What is Auto Scale?
Auto Scale utilizes proprietary algorithms that have been custom-developed by Tier 3 to automatically scale your server environment. Think of it as a senior engineer who understands the needs of your business with the sole focus of managing your server resources 24x7. Tier 3 has encapsulated that technical and business knowledge in Auto Scale to manage the scaling of:
- Web and application servers by increasing or decreasing CPU and memory
- Web and application server pools by adding or subtracting servers
- Databases servers by increasing or decreasing resources
How does Auto Scale work?
Auto Scale can be enabled on your server, server farm or cluster within minutes; it is auto-enabled on The Farm. You configure it to scale based on a scaling profile that you help to create by answering questions regarding your business, sites and/or applications. In addition, it can be configured to automatically scale or provide you with recommendations for scaling via alerts which you can choose to act on or not.
Getting Started
Through the Control Panel click on the Auto Scale button; the Auto Scale Wizard will appear
The Auto Scale Wizard will ask you a series of questions regarding your business, sites and applications. In addition, denote whether you would prefer automatic scaling or recommendations only. The Auto Scale application uses this information to create a scaling profile.
Auto Scale set-up and on-going management can also be done through our API.
Going Forward
- Manage Auto Scale for your server, server farm or cluster through the Control Panel or API.
- You can disable Auto Scale at any time and it will retain your scaling profile should you wish to re-enable it. You are only billed for when it is enabled.
Pricing
Auto Scale should be considered if you want to:
- Reduce costs
- Eliminate the manual management of server resources
- Effectively manage expected and unexpected web application traffic spikes
- Match resources to utilization patterns for business applications or applications that are not 24x7(business hours, days of week, month-end, seasonal, etc.)
Auto Scale is billed based on utilization:
Load Balanced:
- Per virtual IP address = $0.34/hour/month
- Per node = $0.13/hour/month
Cluster:
- Per cluster = $0.22/hour/month
Single Server:
- Per single server = $0.13/hour/month
The Farm
- Included
You can disable Auto Scale at any time and it will retain your scaling profile should you wish to re-enable it. You are only billed for when it is enabled.
Technology
Auto Scale, like Tier 3’s platform, is enterprise-grade. It has multiple layers of checking so you can rest assured it will provide you with the right resources at the right time.
Auto Scale can be used for:
Load Balanced Server Pools:
- Add or subtract nodes to the web and application server pool
- Increase or decrease the CPU and/or memory of current Web and application servers in load balance pool
SQL Clusters:
- SQL Server 2008/Windows Cluster (active/passive)
- MySQL 5/Linux Clusters (active/passive)
- For both, Auto Scale will adjust resources on the passive server first. The load will then be migrated to that server making it the active server while it adjusts resources on the passive server. This occurs automatically with no downtime.
Single Servers:
- Increase or decrease the CPU and/or memory of a single Web or application server.
- This does require a reboot and approximately 5 minutes of downtime.
While other hosting providers may offer scaling features, Auto Scale is a superior offering in that it:
- 1. Is the only fully integrated solution in the market for enterprise-grade scaling
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2. Automatically:
- increases or decreases database resources
- increases or decreases Web and application server CPU and/or memory
- adds or subtracts nodes to a load balanced web and application server pool
- 3. Dynamically changes the configuration of the server instead of just adding nodes
- 4. Utilizes proprietary algorithms that have been custom-developed by Tier 3