The aggressive adoption of digitalization has necessitated enterprises to scale resources and computational capacities to meet dynamic business requirements. Here is where cloud technology evolved as a game-changer. One of the prime capabilities that stands out is auto scaling. Auto scaling is one of the prime capabilities of cloud technology that dynamically and automatically scales the computational capacities and resources based on business needs. AWS, one of the top cloud service providers, offers a robust auto-scaling feature to scale resources intelligently and ensure better service availability and performance without interruption.
AWS Auto Scaling instinctively modifies the number or lifecycle state of compute instances in an instance pool. This provides a consistent performance for end-users during periods of high demand and reduces your costs during periods of low demand. The AWS Auto Scaling feature balances the load by increasing or decreasing resources and computing abilities based on activity. This is best suited for applications that have periodic or unpredictable variations in traffic. The Auto Scale feature can be used for Amazon EC2 instances and other applications and services of AWS.
Setting up and managing the AWS Auto Scale application for various resources and applications is simple using an easy-to-use interface. Users can easily access and manage Auto Scaling, through AWS Management Console, Command Line Interface, or SDK, AWS Auto Scaling is offered at no extra expense, users only pay for essential AWS resources and Amazon CloudWatch monitoring. Users can decide whether to apply auto scaling to the entire application or just a set of resources. They are also permitted to configure and govern scaling through their plan. Based on the scaling plan, the respective scaling strategy is decided, and this determines how to optimize resources.
AWS Auto Scaling can be applied to resources of EC2 Auto Scaling groups, EC2 Spot Fleet requests, Amazon ECS, AWS DynamoDB, and Aurora. One might prefer EC2 Auto Scaling if the need is to scale only EC2 groups and ensure the health of the EC2 fleet. Using this auto scaling feature, users can configure and frame auto scaling policies specific to any targeted EC2 group. Unlike other AWS services and applications, this cannot be configured in an auto scaling interface and instead must be completed through the EC2 auto scaling console or through API or CloudFormation.
The scaling plan is based on your desired performance and budget while ensuring service availability. Users can use the existing AWS Auto Scaling recommendations to create the scaling strategy or customize a plan according to specific needs. To automatically scale resources, AWS uses two types of scaling techniques: dynamic scaling and predictive scaling.
In dynamic auto scaling, resources are scaled dynamically as the load increases or decreases in real-time. This methodology is tightly coupled with real-time supervising of resources. These scaling procedures alter resources in reaction to real-time modifications in consumption. The intent is to deliver resource capacities in accordance with the user's stipulated value.
The predictive scaling uses machine learning capabilities to do a chronological analysis of each resource’s utilization and workload and predicts the approximate time when the workload will be high and low. Based on the predictive analysis, the scaling mechanism generates actions to be performed. This technique ensures that the resource facility is accessible before the application demands.