Cost LineLesson
Autoscale economics
Pixel's web tier is paid for at its evening size all night. Let the fleet follow the day — and learn what every safety margin puts back on the bill.
13 minMediumStation: Autoscale economicsMembers lesson
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- Page loadsUsers
- Web tier (4 × large)Web API
What you'll be able to do
- 1Predict a day's instance-hours and bill for a fleet sized for the peak and for an autoscaled one, from a traffic curve and one server's capacity.
- 2Explain how the minimum, headroom, scale-in delay and maximum each trade money against the risk of being slow or turning users away.
- 3Choose how to pay for each part of the load — a commitment for the steady base, on-demand autoscaling for the daily swing, a schedule for known peaks, spot for work that can be interrupted.
Inside the lesson
- steps
- 11
- questions
- 9
- simulations
- 4
You guess first, then run the system and see if you were right.
Step 1 · The setup
Pixel's photo API is right-sized now. Next on the bill: the web tier, which has grown to four large servers at $0.092 an hour each, about $269 a month. Four is what the evening peak needs. The rest of the day, two would do.
Watch one day. Most of it brings 160 page loads a second; the evening builds up to 420, holds, then falls away.
Steps 2–11 are for members