What is AWS Auto Scaling?

AWS Auto Scaling is a powerful feature of AWS that monitors the application and automatically adjusts the resources allocated to it. This process is done as per the demand to ensure the costs are as low as possible and that no server resources ever go to waste.

For example, let's imagine we run an e-commerce website. Throughout the year, our website may experience periods of average capacity. However, as the end of the year approaches, customer traffic rapidly increases. AWS Auto Scaling actively monitors our application's demand and automatically adjusts the resources allocated to our servers. During peak seasons, it scales up server capacity to handle the surge in traffic, guaranteeing a smooth ordering experience for all customers. Conversely, during low-demand periods, it scales down our resources, eliminating wastage and ensuring we only pay for the resources we use.

Setting up AWS Auto Scaling on an EC2 instance

AWS Auto Scaling seamlessly integrates with various AWS services, including Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) and Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service). However, for the purpose of this Answer, we will focus on showing how Auto Scaling works with EC2 instances.

Note: We need an AWS account for the following steps.

We can set up AWS Auto Scaling on an EC2 instance with the following steps:

Step 1: Create a launch configuration

• Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the EC2 service.

• Go to the "Launch Configurations" section and click on "Create launch configuration."

• Select the desired AMI (Amazon Machine Image) for our EC2 instance.

• Choose the instance type, and specify the necessary configuration details such as security groups, key pair, user data, etc.

• Review the configuration and click "Create launch configuration" to proceed.

Step 2: Configure the Auto Scaling Group (ASG)

• After creating the launch configuration, go to the "Auto Scaling Groups" section and click on "Create Auto Scaling Group."

• Select the created launch configuration as the basis for our Auto Scaling Group.

• Specify the desired capacity for the group, which includes the minimum, maximum, and desired number of instances.

• Set up scaling policies based on our requirements. We can choose either target tracking scaling or step scaling based on our application's needs.

• Review the configuration and click "Create Auto Scaling Group" to create the group.