This tutorial explains how to use autoscaling to automatically adjust the number of VM instances that are hosting your application, allowing your application to adapt to varying amounts of traffic.
To use autoscaling, host your application on a managed instance group. A managed instance group is a collection of instances that are all running the same application and can be managed as a single entity. When a managed instance group has autoscaling enabled, the number of VMs in the instance group automatically increases (scales out) or decreases (scales in) according to the target value that you specify for your autoscaling policy.
This tutorial includes detailed steps for launching a web application on a managed instance group, setting up autoscaling, configuring network access, and observing autoscaling by simulating load spikes and drops. Depending on your experience with these features, this tutorial takes about 20 minutes to complete.
ObjectivesIn this document, you use the following billable components of Google Cloud:
To generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage, use the pricing calculator.
New Google Cloud users might be eligible for a
free trial.
Before you beginIn the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
The application includes the following Compute Engine components:
This tutorial uses a web application that is stored on GitHub. If you would like learn more about how the application was implemented, see the GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docs-samples repository on GitHub.
Launch the web application on every VM in a managed instance group by including a startup script in an instance template. To allow HTTP traffic to the web application, create a firewall rule.
Create a firewall rule Note: This firewall rule allows ingress HTTP traffic for all instances that are on the default network and have thehttp-server
networking tag.
Create a firewall rule to allow HTTP traffic to the web application:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewalls page.
Click Create firewall rule.
Under Name, enter default-allow-http
.
Set Network to default
.
Set Targets to select Specified target tags
.
Under Target Tags, enter http-server
.
Set Source filter to IPv4 ranges
.
Under Source IPv4 ranges, enter 0.0.0.0/0
to allow access for all IP addresses.
Under Protocols and ports, select Specified protocols and ports. Then, select TCP and enter 80
to allow access for HTTP traffic.
Click Create.
Create an instance template that launches the demo web application on startup:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance templates page.
Click Create instance template.
Under Name, enter autoscaling-web-app-template
.
Under Machine configuration, set the Machine type to e2-standard-2
.
Under Firewall, select the Allow HTTP traffic checkbox. This applies the http-server
networking tag to each instance created from this template.
Expand the Advanced options section to see advanced settings.
Expand the Management section.
In the Automation section, enter the following startup script:
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install git gunicorn3 python3-pip git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docs-samples.git cd python-docs-samples/compute/managed-instances/demo sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt sudo gunicorn3 --bind 0.0.0.0:80 app:app --daemon
This script causes each VM to run the web application during startup.
Click Create.
Create a regional instance group to begin running the web application:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance groups page.
Click Create instance group to create a new instance group.
Select New managed instance group (stateless)."
For Name, enter autoscaling-web-app-group
.
For Instance template, select autoscaling-web-app-template
.
For Location, select Multiple zones.
Pro Tip: To ensure your application is available during extreme events, like zonal outages, Compute Engine recommends that you distribute your application across multiple zones.
For Region, select us-central1.
For Zones, select the following zones from the drop-down list:
Configure autoscaling for the instance group:
Set the Minimum number of instances to 3
.
Pro Tip: When creating a regional managed instance group, Compute Engine recommends that you provision enough instances so that, if all of the instances in any one zone are unavailable, the remaining instances still meet the minimum number of instances that you require. However, provisioning more instances than you need might incur additional costs. For more information, see Selecting instance group size to ensure availability.
Set the Maximum number of instances to 6
.
Set the Initialization period to 120
seconds.
Pro Tip: The initialization period is the number of seconds after an instance is created that the autoscaler should wait before using information about the instance for scaling decisions. When a VM is initializing, the CPU usage is not reliable for autoscaling. To prevent the autoscaler from scaling based on inaccurate data, make sure the initialization period is longer than the time than the time it takes for the CPU utilization of your VM to initially stabilize. For more information, see Initialization period and Monitoring autoscaling charts and logs.
Under Autoscaling Metrics, select CPU utilization as the metric type. To learn more about autoscaling metrics, see Autoscaling policy.
Set the Target CPU utilization to 60
.
Click Done.
Under Autohealing, select No health check from the Health check drop-down list.
Click Create. This redirects you to the Instance groups page.
Note: Wait a few minutes until all of the instances in the group are running and ready to display the web application.To verify that your instances are running:
autoscaling-web-app-group
to see the instances in that group.Under External IP, click on an IP address to connect that instance. A new browser tab opens displaying the demo web application:
Note: If you are unable to connect to the web application after waiting a few minutes, verify the instance status and network settings:
allow-web-app-http
firewall rule was created correctly.When you are done, close the browser tab for the demo web application.
For more information about autoscaling behaviors, see Understanding autoscaling decisions.
