AWS Auto Scaling allows you to automatically adjust the number of resources in use based on predefined conditions or in response to changing demand.
The primary goal of Auto Scaling is to ensure you have the right number of resources available to handle the current workload efficiently and cost-effectively.
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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps maintain application availability and lets you automatically add or remove EC2 instances using scaling policies that you define.
Predictive Scaling: Adjusts capacity based on established demand patterns.
Dynamic Scaling: Adjusts capacity in real-time to meet changing demand.
An Auto Scaling group (ASG) contains a collection of EC2 instances that are treated as a logical grouping for the purposes of automatic scaling and management.
You define a desired capacity, min and max capacity, a launch configuration or launch template (recommended), scaling policies, cooldown periods and optional ELB.
An ASG can be integrated with Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs) to distribute incoming traffic across instances. The load balancer performs health checks and routes traffic only to healthy instances.
Desired capacity: Represents the initial capacity of the Auto Scaling group at the time of creation.
An Auto Scaling group attempts to maintain the desired capacity if there are no scaling policies or scheduled actions attached to the Auto Scaling group.
Minimum capacity: Represents the minimum group size.
When scaling policies are set, they cannot decrease the group's desired capacity lower than the minimum capacity.
Maximum capacity: Represents the maximum group size.
How to identify?
In AWS Console, go to the EC2 service, then select the Auto Scaling Groups section.
How to fix?
In Amazon EC2 Dashboard, choose Launch Templates and specify: a name, an AMI, an instance type, network settings, a key pair and storage.
Navigate to the Auto Scaling Groups section in EC2 and start the creation process.
Choose a name.
Select your launch template.
Optionally, select or create a load balancer to attach.
Optionally, turn on ELB health checks.
Define Scaling Limits
Select Target tracking scaling policy.
Choose a metric type (Average CPU Utilization, Average network in or out, ALB request count per target, custom cloudwatch metric).
Choose a target value
If the resource is provisioned automatically via IaC (such as CloudFormation or Terraform), update the corresponding code to reflect the changes.
Incorrect configurations can lead to inefficiencies or failures.
Defining effective scaling policies requires a deep understanding of the application's workload patterns and performance metrics.
Determining the optimal cooldown period can be challenging and may require iterative adjustments.
ECS Auto Scaling
ECS Auto Scaling allows you to increase or decrease the desired number of tasks in your Amazon ECS service automatically.
Amazon ECS publishes CloudWatch metrics with your service’s average CPU and memory usage.
Use these metrics to scale out during high utilization or scale in during low utilization.
Auto Scaling Service
AWS Auto Scaling monitors your applications and automatically adjusts capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost.
Easily set up application scaling for multiple resources across multiple services in minutes.
Supports scaling for:
Amazon EC2 instances and Spot Fleets
Amazon ECS tasks
Amazon DynamoDB tables and indexes
Amazon Aurora Replicas
