Cloud Elasticity and Its Importance in Cloud Computing

The digital market is changing almost every day, and it can be challenging to keep up with all the latest inventions and breakthroughs in technology as it develops. Even though cloud computing is not a brand-new innovation, businesses have only recently begun to use it. It is difficult to overestimate the influence that cloud computing has on the data business and end consumers. This cutting-edge digital solution has changed and transformed many elements of daily living. 

But the demand for cloud computing might vary for different users or organizations based on several factors. So, a business cannot just have a static number of resources for their ever changing dynamic demands. To avoid crashing of server or slowdown of the system during a sudden spike, a concept was introduced in cloud computing called Cloud Elasticity. You can learn more about cloud computing and its advantages by taking Cloud Computing classes. 

What is Cloud Elasticity?

Let us now learn what is elasticity in cloud computing. Elasticity is the capability for a cloud-based program to require more or fewer resources, to put it simply. You can scale computer processing, memory, and storage capacity in cloud computing to match changing demands. Thanks to scalability, you won't have to worry about peak engineering or capacity planning. You won't need to purchase or maintain additional equipment since cloud elasticity saves you from paying for underutilized capacity or idle resources. 

Elastic computing is more effective than on-premises technology in many situations. Additionally, it is usually automated and keeps services running smoothly by preventing pauses and interruptions. It is also referred to as rapid elasticity in cloud computing. 

As more companies become aware of the advantages of elastic computing, they make quick transitions to save infrastructure costs and get around the difficulty of managing resources manually. But first, it's crucial to comprehend cloud computing before we can start to explore the idea of elasticity.  

Cloud computing is a system currently used extensively by IT businesses worldwide and is a requirement for elastic computing. Using online servers, software data platforms, storage space, and other services through the internet, cloud computing enables both small and large enterprises to move their data to the cloud. 

The ability of a cloud service provider to instantly increase and decrease capacity at any moment gives enterprises a great deal of flexibility to make quick resource adjustments without affecting the flow of their operations.

Importance of Elasticity in Cloud Computing

Now that we have learned what elasticity means in cloud computing let us learn why it is important. Without Cloud Elasticity, businesses would be forced to pay for largely unutilized capacity and manage it through OS updates, patching, and component failures. In many ways, cloud computing is defined by its elastic nature, which also sets it apart from traditional computing paradigms including client-server, grid computing, and legacy infrastructure.

Cloud Elasticity assists companies in avoiding either under- or over-provisioning i.e., deploying and allocating more IT resources than necessary to fulfil demand at the time. Over-provisioning organizations waste money that may be used elsewhere by spending more than is necessary to meet their demands. Even if a company is already using the public cloud, a lack of elasticity could result in thousands of dollars in annual VM wastage.

Under-provisioning may make it impossible to meet demand, resulting in unacceptable latency, user annoyance, and eventually business loss when customers quit lengthy online transactions in favor of more responsive businesses. In this approach, a lack of cloud elasticity might result in lost revenue and negative effects on the bottom line.

Elastic computing has made it incredibly simple and easy to manage cloud services. Nowadays, businesses may use resources for infrastructure, storage, computing, etc. with a staggering amount of freedom. Organizations look for cost savings, scalability, and agility to boost digital transformation and business competitiveness. Elastic cloud storage makes all of this possible. So, this answers our question of why is elasticity important in cloud computing.

How Does Cloud Elasticity Work?

Thanks to cloud elasticity, organizations can quickly scale capacity up or down, manually or automatically. To fulfil a sudden or seasonal demand, for instance, a burst in demand from on-premises infrastructure into the public cloud is an example of cloud elasticity. The term "cloud elasticity" can also describe an application's ability to expand or contract resource usage. 

Cloud Elasticity can be manually instantiated, frequently in minutes, or initiated and done automatically based on workload trends. Organizations previously had to either have additional stand-by capacity on hand or acquire, configure, and deploy additional capacity, a process that may take weeks or months before they could use Cloud Elasticity. 

Elastic Beanstalk in AWS is a rapid elasticity in cloud computing example. Developers now have it even simpler to swiftly deploy and maintain apps on the AWS Cloud thanks to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Elastic Beanstalk takes care of the deployment specifics, including capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring, while developers only need to upload their applications. To learn more about what is elasticity in AWS you can refer to the Architecting on AWS Course.  

Another example is elasticity in cloud computing azure. The term "Azure elasticity as a service" refers to a cloud service that allows for the automatic scaling of resources hosted by Azure in accordance with demand and set criteria. It gives Azure administrators the flexibility to automatically scale Azure resources and infrastructure as needed. It is typically offered via Azure Monitoring and Automation Software, which keeps an eye on the systems for specific events and scales or downsizes the infrastructure automatically as necessary.

