Auto Scaling in Amazon Web Services (AWS) automatically adds or removes compute resources running your application in the cloud depending upon on conditions you configure. For applications configured to run on cloud infrastructure, scaling is an important part of cost control and resource management.

In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to create and configure all the resources that are needed to automatically scale an application in response to load.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this Lab you will be able to:

• Create and configure an Application Load Balancer
• Create and configure Auto Scaling groups and launch templates
• Utilize Auto Scaling to ensure application availability

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with:

• EC2 Basics including launching instances and connecting to them using SSH
• Working with the AWS Console
• Conceptual understanding of CloudWatch, and EC2 Security Groups (firewall rules)

Updates

February 24th, 2022 - Updated some screenshots to reflect the latest UI changes

October 12th, 2021 - Changed lab to use an Application Load Balancer instead of a Classic Load Balancer

August 16th, 2021 - Update security group creation instructions to match the latest user interface changes

June 28th, 2021 - Updated screenshots to reflect the latest user interface changes and improved some instructions

August 18th, 2020 - Updated all instructions and screenshots

March 11th, 2020 - Updated the validation checks inserting them in the correct lab steps instead of the last one