Why auto scaling matters in AWS - See It in Action

Why Auto Scaling Matters

📖 Scenario: You are managing a website that gets different amounts of visitors at different times. Sometimes many people visit at once, and other times only a few. You want your website to work well all the time without spending too much money.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple AWS Auto Scaling setup that adjusts the number of servers automatically based on the website traffic.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a launch configuration for the server

Set a minimum and maximum number of servers

Create an Auto Scaling group using the launch configuration

Set a scaling policy to add or remove servers based on CPU usage

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Websites and applications often have changing traffic. Auto Scaling helps keep them fast and available without wasting money.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals use Auto Scaling to build reliable and cost-effective cloud systems.

1

Create a launch configuration

Write the AWS CLI command to create a launch configuration named MyLaunchConfig using the Amazon Linux 2 AMI with ID ami-0abcdef1234567890 and instance type t2.micro.

AWS

# Your AWS CLI command here to create launch configuration

Need a hint?

Use the aws autoscaling create-launch-configuration command with the exact names and IDs given.

2

Set minimum and maximum server counts

Create variables named min_size and max_size and set them to 1 and 3 respectively to define the minimum and maximum number of servers in the Auto Scaling group.

AWS

aws autoscaling create-launch-configuration --launch-configuration-name MyLaunchConfig --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 --instance-type t2.micro

# Define min_size and max_size variables
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the numbers 1 and 3 to variables named exactly min_size and max_size.

3

Create the Auto Scaling group

Write the AWS CLI command to create an Auto Scaling group named MyAutoScalingGroup using the launch configuration MyLaunchConfig, with minimum size 1, maximum size 3, and availability zone us-east-1a.

AWS

aws autoscaling create-launch-configuration --launch-configuration-name MyLaunchConfig --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 --instance-type t2.micro
min_size=1
max_size=3

# Create Auto Scaling group command
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group command with the exact names and sizes.

4

Add a scaling policy based on CPU usage

Write the AWS CLI command to create a scaling policy named ScaleUpPolicy for the Auto Scaling group MyAutoScalingGroup that adds 1 instance when triggered.

AWS

aws autoscaling create-launch-configuration --launch-configuration-name MyLaunchConfig --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 --instance-type t2.micro
min_size=1
max_size=3
aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group --auto-scaling-group-name MyAutoScalingGroup --launch-configuration-name MyLaunchConfig --min-size 1 --max-size 3 --availability-zones us-east-1a

# Create scaling policy command
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the aws autoscaling put-scaling-policy command with the exact group and policy names and scaling adjustment.