What does scalability allow a system to do?

Scalability is a key characteristic of systems that allows them to manage increasing workloads effectively. By adding instances or increasing resources, a scalable system can accommodate a growing number of users or requests without compromising performance. This capability is essential for applications that experience fluctuating or consistently rising demand, enabling businesses to cater to their customers while maintaining efficient operations.

For instance, in a cloud environment like AWS, scalability can be achieved through various methods, such as vertical scaling, where the resources of a single instance are increased, or horizontal scaling, where additional instances are deployed. This flexibility allows organizations to optimize their infrastructure and costs based on their current needs.

The other options focus on different aspects of cloud architecture and management. While ensuring high availability through multiple data centers (the second option) is important for resilience, it does not directly address how systems can adapt to increasing workloads. Similarly, reducing data storage costs (the third option) and automatically backing up data (the fourth option) are operational efficiencies but are not directly related to the concept of scalability itself.