Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling is a fundamental cloud computing concept that automatically adjusts the computational resources allocated to an application or service based on observed demand and predefined policies. This dynamic adjustment, typically involving adding or removing instances, ensures applications…
Key facts
- First appeared
- 2009
- Category
- technology
- Problem solved
- Auto Scaling was created to solve the twin problems of inefficient resource utilization and operational overhead associated with manually provisioning and de-provisioning compute resources. It prevents applications from suffering performance degradation or outages due to insufficient capacity during peak loads, and simultaneously avoids the high costs of maintaining idle, over-provisioned infrastructure during periods of low demand.
- Platforms
- OpenStack, Hybrid Cloud Environments, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Microsoft Azure
Related technologies
- Cloud Virtual Machines (e.g., AWS EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine)
- Serverless Computing (e.g., AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation)
- Container Orchestrators (e.g., Kubernetes, Amazon ECS, Azure AKS)
- Monitoring and Alerting Systems (e.g., CloudWatch, Prometheus, Datadog)
- Load Balancers (e.g., AWS ELB, Nginx)
Notable users
- Netflix
- Airbnb
- Any large-scale enterprise leveraging cloud infrastructure
- Amazon.com
- Microsoft
- Lyft