Rackspace Cloud Library

What is Auto Scaling?

With auto scaling, your cloud resources — such as a designated group of servers — can scale up or down automatically, based on your needs.

You can set up auto scaling to operate according to a predetermined schedule, such as a sales weekend or event, or to scale automatically to meet unexpected spikes in customer traffic.

Also referred to as autoscaling (one word), automatic scaling or automatic elasticity, auto scaling is very similar to load balancing. Both distribute workloads across multiple computing resources — such as computers, network links and central processing units — to optimize resource usage, increase throughput and minimize response time.

Why Use Auto Scaling?

Reducing Cloud Costs

By scaling down resources during times of slow traffic, you can cut your overall operating costs.

Improved Performance

Reduce latency and downtime by always having the right number of cloud resources at the right time.

Focus On Core Business

Refocus your IT resources on your core business, rather than on manually responding to web traffic changes.

Better IT Efficiency

Auto scaling allows you to run non-time-sensitive workloads on available servers during periods of low traffic.

How Can Rackspace Help?

With over 15 years of cloud hosting experience, we understand that auto scaling is an essential cloud feature for every business.

Schedules

Dynamically provision your servers and other cloud resources according to a schedule, such as for a big sales promotion or Black Friday. You can also increase your cloud resources during the day, and decrease them at night when usage drops.

Events

Dynamically provision your servers and other cloud resources based on designated events, such as when the workload for a group of servers reaches a certain threshold (e.g., number of requests received, length of a server queue). Rackspace Auto Scale is easy to set up via our control panel or API. You can also add third-party monitoring tools like LiquiD AutoScaler.