Components of Cloud Elasticity

The components of different types of elasticity in cloud computing are: 

1. Instances

A virtual server or virtual computing environment that contains an operating system, CPU, RAM, storage, and network configurations is known as an elastic cloud computing instance. There are various instance kinds, each with unique requirements. 

2. Storages

Providers of elastic cloud services give extra storage to accommodate organizational needs and workload demands. This is known as elastic block storage space (EBS), which continuously offers greater performance and significantly lowers latency. 

3. OS Support

To give businesses as many options as possible, elastic computing relies on cloud service providers to support several operating systems (OS), including Microsoft Windows servers, Linux, Oracle Enterprise, and many more. 

4. Networks

The performance of enhanced networks is significantly higher in terms of packets per second (PPS), and there are lower latency and network jitters if any. Virtual private clouds (VPCs) constructed on a separate private cloud network and traditional networks constructed on common infrastructure networks are two frequently utilized networks. 

5. Backup Files

A complete drive can be backed up or restored using a snapshot, similar to a backup data file made up of snapshots of all disc categories. Exact point-in-time status of a disc is captured and highlighted in a snapshot, enabling you to generate bespoke images. Snapshots are a fantastic tool in disaster scenarios where you risk losing crucial data, making recovery data backup mandatory. 

6. Regions

Elastic cloud computing service providers allow users to deploy instances across various regions and availability zones. This prevents the failure of one of your applications from spreading to others. Availability zones are discrete areas that offer other zones in the same region cost-efficient, economical, and low-latency network connectivity.

Benefits of Cloud Elasticity

Now you may be wondering how elasticity helps us in cloud computing. Following are the benefits of elasticity in cloud computing are: 

1. Agility

Cloud Elasticity avoids the need to plan for unforeseen demand spikes by removing the requirement to buy, configure, and install new infrastructure when demand changes. This allows enterprises to meet any unexpected demand, whether it results from a seasonal spike in demand.

With on-premises computing, firms had to buy more resources than they would typically need to prepare for unforeseen demand surges. With cloud elasticity, this is no longer necessary.

With computer services, any infrastructure and services that a company organization needs may be promptly given. Since scalability is a key component of cloud deployments, performance is improved, and great calculation speed is guaranteed. 

2. Availability

Since VMs or containers can be replicated if they seem to malfunction, cloud elasticity allows high availability and fault tolerance, ensuring that business services are uninterrupted and users do not experience downtime. By doing this, you can ensure that users continue to have a predictable and consistent experience even when resources are automatically supplied or deprovisioned without affecting operations.

Organizations can benefit from fault tolerance and high availability for their infrastructure and applications more easily thanks to cloud elasticity. To reduce downtime as much as possible, it is feasible to automatically clone servers that are close to failing before they fail.

With cloud services, file access has become seamless and always available. There are other possibilities to access and modify data, and alternate backups reduce the likelihood of system failure. 

3. Capacity

Businesses can use elastic cloud computing to access an infinite amount of storage. Because it is virtual, anyone on the network can access it anytime. 

4. Pay-as-you-go

One of the key factors in elastic cloud computing's rising popularity and rapid adoption rate is its attractive pay-for-what-you-use feature. Elastic computing differs from on-premises computing in that you only pay for the resources you use and nothing more. Contrary to on-premises computing, where you pay the same amount regardless of how many resources you use, you only pay for what you use. This aids businesses in saving a large sum that was previously being wasted on unused resources.

According to Amazon, businesses that use their instance scheduler with their EC2 cloud service can save more than 70% compared to those that do not.

The cost of your hardware and software is the main disadvantage of on-premises computing irrespective of how you use it.

5. Cost Efficiency

With elastic computing, businesses can avoid the high expenditures and expenses associated with expanding their data centers. You no longer have to incur additional expenses for unused capacity thanks to elastic computing. In the past, companies had to buy more resources even if they weren't needed every day to be ready for an unanticipated increase in demand. The pay-as-you-go approach, which only charges for the capacity that you use, has, however, found a solution to this issue.

With elastic computing, firms can substantially cut costs because they no longer need to invest in expensive IT equipment and just pay for what they use.

6. Speed

The days of adding more servers to the infrastructure to handle spikes in website traffic or bandwidth usage are long gone. The issue with this effort was that it frequently included meticulous capacity planning that had to be done months in advance, as well as bearing extremely high upfront expenses for purchasing and configuring technology.

Businesses that take advantage of elastic computing's benefits can scale up or down as needed without worrying about capacity because it is already set up and ready to go.

