What do the terms elastic and scalability mean in the context of cloud computing?

Question

I've been reading a lot about cloud computing recently and the terms elasticity and scalability are used very frequently. I've been trying to finding some hard definitions for them, but many different sites seem to have different ideas for what exactly they mean. I recognize that they could mean different things in different contexts, but I thought I'd ask the stack overflow community for their thoughts.

Thanks!

-David

Answer 1

Simply put: scalability means the ability to handle huge numbers of transactions.

Elastic means the system can bring on other resources (ie add databases, cpus, caches) or deactivate them based on traffic demand

Answer 2

i think, scalability - ability of a system to increase the workload on its present hardware resources. elasticity - ability of a system to increase the workload on its present and additional hardware resources. i got more and more into clouds while at first i had no idea about them as i got exposed to my organization working and storing method. they work with stratoscale. i learned through their site many things about cloud computing that just caught me.