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Tutorial: Automatically scale a virtual machine scale set with an Azure template

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Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Windows VMs ✔️ Flexible scale sets ✔️ Uniform scale sets

When you create a scale set, you define the number of VM instances that you wish to run. As your application demand changes, you can automatically increase or decrease the number of VM instances. The ability to autoscale lets you keep up with customer demand or respond to application performance changes throughout the lifecycle of your app. In this tutorial you learn how to:

  • Use autoscale with a scale set
  • Create and use autoscale rules
  • Stress-test VM instances and trigger autoscale rules
  • Autoscale back in as demand is reduced

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create an Azure free account before you begin.

Prerequisites

  • This article requires version 2.0.29 or later of the Azure CLI. If using Azure Cloud Shell, the latest version is already installed.

Define an autoscale profile

You define an autoscale profile in an Azure template with the Microsoft.insights/autoscalesettings resource provider. A profile details the capacity of the scale set, and any associated rules. The following example defines a profile named Autoscale by percentage based on CPU usage and sets the default, and minimum, capacity of 2 VM instances, and a maximum of 10:

{
"type": "Microsoft.insights/autoscalesettings",
"name": "Autoscale",
"apiVersion": "2015-04-01",
"location": "[variables('location')]",
"scale": null,
"properties": {
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "Autoscale by percentage based on CPU usage",
      "capacity": {
        "minimum": "2",
        "maximum": "10",
        "default": "2"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Define a rule to autoscale out

If your application demand increases, the load on the VM instances in your scale set increases. If this increased load is consistent, rather than just a brief demand, you can configure autoscale rules to increase the number of VM instances in the scale set. When these VM instances are created and your applications are deployed, the scale set starts to distribute traffic to them through the load balancer. You control what metrics to monitor, such as CPU or disk, how long the application load must meet a given threshold, and how many VM instances to add to the scale set.

In the following example, a rule is defined that increases the number of VM instances in a scale set when the average CPU load is greater than 70% over a 5-minute period. When the rule triggers, the number of VM instances is increased by three.

The following parameters are used for this rule:

Parameter Explanation Value
metricName The performance metric to monitor and apply scale set actions on. Percentage CPU
timeGrain How often the metrics are collected for analysis. 1 minute
timeAggregation Defines how the collected metrics should be aggregated for analysis. Average
timeWindow The amount of time monitored before the metric and threshold values are compared. 5 minutes
operator Operator used to compare the metric data against the threshold. Greater Than
threshold The value that causes the autoscale rule to trigger an action. 70%
direction Defines if the scale set should scale in or out when the rule applies. Increase
type Indicates that the number of VM instances should be changed by a specific value. Change Count
value How many VM instances should be scaled in or out when the rule applies. 3
cooldown The amount of time to wait before the rule is applied again so that the autoscale actions have time to take effect. 5 minutes

The following rule would be added into the profile section of the Microsoft.insights/autoscalesettings resource provider from the previous section:

"rules": [
  {
    "metricTrigger": {
      "metricName": "Percentage CPU",
      "metricNamespace": "",
      "metricResourceUri": "[concat('/subscriptions/',subscription().subscriptionId, '/resourceGroups/',  resourceGroup().name, '/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets/', variables('vmssName'))]",
      "metricResourceLocation": "[variables('location')]",
      "timeGrain": "PT1M",
      "statistic": "Average",
      "timeWindow": "PT5M",
      "timeAggregation": "Average",
      "operator": "GreaterThan",
      "threshold": 70
    },
    "scaleAction": {
      "direction": "Increase",
      "type": "ChangeCount",
      "value": "3",
      "cooldown": "PT5M"
    }
  }
]

Define a rule to autoscale in

On an evening or weekend, your application demand may decrease. If this decreased load is consistent over a period of time, you can configure autoscale rules to decrease the number of VM instances in the scale set. This scale-in action reduces the cost to run your scale set as you only run the number of instances required to meet the current demand.

The following example defines a rule to scale in the number of VM instances by one when the average CPU load then drops below 30% over a 5-minute period. This rule would be added to the autoscale profile after the previous rule to scale out:

{
  "metricTrigger": {
    "metricName": "Percentage CPU",
    "metricNamespace": "",
    "metricResourceUri": "[concat('/subscriptions/',subscription().subscriptionId, '/resourceGroups/',  resourceGroup().name, '/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets/', variables('vmssName'))]",
    "metricResourceLocation": "[variables('location')]",
    "timeGrain": "PT1M",
    "statistic": "Average",
    "timeWindow": "PT5M",
    "timeAggregation": "Average",
    "operator": "LessThan",
    "threshold": 30
  },
  "scaleAction": {
    "direction": "Decrease",
    "type": "ChangeCount",
    "value": "1",
    "cooldown": "PT5M"
  }
}

Create an autoscaling scale set

Let's use a sample template to create a scale set and apply autoscale rules. You can review the complete template, or see the Microsoft.insights/autoscalesettings resource provider section of the template.

