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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.5 out of 5

46 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling provides flexible scaling and integrates with AWS services like CloudWatch to optimize resources. It offers high scalability and cost-effectiveness with transparent pricing. Though efficient, it requires improvements in vertical scaling and more automation for container management. Pricing complexity and limited customization compared to GCP are drawbacks. Better integration support and documentation are needed, especially for instance family selection and technical assistance.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling provides reliable performance with excellent scalability and stability features.

It offers seamless integration capabilities, enabling connections with load balancers and other AWS services like CloudWatch for efficient resource management.

The service is highly flexible, allowing users to deploy and terminate servers based on demand, effectively optimizing resources during high-traffic events.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is praised for its ease of setup, transparent pricing, and ability to scale up and down based on traffic needs, reducing operational overhead.

The automated orchestration using Application Load Balancers and scaling policies ensures efficient workload distribution and maintenance of CPU utilization levels.

CONS

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling's licensing and usage costs are considered expensive and complex, with users often paying more than needed for certain instance sizes.

Users report issues with understanding why instances terminate without sufficient explanation or troubleshooting information.

There is a lack of automation and integration features, particularly in comparison to other cloud providers, limiting the flexibility and efficiency of scaling operations.

The documentation, especially for integration and configuration, is reportedly difficult to navigate, complicating troubleshooting and setup processes.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling lacks fine-grained customization options for instance selection, constraining users to predefined instance families.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Pros review quotes

Shaamil Ashraff

Architect - Database Administration at Mitra Innovation

Jun 3, 2022

The integration capabilities are good.

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Subhdip Rakshit

Sr. DevOps & Cloud Manager at Applied Solar Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.

Apr 18, 2024

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling operates at a different level, working in parallel to efficiently manage workload distribution. Primarily, it focuses on orchestration rather than directly managing EC2 instances for deployment and configuration. It uses automated processes to deploy and manage ports, leveraging Application Load Balancers to effectively handle data communication and management.

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Technical Lead at Cellulant Kenya

Apr 16, 2024

Applications deployed on EC2 instances can easily integrate with other AWS services. For example, you can connect your EC2 Auto Scaling group to a tool like CloudWatch for health checks and anomaly detection.

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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

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reviewer2007342

DevOps Lead at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 10, 2023

The auto-scaling feature is particularly useful. Additionally, CloudWatch and CloudTrail are also important features for us.

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Lead Data Engineer at Seven Lakes Enterprises, Inc.

Aug 15, 2023

The product’s most valuable feature is the seamless resizing of web connection.

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Cloud manager at Baxter International Inc.

Aug 11, 2023

The initial setup of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is easy...Since we are an enterprise-sized company and a client of Amazon, the response from the technical support team was immediate.

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AN

Alexey Nadenenko

Solution Architect at EPAM Systems

Apr 17, 2024

The tool is a simple solution. You can deploy a new virtual machine in minutes. You can select options like memory and core number and connect storage. It's great because it's simple and fast. You can build a virtual machine in minutes, do your experiments, and then uninstall it without paying for it when it's not in use.

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TorstenGöldner

Software & Consulting at Timetoact Group

Nov 11, 2024

The most valuable features include the availability of various services like compute, memory, and database services in the AWS landscape.

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VP

Venkateswarlu Paturu

Service Delivery Manager / Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Mar 2, 2021

The most valuable features are that it is stable, flexible, and reliable.

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Muhammad Awais Zahid

DevOps Engineer at Al Nafi

Oct 25, 2024

It uses features like target tracking scaling policy, which automatically maintains CPU utilization levels.

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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Cons review quotes

Shaamil Ashraff

Architect - Database Administration at Mitra Innovation

Jun 3, 2022

The price could always be a bit better.

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Subhdip Rakshit

Sr. DevOps & Cloud Manager at Applied Solar Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.

Apr 18, 2024

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling offers various benefits but lacks certain features for fine-grained customization compared to other cloud providers like GCP. Users are constrained by predefined instance families in EC2 when selecting instance types for scaling. Unlike GCP, where users can independently scale resources such as memory or CPU, EC2 doesn't offer this flexibility.

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Technical Lead at Cellulant Kenya

Apr 16, 2024

There is room for improvement. You might end up paying a high price if you're not careful and you provision a server that's underutilized.

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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Free Report: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2007342

DevOps Lead at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 10, 2023

As we are transitioning to managing containerized applications, the solution could improve by adding more managed container services as a feature in the solution.

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Lead Data Engineer at Seven Lakes Enterprises, Inc.

Aug 15, 2023

The support to manage the processes could be better.

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Cloud manager at Baxter International Inc.

Aug 11, 2023

The spinning up in the solution can be much faster...The product should have a faster scalability option.

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AN

Alexey Nadenenko

Solution Architect at EPAM Systems

Apr 17, 2024

The solution is not cheap.

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TorstenGöldner

Software & Consulting at Timetoact Group

Nov 11, 2024

There is a need for improvement in understanding the pricing structure, as it is complex and depends on several factors such as the location of data centers.

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VP

Venkateswarlu Paturu

Service Delivery Manager / Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Mar 2, 2021

The technical support needs to be improved.

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Muhammad Awais Zahid

DevOps Engineer at Al Nafi

Oct 25, 2024

For future improvements, I suggest focusing on cost reduction.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 43)

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