¶ High Scalability and Flexibility in Cloud Computing (Step-by-Step with Example)
¶ 1. What is High Scalability and Flexibility in Cloud?
High scalability and flexibility in cloud computing mean the ability to:
- Increase or decrease computing resources automatically based on demand
- Quickly adapt infrastructure to changing business needs
- Pay only for what you use
This allows applications to run smoothly during peak traffic and save cost during low usage.
¶ 2. Why Scalability and Flexibility are Important
- Handles sudden traffic spikes without downtime
- Reduces hardware and maintenance costs
- Enables fast deployment of new applications
- Supports business growth without infrastructure redesign
- Increase or decrease CPU, RAM, or storage of a server
- Example: Upgrade a VM from 4 GB RAM to 16 GB RAM
- Add or remove servers automatically
- Example: Increase web servers from 2 to 10 during high traffic
¶ 4. How Cloud Provides High Scalability and Flexibility
- Create virtual machines, containers, or serverless services on demand
- Distribute traffic across multiple servers
- Automatically add or remove servers based on CPU, memory, or request load
- Increase or decrease storage instantly without downtime
- Pay only for resources used
An online shopping website experiences high traffic during festive sales and low traffic on normal days.
- Create 2 virtual machines to host the website
- Place a load balancer in front of web servers
- Distribute user requests evenly
- Set rule:
- If CPU > 70%, add more servers
- If CPU < 30%, remove extra servers
- Use cloud-managed database (auto scaling storage)
- Store images and videos in scalable cloud storage
- During sale: Servers automatically scale from 2 to 20
- After sale: Servers reduce back to 2
- Website stays fast and available
- Business pays only for actual usage
- Instant scaling for any workload
- No hardware investment
- High availability and performance
- Cost-efficient infrastructure
High scalability and flexibility in cloud computing allow businesses to automatically adjust resources based on demand, ensuring high performance, reliability, and cost efficiency without managing physical infrastructure.