Auto scaling in AWS is a way to increase/decrease the infrastructure required to run a server in AWS purely based on the demand.
- Its helps to scale up/down the EC2 capacity based on the conditions defined.
- Automatically increases the number of EC2 instances to handle demand.
- Decreases/stops the number of EC2 instances when demand reduces to reduce cost.
- Note: all server / nodes should be in auto start mode for Auto scaling to work properly.
For example:
In a typical Websphere Clustered environment with multiple nodes and a Load balancer, we can create a Auto Scaling Group to start /stop nodes based on demand.
References: http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/details/
