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AWS Documentation » Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling » User Guide » Scaling the Size of Your Auto Scaling Group » Suspending and Resuming Scaling Processes

Suspending and Resuming Scaling Processes

You can suspend and then resume one or more of the scaling processes for your Auto Scaling group. This can be useful for investigating a configuration problem or other issues with your web application and making changes to your application without invoking the scaling processes.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling can suspend processes for Auto Scaling groups that repeatedly fail to launch instances. This is known as an administrative suspension. It most commonly applies to Auto Scaling groups that have been trying to launch instances for over 24 hours but have not succeeded in launching any instances. You can resume processes suspended for administrative reasons.

Scaling Processes

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling supports the following scaling processes:

Launch

Adds a new EC2 instance to the group, increasing its capacity.

Warning

If you suspend Launch, this disrupts other processes. Refer to the sections below for more information. For example, you can't return an instance in a standby state to service if the Launch process is suspended, because the group can't scale.

Terminate

Removes an EC2 instance from the group, decreasing its capacity.

Warning

If you suspend Terminate, this disrupts other processes. Refer to the sections below for more information. For example, your scaling policy can't perform a scale-in action if the Terminate process is suspended, because the group can't terminate instances.

HealthCheck

Checks the health of the instances. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling marks an instance as unhealthy if Amazon EC2 or Elastic Load Balancing tells Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling that the instance is unhealthy. This process can override the health status of an instance that you set manually. For more information, see Health Checks for Auto Scaling Instances.

ReplaceUnhealthy

Terminates instances that are marked as unhealthy and later creates new instances to replace them. This process works with the HealthCheck process, and uses both the Terminate and Launch processes. For more information, see Health Checks for Auto Scaling Instances.

AZRebalance

Balances the number of EC2 instances in the group across the Availability Zones in the region. If you remove an Availability Zone from your Auto Scaling group or an Availability Zone otherwise becomes unhealthy or unavailable, the scaling process launches new instances in an unaffected Availability Zone before terminating the unhealthy or unavailable instances. When the unhealthy Availability Zone returns to a healthy state, the scaling process automatically redistributes the instances evenly across the Availability Zones for the group. For more information, see Rebalancing Activities.

If you suspend AZRebalance and a scale-out or scale-in event occurs, the scaling process still tries to balance the Availability Zones. For example, during scale out, it launches the instance in the Availability Zone with the fewest instances.

If you suspend the Launch process, AZRebalance neither launches new instances nor terminates existing instances. This is because AZRebalance terminates instances only after launching the replacement instances. If you suspend the Terminate process, your Auto Scaling group can grow up to ten percent larger than its maximum size, because this is allowed temporarily during rebalancing activities. If the scaling process cannot terminate instances, your Auto Scaling group could remain above its maximum size until you resume the Terminate process.

AlarmNotification

Accepts notifications from CloudWatch alarms that are associated with the group.

If you suspend AlarmNotification, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling does not automatically execute policies that would be triggered by an alarm. If you suspend Launch or Terminate, it is not able to execute scale-out or scale-in policies, respectively.

ScheduledActions

Performs scheduled actions that you create.

If you suspend Launch or Terminate, scheduled actions that involve launching or terminating instances are affected.

AddToLoadBalancer

Adds instances to the attached load balancer or target group when they are launched.

If you suspend AddToLoadBalancer, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling launches the instances but does not add them to the load balancer or target group. If you resume the AddToLoadBalancer process, it resumes adding instances to the load balancer or target group when they are launched. However, it does not add the instances that were launched while this process was suspended. You must register those instances manually.

Suspend and Resume Processes Using the Console

You can suspend and resume individual processes using the AWS Management Console.

To suspend and resume processes using the console

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. On the navigation pane, under Auto Scaling, choose Auto Scaling Groups.

  3. Select the Auto Scaling group.

  4. On the Details tab, choose Edit.

  5. For Suspended Processes, select the process to suspend.

    Suspended processes list.

    To resume a suspended process, remove it from Suspended Processes.

    Suspended processes list.

  6. Choose Save.

Suspend and Resume Processes Using the AWS CLI

You can suspend and resume individual processes or all processes.

To suspend a process

Use the suspend-processes command with the --scaling-processes option as follows: 

aws autoscaling suspend-processes --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg --scaling-processes AlarmNotification

To suspend all processes

Use the suspend-processes command as follows (omitting the --scaling-processes option): 

aws autoscaling suspend-processes --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg

To resume a suspended process

Use the resume-processes command as follows: 

aws autoscaling resume-processes --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg --scaling-processes AlarmNotification

To resume all suspended processes

Use the resume-processes command as follows (omitting the --scaling-processes option): 

aws autoscaling resume-processes --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg