Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Reviews

EC2 and Auto Scaling are solutions to deploy computer VMs. When you use Auto Scaling, you have many advantages because the platform is elastic. When your platform requires high performance, Auto Scaling can provide this and avoid replication.

For clients, I deployed many Auto Scaling solutions for different applications, and currently I'm using Auto Scaling to deploy FortiGate. FortiGate is a next-generation firewall that provides security for AWS in general.

One of the most important benefits is that a company can optimize resources because Auto Scaling deploys resources when needed. For example, for Black Friday, a company can deploy 100 servers for a couple of days. When Black Friday is over, the company can delete those servers.

This solution makes it easier to provide a good customer experience because if you deploy the right infrastructure, the website will work properly and the user experience will be good.

The documentation for this solution could be improved. For example, sometimes it's difficult to find documentation for integration with applications. 

I have been using this solution for five years.

This is a stable solution. 

Scalability is very good because you can deploy the infrastructure as you need it. 

The customer support for this solution is excellent. 

The initial setup on the first day was a little bit challenging but with time became easier. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. 

We use the solution for two instances for the frontend and backend, then I use CI/CD pipelines to integrate both, and finally, I use Jenkins.

Most of what I've deployed are CI/CD pipelines. AWS is scalable. You can always increase or adjust the resources to meet the specific requirements. I also like choosing an instance in any location, preferably the closest one. We don't have any AWS locations in South Africa, but the latency is about the same as hosting in Europe.

There should be an AWS instance in South Africa, where the latency would be even lower. It might happen soon since AWS has recently opened more data centres in Nigeria. AWS may extend its reach to South Africa, and offer hosted CLI servers there. Most of the problems with AWS are not to do with the solution itself but with configuration. It is something on design, more or less.

I have been using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling for two years. It is a cloud-based solution.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is stable. We have not experienced any downtime in the past two years.

The solution’s scalability is good. It is pretty straightforward and not in production yet.

The initial setup is straightforward. There is an interface that makes it easy to select what you need, and billing is also quite straightforward.

The front end of the instances takes a couple of minutes.

I set up the solution, but for the database in Postgres, I need to contact a call centre. I need to PRT five times to integrate the front and back end. I also need to work with the consultant.

I first automatically provisioned the required services and configurations. I created an AWS account. I then checked the gigabyte-based deals, reviewed the instance instructions, and added the appropriate insights. This was a good first-time experience, and setting up each instance and naming them was pretty straightforward.

AWS offered some credits, so we have been able to enjoy some of those benefits. The pricing was fair.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is for infographic designing.

What we have found most valuable are the purchasing of usage at the time and small storage.

I would like to see the security portal improved in the future.

I have been using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling for the past three years.

We have found the solution to be stable and have had no problems.

There is definitely scalability and we have around two hundred individuals using the solution. We are planning to increase usage in the future.

Technical support is very solid.

Positive

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We did our implementation through a vendor team.

I would rate Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling an eight on a scale of one to ten.

We use Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling in our company for regulating and scaling. We also use it on architectural projects.

The feature I found most valuable was the vertical and horizontal scaling. 

It should work for the cloud, cloud monitoring features, and DevOps processes. It should automatically enable features for downscaling and upscaling.

Apart from this, it also needs to increase its performance both speed-wise and cost-wise.

I have been using it for last year and three months. 

There are a lot of functions including tools, computing, and memory optimization. The stability and performance are similar. It also has a baseline instance in AWS. The stability depends on the performance, but in general, due to performance issues, I would rate it a four out of ten.

We are able to increase the scale on our own. We can easily increase the machines up to a limit. However, the scalability depends on the project, but based on its high scalability, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The technical support is satisfactory.

Positive

The initial setup is easy and I would rate it an eight out of ten. It is deployed on the cloud, AWS Amazon Cloud, and roughly takes 30 minutes. The deployment process needs some additional tools to be downloaded for the task. 

Compared to the performance, the price is quite high. I would rate it a ten because it is expensive. There are additional costs including bandwidth costs, data transfer costs, and load balancing costs.

I would advise others to use other solutions before using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling. I would rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. 

We use the solution to autoscale the number of servers per specific business requirements.

The solution allows setting the number of servers required depending on the usage. Later, it automatically increases or decreases the servers per the threshold level.

There should be fewer inputs required that include mandatory details for configuration. It will help someone with less technical knowledge easily set up the system.

I have been using the solution for more than seven years.

The solution is stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution has generated over 50-55% ROI for us. It is higher compared to GCP.