Instead of the weeks or months, it could take through a conventional procurement procedure, organizations can get capacity in a matter of minutes.

7. Easy to Use and Manage

• The IT staff are relieved that the time of maintaining, updating, and implementing IT infrastructure is now in the past.
• Cloud technology is very eco-friendly because it uses fewer resources. 

Challenges in Cloud Elasticity

Elasticity in the cloud might not be for everyone. If there is an online market for your goods or services that is largely stable, cloud scalability can be enough on its own.

For instance, if your company does not sometimes or seasonally face surges in server demand, you might not mind adopting scalability without elasticity. Remember that scalability cannot be achieved without elasticity.

Some of the challenges or disadvantages of elasticity in cloud computing are:

1. Security

Elastically scaling cloud services may influence current security operations and necessitate their redesign. Due to the transient nature of elastic systems, the incident response may suffer. For instance, a server facing a security risk shuts down when demand decreases.

Although most IT executives concur that cloud computing is typically secure, cloud elasticity can cause havoc with your security routine. Elastic systems might only be operational for a little period of time, necessitating a revision of your incident response, root cause analysis, forensics, and auditing procedures.

2. Lock-in

Although all of the main public cloud providers provide the Cloud Elasticity solution, they are all built differently, which forces businesses to work only with one vendor for their cloud requirements.

Customers can use services from big public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure to use cloud elasticity, but these services also run the risk of vendor lock-in. The "golden handcuffs" of the public cloud may ensnare you, preventing you from leaving even when you can see its advantages.

3. Provision Time

Despite the fact that all of the main public cloud providers provide the Cloud Elasticity solution, they are all built differently, which forces businesses to work only with one vendor for their cloud requirements.

Customers can use services from big public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure to use cloud elasticity, but these services also run the risk of vendor lock-in. The "golden handcuffs" of the public cloud may ensnare you, preventing you from leaving even when you can see its advantages.

Cloud Elasticity Use Cases and Examples

Below are some of rapid elasticity in cloud computing examples: 

1. E-commerce Company

Events on e-commerce websites, like sales, promotions, and the introduction of unique products, draw many more visitors than usual. These websites can more effectively distribute resources during periods of high demand because of cloud elasticity, allowing customers to complete their purchases.

Customers could be doing multiple things at once, such as looking for products, adding items to their carts, purchasing items, paying for them, reading reviews, and so forth. There is no doubt that this increases server load and traffic. With elastic computing, you might increase the resources of your applications to satisfy user demand during busy festival seasons. After the sale, you might give your cloud service provider the extra capacity you no longer need and simply maintain what you actually need to run your business.

2. Online Booking Sites

Consider a large band or artist performing in your city. The mention of this musician or group will increase the desire of their fans to get tickets for the live performance of their favorite musician or group. The booking app's increased traffic will undoubtedly put more strain on the servers. There is even a good probability that the website will have delays in processing tickets or even crash entirely. You no longer need to be concerned about any of these problems because of elasticity. 

3. Streaming Sites

Streaming websites must manage occasions like the debut of a well-liked new album or TV show in a suitable manner. For instance, Netflix asserts that it can quickly deploy "thousands of virtual servers and petabytes of storage" so that consumers may continue to enjoy their preferred content regardless of how many other people are watching. 

Engineers from Netflix have stated time and time again that they use AWS's elastic cloud services to handle a high volume of server requests quickly and without any downtime. 

The addition of more resources can manage both unexpected and anticipated traffic surges at any time, enabling millions of people to stream their favorite shows concurrently. 

4. Auto Insurance

Imagine you work in the vehicle insurance industry. Perhaps your clients renew their auto insurance at roughly the same time each year. When that time arrives, a spike in traffic is to be anticipated. To meet the deadline for renewal, policyholders would be hurrying. 

The traffic surge could quickly surpass your provided virtual machine if you only depended on scalability, resulting in service interruptions. That would result in a loss of income and clients. 

However, if you "leased" a few additional virtual computers, you could manage the volume of traffic for the full period of the policy renewal. So, you could control demand in real time, and you would have several expandable virtual machines. 

Whether you served more clients this year than last, policyholders wouldn't detect any differences in performance. Then, when you are no longer using some of those virtual computers, perhaps during the off-peak season, you could release them. 

5. Backups

Elastic computing can be utilized for internal organizational goals, such as taking data backups in circumstances when the corporation deals with vital information, in addition to these examples linked to accommodate unexpected spikes in consumption. As a result, flexibility aids companies with business continuity and disaster recovery.

Cloud Elasticity vs Cloud Scalability

Below we discuss some factors that differentiate between elasticity and scalability in cloud computing. 

