Use Cases

If you need to troubleshoot any problems related to configurations or Web applications (for example, shutdown to reset a password and upgrade services), and you want to modify the applications without triggering the auto scaling process, you can disable the scaling group and recover it after troubleshooting.

Suspending a Scaling Group

Directions

1. Log in to the Auto Scaling console and select Scaling Groups in the left sidebar.
2. On the “Scaling Groups” page, click Disable on the right side of the row of the scaling group to be disabled and click OK in the pop-up window.
   Then, you can see that the scaling group is in “Disabled” status, as shown in the following figure:
   

Considerations

After you disable a scaling group, the automatic capacity scaling of the scaling group will not be triggered, but the restrictions on the scaling group remain in effect.

• Automatically triggered activities include:

  • Alarm-based scaling
  • Scheduled actions
  • Health checks
  • The desired number of instances does not match the desired capacity due to manual operations.

• Scaling group restrictions include:

  • If manual removal causes the number of instances in the group to be less than the min capacity, removal will not be permitted.
  • If manual addition causes the number of instances in the group to be more than the max capacity, the addition will not be permitted.
  • Manually increasing the min capacity or the max capacity does not trigger scaling activity.

Recovering a Scaling Group

If you have finished troubleshooting, you can recover the auto scaling configuration.

1. Log in to the Auto Scaling console and select Scaling Groups in the left sidebar.
2. On the Scaling Groups page, click Enable on the right side of the row of the scaling group to be enabled, as shown in the following figure: