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Getting Started with Compute: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

By: Author Alex Lim

Posted on

Categories Cloud Computing

Discover how Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling supports horizontal scaling to dynamically adjust your application’s capacity. Learn about the benefits of horizontal scaling and how it can help you maintain optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

Table of Contents

Question

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling can help to scale EC2 instances. Which kind of scaling methodology does Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling support?

A. Scaling up but not scaling out
B. Horizontal and vertical scaling
C. Vertical scaling
D. Horizontal scaling

Answer

D. Horizontal scaling

Explanation

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling can only scale horizontally. Scaling up means to scale vertically, and scaling out means to scale horizontally.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling supports horizontal scaling, also known as scaling out. Horizontal scaling involves adding or removing EC2 instances to adjust the capacity of your application based on demand.

With horizontal scaling, you can dynamically increase or decrease the number of EC2 instances running your application. When the demand for your application increases, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling can automatically launch additional instances to handle the increased load. Conversely, when the demand decreases, it can terminate unnecessary instances to optimize costs.

Horizontal scaling offers several benefits:

  1. Scalability: Your application can handle varying levels of traffic by adjusting the number of EC2 instances.
  2. High Availability: By distributing the load across multiple instances, your application can continue running even if one or more instances fail.
  3. Cost Optimization: Auto Scaling helps you pay only for the resources you need by automatically adjusting the number of instances based on demand.
  4. Flexibility: You can define scaling policies and set thresholds based on metrics like CPU utilization, network traffic, or custom metrics to trigger scaling actions.

It’s important to note that Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling does not support vertical scaling (scaling up), which involves increasing the size or capacity of individual EC2 instances. Vertical scaling requires manual intervention and cannot be automated using Auto Scaling.

In summary, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling supports horizontal scaling, allowing you to dynamically adjust the number of EC2 instances running your application based on demand. This enables you to build scalable, highly available, and cost-effective applications on the AWS cloud platform.

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