Performance, Elasticity and Scalability

Performance tuning is done for improving system performance. Prerequisite to performance tuning is monitoring. Monitoring forms the bases of building system performance baseline. Baseline provides reference for the performance evaluation of the system.

A system’s ability to accommodate to changing conditions or circumstances is called elasticity. If system is resilient and requires minimal changes in order to accommodate the new conditions, system has elasticity.

In many cases the system performance decreases for example with increasing load volumes or the number of executed applications, resilience of the system to these and maintain the performance is termed as scalability.

All of the three i.e. performance, elasticity and scalability are qualities of the system and are the cumulative result of designing the system with proven methodology. Architectural approach is the deciding factor here. Design of the system from conceptual, logical to physical layer contributes towards these.

Conceptual Layer design needs proper understanding of the Business Process and there relative importance to the business top line. This will ensure elasticity built into the system as, conceptual design will delineate detailed understanding of the business requirement, towards this Bus Architecture is of prime most importance as it provides top-down integrated view of the enterprise.

Logical Layer design requires process and data modeling expertise in order to ensure all permutation and combination in terms of business requirement are developed.

Physical Layer design needs using appropriate capacity planning of hardware and configuration of software/services