You can match the number of resources allocated with the number of resources required at any given time, thanks to cloud elasticity. With cloud scalability, you may modify the resources that are already in place to accommodate changing application demands. You can achieve this by adding or removing resources to existing instances—vertically scaling up or down—or by adding or removing resources from existing instances—horizontally scaling out or in. 

The application or chip design project avoids slowing down due to a shortage of resources by scaling up or out. When you don't require the resources, you may statically support a smaller environment by scaling down the infrastructure. 

The below table shows the difference between elasticity and scalability in cloud computing:

Cloud Elasticity	Cloud Scalability
Elasticity is only used temporarily to support a workload that changes abruptly up and down.	Scalability is used to manage the static growth in workload.
Elasticity is used to adjust to dynamic changes, such as when the demand for resources fluctuates.	Scalability is usually employed in organizations to handle the increase in workload.
Small businesses rarely exploit elasticity when demand or workload surges occur.	Scalability is necessary for large companies with a growing customer base to run their operations efficiently.
It was implemented as a short-term plan solely to address a sudden rise in demand or seasonal demands.	Scalability is a long-term strategy that is only used to respond to an anticipated rise in demand.

Best Practices for Elasticity in Cloud Computing

1. Security

Because of their increased internet exposure, cloud-based systems are a simple target for hackers and attackers. Organizations must, therefore, strictly adhere to security best practices when managing access controls and credential management policies and processes. 

Provide enough security at each tier. Both data at rest and data in transit should be encrypted using a system. Create, distribute, and rotate keys frequently, and also revoke access rights to protect your credentials. Additionally, you should regularly maintain the operating system and the applications that operate on instances by patching, upgrading, repairing, and securing them. 

2. Backup and Recovery

Setting up a procedure for data backup and recovery is crucial for several reasons. You can choose from a variety of adaptable and dependable backup and recovery solutions offered by various cloud service providers. Regularly backing up your EBS via snapshots and image generation is also essential. The current configuration can be saved in this way to serve as a template for new instances. Another procedure that you should adhere to is replicating data in a methodical manner and deploying application data across several availability zones. 

3. Storage

With elastic cloud computing, you can accommodate and store as much data as you want, and it has infinite storage capacity. Use elastic block storage space (EBS) for the operating system rather than your data in this case. On the instance storage, you can also keep your temporary data. 

Another important point to keep in mind is that the data kept in the instance storage will automatically destroy itself once the process has been stopped, thus, you should hibernate or stop using your instance. 

4. Automation

The flexibility of the cloud application programming interface (API) to automate the deployment process is another advantage of utilizing an elastic cloud computing environment. The likelihood of human-caused deployment failures is decreased by taking the time to develop an automated deployment process very early on. This also makes it easier to update systems in an effective and scalable manner, builds a robust environment that is resilient to failure, and aids in migration. Without a doubt, automation contributes to giving you better control over your cloud-based resources. 

5. Manage your Resources

Elastic computing's main advantage is the capacity of cloud service providers to supply businesses with more resources so they can manage their workload more flexibly. However, you must also anticipate your precise resource needs and submit a request for them in advance. Resource management is, therefore, crucial in this situation.

6. Monitoring

If you have no idea how many resources are idle, you will incur a hefty price because the cloud service provider will bill you whenever a resource is used, even if only briefly. If resources are unused for a prolonged period, you should think about stopping them or terminating them entirely. As a result, registering for a monitoring tool will cause warnings to be sent out any time a resource is idle or underutilized, allowing you to minimize wasteful spending and optimize the value of a service.

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Conclusion

There has never been a better time to include flexibility as a key component of your IT architecture. As more firms become aware of its advantages, elastic computing is gaining popularity. Your company's flexibility and availability greatly impact your ability to dynamically manage resources during peak periods and provision them as and when needed. Many businesses have moved all or a portion of their operations to cloud service providers or some of their IT workloads to cloud platforms.

Organizations now have the freedom to develop automated corporate AI applications and interact with enormous data volumes in the most scalable and cost-effective way possible, thanks to elastic computing. It is the ideal fusion of affordability, dependability, and a facility that is continuously operational. Businesses aiming to take advantage of elasticity will undoubtedly see a general digital refresh in terms of data and business continuity that is very much in accordance with the circumstances and expectations of the present market.

Elastic computing is now the obvious choice for many firms worldwide because of its continued growth across enterprises of all sizes and capacity to service numerous industries. Elastic computing genuinely democratizes the cloud sector by offering unlimited storage space as well as inexpensive access to computer resources. You can learn more about cloud elasticity in KnowledgeHut Cloud Computing classes.