You can auto scale applications depending on the current CPU and memory use.

For information about the configuration of the auto scale solution, see Auto Scale Groups in the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Guide.

Depending on predefined criteria for the CPU and memory use, VMware Cloud Director can automatically scale up or down the number of VMs in a selected scale group. To balance the load of the servers that you configure to run the same application, you can use VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi Networks).

System administrator and organization administrator roles have full control over the VMs in the scale groups. The other global tenant roles can view the VMs and access the VM Web Console but cannot delete, edit, perform power operations, and so on.

If you delete a scale group, VMware Cloud Director does not delete any of the existing VMs in the scale group.

Create a Scale Group in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

Your service provider can grant you rights to create scale groups. The amount of VMs in a scale group changes automatically depending on the conditions that you define.

You can also access scale groups from a selected organization virtual data center (VDC).

Procedure

  1. From the top navigation bar, select Applications and select the Scale Groups tab.
  2. Click New Scale Group.
  3. Select an organization VDC in which to create the scale group.
  4. Enter a name and, optionally, a description of the new scale group.
  5. Select the minimum and maximum number of VMs to which you want the group to scale to, and click Next.
  6. Select a VM template for the VMs in the scale group and a storage policy, and click Next.
  7. Select a network for the scale group.
    • If your VDC is backed by NSX, select a load balancer.
    • If you want to manage the load balancer on your own or if there is no need for a load balancer, select I have a fully set-up network.
  8. Click Create Group and Add Rules.

Results

VMware Cloud Director starts the initial expansion of the scale group to reach the minimum number of VMs.

What to do next

  • Add an Auto Scaling Rule in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal
  • From the details view of a scale group, when you select Monitor, you can see all tasks related to this scale group. For example, you can see the time of creation of the scale group, all growing or shrinking tasks for the group, the rules that initiated the tasks, and so on.
  • Delete a scale group. When you delete a scale group, VMware Cloud Director does not delete any of the existing VMs in the scale group. If you want to reduce the number of VMs, you must manually delete them.

Add an Auto Scaling Rule in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

Your service provider can grant you rights to create and manage scale groups. You can add rules that trigger the growing or shrinking of scale groups.

Prerequisites

Create a Scale Group in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

Procedure

  1. From the top navigation bar, select Applications and select the Scale Groups tab.
  2. Select a scale group and select Rules.
  3. Click Add Rule.
  4. Enter a name for the rule.
  5. Select whether the scale group must expand or shrink when the rule takes effect.
  6. Select the number of VMs by which you want the group to expand or shrink when the rule takes effect.
  7. Enter a cooldown period in minutes after each auto scale in the group.
    The conditions cannot trigger another scaling until the cooldown period expires. The cooldown period resets when any of the rules of the scale group takes effect.
  8. Add a condition that triggers the rule.
    The duration period is the time for which the condition must be valid to trigger the rule. To trigger the rule, all conditions must be met.
  9. (Optional) To add another condition, click Add Condition.
  10. Click Add.