The solution is less expensive than Azure and GCP.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The client had a requirement to make sure there was a specific amount of memory utilization for each of the EC2 instances. When it reached its maximum or a threshold limit. The client wanted the Auto Scaling to scale up more easily to instances onto the system, with all the relevant security configurations, and everything available. That was his business problem. He didn't want to pay a lot at once, however, he didn't want to leave the system in a state that should not be in a position to be unable to handle jobs due to heavy usage or if there is a demand. The client wanted to make sure the demand was met and he wanted to make sure the service that he was obtaining from AWS was not idle.

Therefore, we provided the Auto Scaling EC2s. While we designed the solution, we identified what could be the minimum utilization based on the on-prem solution that they had. It was kind of a migration solution. The client had an on-prem environment and wanted to go into AWS in a cost-effective way. To ensure cost-effectiveness, we proposed Auto Scaling, so that if there was a heavy demand for memory, Auto Scaling could start scaling up based on the demand. And then, when the demand is reduced, it would automatically scale down and run on a specific minimum usage so that the cost will be at the minimum. 

When customers decide to go from on-prem to cloud, they have a lot of issues. For example, once they're comfortable on-prem, they don't want to spend a lot of operational expenses. Amazon services, however, are OpEx; it's operational costs only that you have to pay. Therefore, there is a lot of resistance that could come from the client. However, with Auto Scaling, since it guarantees that you will not be charged for what you are not using, the customer is very happy. That enables people to move into the cloud with relative comfort. 

The cloud migration is very easy and problem-free. It's not so complex. We didn't face any issues migrating. It was very fast. 

The initial setup itself was very straightforward. 

Technical support is responsive.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good. 

The integration capabilities are good. 

We have found the solution offers good security capabilities. 

We do have some issues sometimes when something is not configured in the correct way. However, users can avoid this type of trouble by being knowledgeable about the product.

The price could always be a bit better. 

On the ECs, the T2 microservice is the lowest tier. That particular tier could be a little better than what they're offering currently. You cannot do anything at all on that T2 micro. It's a useless tier to have introduced, as you can't do anything at all. You would be able to log in and log off and do some simple features which are already available on that operating system. Yet you cannot install anything. You cannot do anything at all. 

I've used the solution for six months or so. 

The product is very, very, very stable, even though some instances crashed due to instability here and there. Since it's Auto Scaling, there was another instance that would come up quickly. Overall, however, it was reliable. 

The solution is very scalable.

Currently, I've worked with two clients that have used the solution. 

Technical support is good. They are quite responsive. 

Positive

It was a straightforward setup, however, there were additional test scenarios we had to do, as we had to prove that services will not degrade during the time the systems are scaling up and scaling down. Those kinds of test scenarios took us little time for us to prove it meets their requirements. Apart from that, it was very easy and straightforward. 

The deployment doesn't take long, although there were some idle times. If I cut out all the idle time, we completed that project within two weeks. 

The deployment could be handled by one person. We have two staff that are not full-time handling it. We wanted some redundancy, which is why we have two, however, you only need one. 

There are no licensing costs. However, there is a monthly service charge.

We are a system integrator. I was more of a DevOps engineer on that. In the company that I'm working with, we provide the required staff augmentation to get that solution up and running.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We have EC2-based architectures. We deploy our applications on EC2. We also use Amazon RDS.

The operating system, Amazon Linux, is valuable. We like it very much. The availability of the instance is valuable. The documentation is good. We can use Systems Manager to manage nodes and Patch Manager to manage patches. The solution provides a variety of features.

The tool must provide proper guidelines to troubleshoot connectivity issues. It must also improve AMI creation.

I have been using the solution for the last four years.

The product’s stability is perfect. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten. It is made for scalability. We have 20 users. We are planning to increase usage.

The support is good.

The tool is very easy to deploy. I like the new interface. The time taken for deployment depends on our requirements. It is a cloud-based tool. Sometimes, we use the CloudFormation template. Sometimes, we do it manually. Generally, it takes around five minutes. We create CloudFormation stacks to deploy the tool depending on the type of instance we require. We need more than ten technical team members to deploy and maintain the solution.

We deployed the solution ourselves using the documentation.

The availability is valuable. It is very useful to deploy the instances automatically.

The solution is not expensive.

The product is very helpful. It has various features that we can utilize. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

We use the tool to deploy NLP modules. 

The tool helps me to process large data sets while scaling up. 

The product's technical support needs to be better. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. 

The product is easy to deploy. 

I have seen ROI with the product's use. 

The tool's pricing is good and not expensive. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. We plan to increase the tool's usage. You need to have good documentation to start using the product.