To help you detect and address changing demand for resources, the platform's control features include monitoring alerts with notifications, action plans for automation, and autoscaling. These features may depend on the configuration of metrics and alarms, so you may like to set these up first (see VM monitoring and metrics and Manage cloud alarms). To use scaling, you should also define scaling groups for the VMs you want to scale, (see Manage Scaling Groups). The Control view manages Alerts and Action plans.
Basic control and scaling concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Alarm | An alarm activates when a metric passes a certain threshold. If you imagine a dashboard for your metrics, alarms are like red lights that light up when conditions change, for example, when there is a problem. See Manage cloud alarms and Infrastructure Alarms |
| Alert | An alert enables you to configure notifications or actions from alarms. Alerts are like a worker monitoring a group of alarms; when all the lights for the group are lit up, the alert is activated. Alerts can trigger action plans. See Control View |
| Action plans | A sequence of actions to perform on entities on the platform, such as VMs or scaling groups. An action plan is run by a trigger. |
| Trigger | A trigger is an alert or a schedule that will run the action plan, for example, during times of increased demand. |
| Scaling group | For horizontal autoscaling, create a scaling group for a VM with rules to define how the platform should scale it out. You can then include scaling operations in an action plan. |
| Vertical scaling | Vertical scaling means scaling up, adding more resources to an existing VM, for example, boosting your CPU and or RAM capacity. |
| Horizontal scaling | Horizontal scaling means scaling out, deploying more VMs when you need more resources. |
Scale out VMs
As an automatic response to changing demands for resources, the platform can scale out by cloning a master VM. And it can scale in, by deleting clone machines and undeploying the master VM.
To use scaling, first define a scaling group, see Manage Scaling Groups
To automate scaling, create an action plan with scaling actions and trigger it with a schedule or a monitoring alert.
Pages related to control of VMs
- Main VM configuration page: Configure Virtual Machines
- Configure VM Monitoring and Metrics