Help Center/ Elastic Cloud Server/ User Guide/ Auto Launch Groups/ Overview
Updated on 2026-08-10 GMT+08:00
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Overview

What Is an Auto Launch Group?

An auto launch group automatically provisions ECSs across different AZs based on your launch template configurations. The group supports different ECS types and billing modes to meet capacity targets at the lowest price possible.

Application Scenarios

Auto launch groups are applicable to scenarios such as graphics rendering, stateless web services, DNA sequencing, offline analysis, function computing, batch computing, sample analysis, CI/CD, and test.

Notes

  • An auto launch group can create ECSs across AZs but cannot create ECSs across regions.
  • You can specify one launch template for each auto launch group.

Advantages

  • Spot ECSs and pay-per-use ECSs

    Spot ECSs are far less expensive than regular pay-per-use ECSs, but they can be reclaimed suddenly. Spot ECSs are a great way to save money when running stateless, fault-tolerant instances that are not sensitive to interruptions. Pay-per-use ECSs can be created and deleted at any time, and the inventory is sufficient and stable, but the price is higher than that of spot ECSs.

    An auto launch group lets you rapidly create both spot and pay-per-use ECSs to meet capacity targets at the lowest price possible.

  • ECSs from different AZs

    An auto launch group can create ECSs across AZs to improve the disaster recovery capability.

  • ECSs of different types

    An auto launch group can create ECSs of different types to meet your requirements of different scenarios.

  • Flexible allocation strategies

    You can specify your desired target capacity and how much of that must be pay-per-use ECSs.

    You can also let your auto launch group continue to create ECSs until the total target capacity is reached or delete ECSs when the target capacity is exceeded.

  • Cost effectiveness

    If you set Optimize for to Lowest price, the auto launch group will create the least expensive ECSs possible.

Billing

Auto launch groups are free, but ECSs created through them are billed normally.

For details about billing rules, see Billing Modes. For details about prices, see ECS Product Pricing Details.

Operation Instructions

Table 1 Common operations for auto launch groups

Operation

Description

Creating a Launch Template

When creating an auto launch group, you need to use a launch template as the configuration source. If the existing launch templates cannot meet your service requirements, you can create a new one. To view details about existing launch templates, see Viewing Details About a Launch Template.

Creating an Auto Launch Group

If you need to automatically create multiple ECSs in different AZs, with different billing modes, and of different instance specifications, you can use auto launch groups.

Viewing Details About an Auto Launch Group

After an auto launch group is created or modified, you can view the configuration information of the group and the list of ECSs created through the group.

Modifying an Auto Launch Group

You can modify the auto launch group configurations such as the name, target capacity, and the quantity of pay-per-use ECSs as required.

Deleting an Auto Launch Group

You can delete an auto launch group when it is no longer needed.
Parent Topic: Auto Launch Groups