Creating an auto-scaling web application is an ideal use of cloud computing. Although manually scaling your infrastructure is easy in the GoGrid cloud, programmatically controlling your infrastructure to scale automatically is an even better example of the power of the cloud. This scenario–an application that can increase and decrease its server count, and therefore capacity, based on the load it’s experiencing at any given time–makes IT professionals, sysadmins, and application developers alike extremely happy. And it’s also something you can build using out-of-the-box tools in GoGrid.
We’ve divided this topic into two articles:
Part 1 (this article) – The Theory of Auto-Scaling:
Scalability is one of the biggest benefits of cloud computing. Compared to traditional physical servers, cloud servers offer dynamic elasticity that allows businesses to scale “up” or “out” based on load or demand. Scaling “out” means adding more servers to your infrastructure and scaling “up” means adding resources (like RAM) to an existing cloud server.
Adding more cloud servers to your GoGrid infrastructure is easy, as is creating a GoGrid Server Image (GSI). Just a quick refresher: you would use a GSI to deploy copies of a particular server configuration or setup—this is horizontal scalability: create a GoGrid cloud server, save an image of it, and deploy copies of that server.
But let’s say that you want a particular server to have a little more power. One of the best “upgrades” you can make to any computer or server is to add more RAM. Running applications consumes RAM (as does the underlying operating system). Giving that server more RAM will make it run even more efficiently.
So, how do you add more RAM to an existing GoGrid Cloud Server? Just like the 3-step processes before (Create a GoGrid Cloud Server – Select. Configure. Deploy. & Create a GoGrid Server Image – Select. Save. Share.), this process is equally easy:
1. Select 2. Configure 3. Scale
Before we walk through this process, it’s important to remember that RAM scaling only works on “hourly” GoGrid Cloud Servers. If your server is on a monthly, semi-annual, or annual plan, you won’t be able to scale your server. In that case, you’ll want to create a GSI of an existing server and then deploy a new hourly server based on that GSI. If you do have an hourly cloud server, the process is easy. (more…) «How To Scale Your GoGrid Infrastructure»
Let’s say that you have fully configured a Cloud Server running on GoGrid. You’re so proud of your achievement that you want to share your configuration with your team or perhaps even with the GoGrid community. And let’s imagine that you or your company has developed a software solution that you’d like to monetize within a Public Cloud. Well, the process of creating and sharing a GoGrid Cloud Server Image (GSI) is easy and literally takes just a few minutes.
If you visit the GoGrid homepage, you’ll be greeted with the following headline:
We make cloud infrastructure easy. Really easy.
But without trying our cloud infrastructure service, how can you really know what “easy” means? It can be completely subjective and open to interpretation. Even so, we stand firmly by our statement. It IS easy because it simply boils down to 3 action words:
1. select 2. configure 3. deploy.
Don’t just take my word for it though. Your best bet is to test it out yourself. (Here’s a hint: If you’re new to GoGrid, contact one of our Cloud Experts, mention this blog post, and get a $100 service credit to see if we’re right.)
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