SITE Cloud Autoscaling Service ensures your applications always have the optimal compute capacity to handle peak loads efficiently, while optimizing costs during quiet periods. It is designed to dynamically adjust your infrastructure, guaranteeing high availability and performance right here in the Kingdom, with data sovereignty guaranteed.

Key Features and Benefits

• Automatically adds or removes Virtual Machine (VM) nodes based on real-time operational metrics eliminating latency and timeouts during sudden traffic spikes.
• Scales down compute resources when demand is low, reducing operational expenditure. Pay only for the resources you actively use, improving ROI.
• Ensures your application remains highly available and resilient against unexpected load surges.
• All scaling logic and data management remains within the trusted and secure Sovereign Cloud environment meeting regional data residency (Riyadh and Jeddah) and governance requirements.

How Autoscaling Groups Work

The core of the service is the Autoscaling Group (ASG). An ASG is a collection of VMs managed as a single logical unit. When defining an ASG, you establish the boundaries and performance triggers that dictate how and when scale-in, scale-out actions occur. SITE Cloud autoscaling is based on warm pools strategy.

Autoscaling Warm Pools. 

Unlike traditional ASG instances, which are either fully active (serving traffic) or cold (completely terminated), warm pools allow instances to exist in a pre-initialized state. This means they can be quickly transitioned into service without the delay of instance boot time and initialization and quickly enter service when demand increases, significantly reducing the lag that often accompanies scaling events. By having instances in a warm state, organizations can ensure faster response times while optimizing costs, especially during high-demand scenarios.

Configuration Parameters

When setting up your Autoscaling Group, you will define the following mandatory parameters to customize its behavior:

• Name & Description: Assign a unique name for easy identification and a description detailing the application or function it supports.
• Minimum Node Count (Min): The smallest number of running VMs the ASG must maintain. This ensures baseline availability.
• Maximum Node Count (Max): The highest number of VMs the ASG can scale up to. This acts as a budget and resource control guardrail.
• Scaling Thresholds (The Triggers): These metrics define the conditions under which the ASG must add/remove a new node if any one of these metrics goes above or below the threshold.
  • CPU Utilization (%): If the average CPU across the group exceeds this percentage for a defined period, a new VM will be added and if average CPU goes below this percentage VM will be removed.
  • Memory Utilization (%): If the average memory usage across the group exceeds this percentage for a defined period, a new VM will be added and if average memory usage goes below this percentage VM will be removed.

Managing VM Membership

The service provides unique flexibility in managing the VMs within your ASG:

• Add Existing VMs: You can seamlessly select and attach currently running, configured VMs to a newly created or existing Autoscaling Group. This is ideal for quickly integrating pre-tested application instances.
• Remove VMs: You retain the ability to detach VMs from the ASG. Detached VMs are not terminated; they transition to being standard, standalone instances under your direct management.