Scalability versus performance

Scalability encompasses the ability to expand resources to accommodate a larger user base without compromising performance.

Performance, on the other hand, relates to ensuring an application caters to a predefined response time and throughput.

To illustrate these concepts, consider a railway network where the speed of a train correlates to performance. However, the scalability of the railway network is demonstrated by the ability to operate more trains simultaneously at equal or higher speeds.

Autoscaling plays an important role in achieving both performance and scalability. We will learn more about autoscaling in the next section.