Day 49 – Auto Scaling Groups in AWS with the vprofile Stack

Today I worked on Auto Scaling Groups (ASG) in AWS by implementing them for the vProfile project — a real-world Java web app architecture that simulates a production stack.

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🔧 Tech Stack Overview (vProfile Project)

Here’s the complete application infrastructure I worked with:

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🌩️ What is an Auto Scaling Group?

An Auto Scaling Group in AWS:

• Ensures EC2 instances maintain desired capacity

• Automatically scales out/in based on CloudWatch metrics (CPU, network, etc.)

• Works in tandem with Launch Templates or Launch Configurations

• Integrates with Load Balancers (like ALB/NLB)

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🏗️ Steps I Followed for Auto Scaling the vProfile App:

1. Created a Launch Template

   • Configured EC2 with user data to install dependencies like Tomcat, Java, app war file, etc.

2. Configured an Application Load Balancer

   • Listener: Port 80 → Target Group (EC2 instances running vProfile)

3. Defined Auto Scaling Group

   • Minimum instances: 2

   • Desired capacity: 2

   • Maximum: 5

   • Scaling policy: Target CPU > 70%

4. Connected ASG to ALB

   • Ensures traffic routing to healthy instances only

5. Tested Scaling

   • Simulated high CPU to trigger scale out

   • Saw new EC2 instances come up automatically 🎉

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💡 Why Auto Scaling Matters

• Cost-efficient: Scale-in during low traffic hours

• Highly Available: Replaces unhealthy EC2 instances

• Elastic: Adapts dynamically to load

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🧠 Key Learning:

Configuring Auto Scaling taught me how critical automation and elasticity are for cloud-native apps. When tied with monitoring (CloudWatch) and ALBs, ASGs become a powerful force to ensure uptime and scalability.

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📌 Up Next:

I’ll be exploring s3 and how to host a wordpress site on s3.