Automatic scaling of online stores in the AWS cloud. How to prepare for heavy traffic?

One of the most common factors that heavily burden servers is a large increase in website traffic. This often happens during special promotional campaigns for online stores. Sales and discounts almost always attract more customers, which means more traffic.When you first start your e-commerce adventure, you will likely use a shared hosting model, which is ideal early on because you probably won’t need much space for your data. This is completely normal. However, what happens when your store becomes more popular? How do you protect yourself from running out of resources and ensure that your website remains operational at all times?

As an online store owner, you cannot afford to have service interruptions. Every minute your store doesn’t function correctly has a negative impact on your brand image and can lead to financial losses. It also negatively affects the shopping experience of your customers.

In simplified terms, there are three basic elements that affect the number of resources on the server and the interruption of service. So your store may stop working if:

1. The natural growth of your store exceeds your current server and hardware configuration.
2. There is a sudden increase in the number of users, for example, due to promotional activities.  (including the introduction of a new product to the online store or a price discount).
3. Performance issues caused by unoptimized websites and scripts.

Why should e-commerce use cloud computing?

Increasing website traffic is a goal for all online store owners. However, the type of server infrastructure used is crucial.

Shared hosting is often insufficient and can’t process a large number of requests due to limited resources. Put simply, there may not be enough physical space on the hardware for data when the number of users or transactions unexpectedly increases, resulting in your online store stopping working.

What’s the solution? Cloud computing offers scalable and highly available infrastructure, making it an ideal solution for e-commerce and websites with changing traffic intensities. In addition to resource scalability, cloud computing offers another key benefit that is important from a business perspective – you only pay for processing the data you actually use. This means lower IT maintenance bills when your store is quiet and increased transaction volume during promotional periods. With cloud computing, you can achieve high performance at realistic costs.

What is AWS AutoScaling and how does it work?

One of the Amazon Web Services cloud solutions that allow for flexible resource management is AWS AutoScaling. It is worth paying attention to them both if you are a developer or simply a store owner who is looking for a partner who can navigate this technology.

Thanks to AWS AutoScaling, you can adjust the cloud server settings to a specific situation related to increased or decreased traffic on the store’s website (e.g. during promotions, sales, holidays, etc.).

Website scaling is based on the automatic verification of website traffic. An example may be a website based on the popular CMS WordPress, where the traffic on the website is relatively high during the day, and much lower at night. Autoscaling will save you money because you only pay for resources when you actually need them, and you don’t have to set anything up manually. This solution allows you to maintain the highest level of efficiency also in terms of working time spent on website maintenance.

Tip for developers: EC2 instance and AWS AutoScaling

In the case of EC2 instances, you have the option of scaling up or down according to the previously entered settings. All parameters and the maximum number of instances are defined by the user. This configuration allows the EC2 instance to be automatically increased in case of demand, thus maintaining the level of performance.

Using autoscaling, you define the maximum, minimum, or expected capacity, which is presented in the number of EC2 instances. Defining the maximum and minimum capacity is nothing more than defining the upper and lower limits of the autoscaling group.

Predictive Scaling AWS has the ability to define predicted capacity as well.

How does it work in practice? Daily predictive scaling determines the potential capacity per hour needed for the next 48 hours. At the start of each subsequent hour, the value of the forecasted throughput is set relative to the forecasted capacity that is needed for that hour.

This solution results in:

1. When the forecasted capacity is greater than the previously indicated minimum and maximum range, the automatic scaling of the EC2 instance does not make any change in the limits.
2. When the actual capacity is greater than the forecasted capacity, EC2 autoscale instances do not scale in the autoscale group.
3. When the actual capacity is less than the forecasted capacity, the autoscaling of the EC2 instances scales the autoscale group until the requested capacity equals the forecasted capacity.

It is worth noting that the rules of predictive scaling operate in forecast only or forecast and scaling mode – there are only two modes.

What is the main difference between Amazon EC2 scaling and AWS autoscaling?

Overall, AWS autoscaling is a simplified option to scale multiple Amazon cloud services based on usage goals. Amazon EC2 autoscaling focuses solely on EC2 instances to allow developers to configure more granular scaling.

AWS AutoScaling is able to protect you in a situation where the hardware is out of order for any particular reason and your service stops working – it is possible to automatically replace it with a new healthy instance or add a new one to maintain business continuity.

Do you know what Amazon CloudWatch is? This is a tool that is used to monitor resources in the AWS cloud, as well as hosted applications. It allows you to view statistics, reports and measurements in detail.

Summary

AWS AutoScaling is a great solution when there is an irregular increase in traffic to your website. This means you don’t have to worry about the cost of new infrastructure. It is the flexibility and scalability that occurs in AWS cloud solutions that allows you to only pay for the resources used. In addition, the high availability of services such as AWS prevents your website from crashing during periods of increased traffic. This ensures you won’t lose any visitors or valuable transactions because of unwanted downtime.