Monitor autoscalingThe instance group you created uses an Autoscaling policy based on CPU usage. This means that autoscaler grows or shrinks the group as needed to maintain the target CPU utilization of 60
%.
To monitor the size and CPU utilization of your instance group, use the autoscaling charts in the Google Cloud console:
autoscaling-web-app-group
instance group, click the Monitoring tab.Optional: To monitor autoscaled capacity versus utilization, see the Autoscaler utilization (CPU) chart. The graph displays Utilization, which is the total CPU utilization of VM instances in the group, and Capacity, which is the cumulative target CPU utilization of the group (target CPU utilization multiplied by the number of VM instances).
Autoscaling attempts to make Capacity match Utilization by changing the number of Instances, when possible.
Keep this window open.
Simulate scale outScale out occurs when the average CPU utilization of the instance group is significantly higher than the target value. During scale out, autoscaler gradually increases the size of the instance group until CPU utilization decreases to the target CPU utilization value or until the instance group size equals the Maximum number of instances, which was set to 6
.
To trigger scale out, increase the CPU utilization for your instances:
In the Google Cloud console, open Cloud Shell.
Cloud Shell opens on the bottom of the Google Cloud console. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
Pro Tip:
You can open the Cloud Shell from any Google Cloud console page using the Activate Cloud Shell button, which is in the top right corner of every Google Cloud console page.
Create a local bash variable for the project ID:
export PROJECT_ID=[PROJECT_ID]
where PROJECT_ID
is the project ID for your current project, which is displayed on each new line in the Cloud Shell:
user@cloudshell:~ ([PROJECT_ID])$
Run the following bash script. This script causes the demo web application instances to have an increased load, which increases CPU utilization. After a few minutes, the CPU utilization will surpass the target value, prompting the autoscaling to increase the instance group size.
export MACHINES=$(gcloud --project=$PROJECT_ID compute instances list --format="csv(name,networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)" | grep "autoscaling-web-app-group") for i in $MACHINES; do NAME=$(echo "$i" | cut -f1 -d,) IP=$(echo "$i" | cut -f2 -d,) echo "Simulating high load for instance $NAME" curl -q -s "http://$IP/startLoad" >/dev/null --retry 2 done
Open the Monitoring tab in the Google Cloud console.
After a few minutes, the Monitoring tab displays that the CPU Utilization increased, which triggers autoscaling to increase Capacity by increasing the number of Instances.
Note: You might need to refresh the page to see the most recent chart.You might also notice that 6 instances are now listed under the Overview tab.
Keep both windows open.
Simulate scale inScale in occurs when the average CPU utilization of the instance group is significantly lower than the target value. During scale in, autoscaler gradually decreases the size of the instance group until CPU utilization increases to the target CPU utilization or until the instance group size equals the Minimum number of instances, which was set to 3
.
To trigger scale in, decrease the CPU utilization for your instances:
Run the following bash script. This script causes the demo web application instances to have a decreased load, which decreases CPU utilization. After a few minutes, the CPU utilization will fall below the target value, prompting the autoscaler to decrease the instance group size.
export MACHINES=$(gcloud --project=$PROJECT_ID compute instances list --format="csv(name,networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)" | grep "autoscaling-web-app-group") for i in $MACHINES; do NAME=$(echo "$i" | cut -f1 -d,) IP=$(echo "$i" | cut -f2 -d,) echo "Simulating low load for instance $NAME" curl -q -s "http://$IP/stopLoad" >/dev/null --retry 2 done
Open the Monitoring tab in the Google Cloud console.
After a few minutes, the Monitoring tab displays that the CPU Utilization decreased. After the stabilization period, which verifies that the load is consistently less, autoscaling decreases Capacity by decreasing the number of Instances.
Note: You might need to refresh the page to see the most recent chart.You might also notice that only 3 instances are listed under the Overview tab.
Close both windows when you have finished.
Clean upAfter you finish the tutorial, you can clean up the resources that you created so that they stop using quota and incurring charges. The following sections describe how to delete or turn off these resources.
If you created a separate project for this tutorial, delete the entire project. Otherwise, if the project has resources that you want to keep, only delete the resources created in this tutorial.
Deleting the projectappspot.com
URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.If you plan to explore multiple architectures, tutorials, or quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.
autoscaling-web-app-group
instance group.In the Google Cloud console, go to the Instance templates page.
Click the checkbox next to the autoscaling-web-app-template
.
Click delete Delete at the top of the page. In the new window, click Delete to confirm the deletion.
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Firewall rules page.
Click the checkbox next to the firewall rule named default-allow-http
.
Click delete Delete. In the new window, click Delete to confirm the deletion.
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