability: In a scaling environment, the available resources may exceed to meet the "future demands".

Elasticity: In the elastic environment, the available resources match the "current demands" as closely as possible.

---

Scalability: Scalability adapts only to the "workload increase" by "provisioning" the resources in an "incremental" manner.

Elasticity: Elasticity adapts to both the "workload increase" as well as "workload decrease" by "provisioning and deprovisioning" resources in an "autonomic" manner.

---

Scalability: Increasing workload is served with increasing the power of a single computer resource or with increasing the power by a group of computer resources.

Elasticity: Varying workload is served with dynamic variations in the use of computer resources.

---

Scalability: Scalability enables a corporate to meet expected demands for services with "long-term, strategic needs".

Elasticity: Elasticity enables a corporate to meet unexpected changes in the demand for services with "short-term, tactical needs".

---

Scalability: It is "increasing" the capacity to serve an environment where workload is increasing.

This scalability could be "Scaling Up" or "Scaling Out".

(Example:

Scaling Up - increasing the ability of an individual server

Scaling out - increasing the ability by adding multiple servers to the individual server.)

Elasticity: It is the ability to "scale up or scale down" the capacity to serve at will.

---

Scalability: To use a simile, "scaling up" is an individual increasing her power to meet the increasing demands, and "scaling out" is building a team to meet the increasing demands.

Elasticity: To use a simile, a film actor increasing or reducing her body weight to meet differing needs of the film industry.

_