Getting started with Auto Scaling

With your ELB all set up, you are now ready to go ahead and start configuring the Auto Scaling service. As discussed earlier, there are basically three parts to Auto Scaling: The Launch Configurations, the Auto Scaling Group, and, finally, the Scaling Triggers. In this section, we are going to check out some simple steps using which you will be able to create and configure your own auto scaled environment; but before that, here are a few tips and tricks worth mentioning!

First up, prepare your Machine Image or AMI. By prepare I mean make sure you have already installed and configured your web server (in my case, I'm using a simple Apache HTTP web server) to start on instance boot up as well as place your application's code or website files in the correct directories. Additionally, you can even install and configure the CloudWatch Log agent in your AMI such that it captures the essential web server logs and sends them to CloudWatch for further processing.

The...