No one would love to hold back for a second to get an application load or launch. Speed is the essence of the current circumstances. If you want your mission-critical software running in the market, make sure that your customers do not get a bad user experience. If your application shows an ‘insufficient capacity’ error message while launching, it means your app lacks the instances purchased in the cloud.
AWS Auto Scaling Ensures You Never Run Out of Instances
AWS Auto Scaling is a feature that automatically scales the recourses to match the demand of the server load. It will ensure that your app will always have enough instances, no matter how huge spike you receive in traffic volumes.
Is it cost-effective too? Yes, it does not only maintain the performance but also helps you save costs. There are AWS auto-scaling tools that make you powerful enough to balance the costs and performance. However, you need to put the right strategy in place. It automatically scales the instances and reduces the conserve resources when the demand is low.
One Size Never Fits All
There are multiple AWS Auto Scaling options, but not all of them are equal. It means you need to customize your scaling option matching your needs. Let’s start with identifying your requirements first. Have you completely identified the resources you need?
Strategy 1: Configure Auto Scaling For A Set Number of Instances Indefinitely
With this strategy, AWS EC2 automatically scans the instances to check their health. If there are any issues with any instances, it will end and replace that one. This way, you will always be assured about the predefined numbers of instances running all the time.
Strategy 2: Go Back To Manual Scaling For A Defined Group
As the name goes, you can easily manage the scaling resources manually. You can create the desired capacity group of instances which will be managed automatically by the AWS EC2 auto-scaling feature. You can manually define the value of the instances in the group.
Strategy 3: Schedule The Instances
You can schedule the occurrence of the instances at a specific date and time. It is helpful in a situation where you can accurately forecast the demand. The advantage of this strategy is that instead of determining the appropriate volume of the instances from time to time, you can predict the exact number of instances needed at a specified time and date.
Strategy 4: Match With The Demand
As mentioned above, strategies are part of the Auto Scaling tool. However, the real feature of this tool is to match the demand. The ability of this tool to seamlessly shift between the demand spikes is remarkable. The resources will be reduced whenever you do not need them; thus, you just need to pay for what you use really.
It also controls the traffic that you cannot predict. It covers all the valuable features of the strategies mentioned above. Demand-based Scaling is very responsive to fluctuating demands of the instances.
Image Source: AWS
When do you need to apply any of these strategies?
It all starts with the analysis of the usage patterns and traffic. You need to understand whether you do not want your customers to experience a slow time or can afford it. You need to consider these and many more factors while planning to adopt any of the AWS auto-scaling strategies. Usually, there are two broadly classified types of usage:
Dynamic Scaling, which is the most adopted strategy among the enterprises in cases where traffic fluctuates aggressively. You cannot easily predict the consumption.
Predictive Scaling is when you can predict the high level of traffic or usage, i.e., requirements of more instances at that time and date.
It is highly recommended to connect with the certified cloud architects to get the best out of the cloud technology.
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