Question
Dynamic VM scaling during peak times
- Posted on March 21, 2024
- DigitalOceanDigitalOcean DropletsDocker
Asked by brogers
I’m setting up a Droplet to run Docker containers with UI Bakery self-hosted. I anticipate peak loads on the last business day of each month, possibly necessitating a higher-tier Droplet, while expecting moderate loads on other days. Is it possible to dynamically scale the VM up for that specific day and then scale it down the following day?
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Hey there!
As of the time being, the DigitalOcean Droplets do not offer auto-scaling out of the box. While you can manually resize your Droplet, this process isn’t automatic and involves some downtime since it requires a power-off. However, for a more seamless and automated scaling experience, I would recommend considering DigitalOcean’s Managed Kubernetes as an alternative solution:
DigitalOcean’s Managed Kubernetes service includes an autoscaling feature that can dynamically adjust the number of nodes in your cluster based on the workload. This way, during your peak load times, the cluster can automatically scale up to meet demand, and then scale down when the demand decreases, optimizing your resource usage and costs:
Here’s how you could approach this with DigitalOcean Managed Kubernetes:
If your application is already containerized with Docker, transitioning to Kubernetes would be the next logical step. Kubernetes excels at orchestrating containerized applications and can handle the scaling for you.
Within your Kubernetes cluster, you can set up Horizontal Pod Autoscaling to automatically scale your application pods based on metrics like CPU or memory usage. Additionally, you can configure the cluster autoscaler to add or remove nodes from your cluster based on the needs of your pods.
Since you anticipate peak loads on the last business day of each month, you can monitor and adjust the scaling thresholds accordingly to ensure that the scaling occurs smoothly and meets the demand.
Hope that this helps and let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
Bobby