Cloud computing services are becoming common day by day. Organizations are using these services for their applications. With the passage of time, applications are becoming highly scalable and secure. However, scalability can sometimes be a painful experience. Amazon offers an easy solution to scale your applications automatically to meet user needs.

This article will explain the autoscaling groups, their working types, design considerations, and the benefits auto-scaling offers.

What are the Auto Scaling Groups?

A single auto-scaling group is a collection of several EC2 instances to scale the application’s resources according to the needs of the users. It works by monitoring a metric such as CPU usage and when a certain point is crossed in resource utilization. “Elastic Load Balancing” service redirects the users to other instances:

Let us understand the working of auto-scaling groups:

How Do Auto Scaling Groups Work?

Some EC2 instances are allotted for an application for a varying number of available zones. An elastic Load Balancing service is used in these instances. When an instance resource reaches a certain threshold of utilization, ELB redirects the users to keep the application up and running. A visual depiction of the working of auto-scaling groups can be seen below:

This saves the application from getting crashed when traffic to your application instance peaks.

Let us head to the types of auto-scaling groups:

What are the Types of Auto-Scaling Groups?

Scaling can be done manually by CLI or using ML algorithms but auto-scaling groups have mainly two types. These are as follows:

• • Dynamic Scaling Groups
  • Scheduled Scaling Groups

Let us discuss these types briefly:

Dynamic Scaling Groups

Dynamic scaling groups allow the application to scale according to the traffic load. It can upscale and downscale the instances allotment whenever traffic peaks or diminishes. CloudWatch alarms are used as signals for these scaling groups. It is done when the traffic is unpredictable as below:

Scheduled Scaling Groups

Scheduled scaling groups are set up in a way that allows upscaling of the instances at specific times. It will automatically upscale the instances allotment at the assigned times. It is used when the traffic is predictable:

There are a few considerations when creating an auto-scaling group. Let us head to these design considerations:

What are the Design Considerations to Create an Auto-scaling Group?

Keep these guidelines in mind when designing your application. These are:

• • Choose the right policies
  • Multiple zone availability
  • Instance types
  • Resource monitoring
  • Load balancing
  • Testing groups

Let us head to the benefits of using auto-scaling groups:

What are the Benefits of Auto-scaling Groups?

Auto-scaling groups are widely used in cloud infrastructure because they prove to be beneficial. Some of these benefits are:

• • They are a cost-effective solution for managing load balancing.
  • They manage the resource utilization of an application.
  • They are used for a different number of zones.
  • They are used to save the application from crashing.

Conclusion

Auto-scaling groups control and manage the resource utilization of EC2 instances with the help of CloudWatch and Elastic Load Balancing service. They scale applications according to the incoming traffic and usage. They save applications from crashing and keep them running seamlessly. This is all about Auto-scaling groups, their work, and their benefits.