Auto Scaling

Feature Introduction

More and more enterprises use technologies such as Spark and Hive to analyze data. Processing a large amount of data consumes huge resources and costs much. Typically, enterprises regularly analyze data in a fixed period of time every day rather than all day long. To meet enterprises' requirements, MRS provides the auto scaling function to apply for extra resources during peak hours and release resources during off-peak hours. This enables users to use resources on demand and focus on core business at lower costs.

In big data applications, especially in periodic data analysis and processing scenarios, cluster computing resources need to be dynamically adjusted based on service data changes to meet service requirements. The auto scaling function of MRS enables clusters to be elastically scaled out or in based on cluster loads. In addition, if the data volume changes regularly and you want to scale out or in a cluster before the data volume changes, you can use the MRS resource plan feature.

MRS supports two types of auto scaling policies: auto scaling rules and resource plans

• Auto scaling rules: You can increase or decrease Task nodes based on real-time cluster loads. Auto scaling will be triggered when the data volume changes but there may be some delay.
• Resource plans: If the data volume changes periodically, you can create resource plans to resize the cluster before the data volume changes, thereby avoiding a delay in increasing or decreasing resources.

Both auto scaling rules and resource plans can trigger auto scaling. You can configure both of them or configure one of them. Configuring both resource plans and auto scaling rules improves the cluster node scalability to cope with occasionally unexpected data volume peaks.

In some service scenarios, resources need to be reallocated or service logic needs to be modified after cluster scale-out or scale-in. If you manually scale out or scale in a cluster, you can log in to cluster nodes to reallocate resources or modify service logic. If you use auto scaling, MRS enables you to customize automation scripts for resource reallocation and service logic modification. Automation scripts can be executed before and after auto scaling and automatically adapt to service load changes, all of which eliminates manual operations. In addition, automation scripts can be fully customized and executed at various moments, which can meet your personalized requirements and improve auto scaling flexibility.

Customer Benefits

MRS auto scaling provides the following benefits:

• Reducing costs

  Enterprises do not analyze data all the time but perform a batch data analysis in a specified period of time, for example, 03:00 a.m. The batch analysis may take only two hours.

  The auto scaling function enables enterprises to add nodes for batch analysis and automatically releases the nodes after completion of the analysis, minimizing costs.

• Meeting instant query requirements

  Enterprises usually encounter instant analysis tasks, for example, data reports for supporting enterprise decision-making. As a result, resource consumption increases sharply in a short period of time. With the auto scaling function, compute nodes can be added for emergent big data analysis, avoiding a service breakdown due to insufficient compute resources. In this way, you do not need to create extra resources. After the emergency ends, MRS automatically releases the nodes.

• Focusing on core business

  It is difficult for developers to determine resource consumption on the big data secondary development platform because of complex query analysis conditions (such as global sorting, filtering, and merging) and data complexity, for example, uncertainty of incremental data. As a result, estimating the computing volume is difficult. MRS's auto scaling function enable developers to focus on service development without the need for resource estimation.