Common scenarios

Auto Scaling is suitable for applications that have fluctuating workloads and applications that have stable workloads. This topic describes the common application scenarios in which you can use Auto Scaling to scale Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances and elastic container instances.

Unpredictable workload fluctuations

To demonstrate the benefits of Auto Scaling for scenarios that have unpredictable workload fluctuations, a news website is used as an example. The page views of the website increase sharply when breaking news is reported and decrease when the news becomes less hot. Traffic surges and drops are unpredictable. It is impractical and inefficient to manually adjust the number of instances, and you also may not know the exact number of instances that are required by your business.

Predictable workload fluctuations

To demonstrate the benefits of Auto Scaling for scenarios that have predictable workload fluctuations, a game company whose demand surges from 18:00 to 22:00 every day and drops after 22:00 is used as an example. It is impractical and inefficient for the company to manually adjust the number of instances.

Small workload fluctuations

To demonstrate the benefits of Auto Scaling for scenarios that have small workload fluctuations, a telecommunications company that has no obvious changes in demand during a course of time is used as an example. If the existing instances suddenly fail, the failed instances are difficult to be repaired or replaced in time, and the services of the telecommunications company are interrupted.

Complex workload fluctuations

To demonstrate the benefits of Auto Scaling for scenarios that have complex workload fluctuations, a company whose daily traffic is stable but demand sometimes fluctuates is used as an example. If the company has some subscription instances and wants to adjust the number of instances only when the demand fluctuates, Auto Scaling can be used.