Posted On: May 19, 2021

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling introduces native support for Predictive Scaling Policy that proactively scales your applications for upcoming demand, resulting in higher availability. Conversely, it can potentially help you avoid the need to over-provision capacity, resulting in lower EC2 cost. Now, customers can use the same predictive scaling algorithm that is offered in Amazon Auto Scaling Plans through the native and more familiar approach of auto scaling policies.  

Predictive scaling is apt for applications that observe recurring patterns of steep demand changes, such as early morning spikes and weekend vs weekdays. It learns from the past patterns and launches instances in-advance of predicted demand, giving instances time to warm up. Predictive scaling enhances existing auto scaling policies, such as Target Tracking or Simple Scaling policies, so that your applications scale based on both current and historic patterns. You can choose the right metric to forecast on and safely validate in a “Forecast Only” mode before actually switching it on.  

Predictive Scaling is now available as a scaling policy type through Amazon Command Line Interface (CLI), EC2 Auto Scaling Management Console, and Amazon SDKs in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. To learn more, visit documentation.