First, create a resource group with az group create. The following example creates a resource group named myResourceGroup in the eastus location:

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus

Now create a virtual machine scale set with az deployment group create. When prompted, provide your own username, such as azureuser, and password that is used as the credentials for each VM instance:

az deployment group create \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --template-uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/compute-automation-configurations/master/scale_sets/autoscale.json

It takes a few minutes to create and configure all the scale set resources and VMs.

Generate CPU load on scale set

To test the autoscale rules, generate some CPU load on the VM instances in the scale set. This simulated CPU load causes the autoscale rules to scale out and increase the number of VM instances. As the simulated CPU load is then decreased, the autoscale rules scale in and reduce the number of VM instances.

First, list the address and ports to connect to VM instances in a scale set with az vmss list-instance-connection-info:

az vmss list-instance-connection-info \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name myScaleSet

The following example output shows the instance name, public IP address of the load balancer, and port number that the Network Address Translation (NAT) rules forward traffic to:

{
  "instance 1": "13.92.224.66:50001",
  "instance 3": "13.92.224.66:50003"
}

SSH to your first VM instance. Specify your own public IP address and port number with the -p parameter, as shown from the preceding command:

ssh azureuser@13.92.224.66 -p 50001

Once logged in, install the stress utility. Start 10 stress workers that generate CPU load. These workers run for 420 seconds, which is enough to cause the autoscale rules to implement the desired action.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install stress
sudo stress --cpu 10 --timeout 420 &

When stress shows output similar to stress: info: [2688] dispatching hogs: 10 cpu, 0 io, 0 vm, 0 hdd, press the Enter key to return to the prompt.

To confirm that stress generates CPU load, examine the active system load with the top utility:

top

Exit top, then close your connection to the VM instance. stress continues to run on the VM instance.

Ctrl-c
exit

Connect to second VM instance with the port number listed from the previous az vmss list-instance-connection-info:

ssh azureuser@13.92.224.66 -p 50003

Install and run stress, then start ten workers on this second VM instance.

sudo apt-get -y install stress
sudo stress --cpu 10 --timeout 420 &

Again, when stress shows output similar to stress: info: [2713] dispatching hogs: 10 cpu, 0 io, 0 vm, 0 hdd, press the Enter key to return to the prompt.

Close your connection to the second VM instance. stress continues to run on the VM instance.

exit

Monitor the active autoscale rules

To monitor the number of VM instances in your scale set, use watch. It takes 5 minutes for the autoscale rules to begin the scale out process in response to the CPU load generated by stress on each of the VM instances:

watch az vmss list-instances \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name myScaleSet \
  --output table

Once the CPU threshold has been met, the autoscale rules increase the number of VM instances in the scale set. The following output shows three VMs created as the scale set autoscales out:

Every 2.0s: az vmss list-instances --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myScaleSet --output table

  InstanceId  LatestModelApplied    Location    Name          ProvisioningState    ResourceGroup    VmId
------------  --------------------  ----------  ------------  -------------------  ---------------  ------------------------------------
           1  True                  eastus      myScaleSet_1  Succeeded            MYRESOURCEGROUP  4f92f350-2b68-464f-8a01-e5e590557955
           2  True                  eastus      myScaleSet_2  Succeeded            MYRESOURCEGROUP  d734cd3d-fb38-4302-817c-cfe35655d48e
           4  True                  eastus      myScaleSet_4  Creating             MYRESOURCEGROUP  061b4c90-0d73-49fc-a066-19eab0b3d95c
           5  True                  eastus      myScaleSet_5  Creating             MYRESOURCEGROUP  4beff8b9-4e65-40cb-9652-43899309da27
           6  True                  eastus      myScaleSet_6  Creating             MYRESOURCEGROUP  9e4133dd-2c57-490e-ae45-90513ce3b336

Once stress stops on the initial VM instances, the average CPU load returns to normal. After another 5 minutes, the autoscale rules then scale in the number of VM instances. Scale in actions remove VM instances with the highest IDs first. When a scale set uses Availability Sets or Availability Zones, scale in actions are evenly distributed across those VM instances. The following example output shows one VM instance deleted as the scale set autoscales in:

           6  True                  eastus      myScaleSet_6  Deleting             MYRESOURCEGROUP  9e4133dd-2c57-490e-ae45-90513ce3b336

Exit watch with Ctrl-c. The scale set continues to scale in every 5 minutes and remove one VM instance until the minimum instance count of two is reached.

Clean up resources

To remove your scale set and additional resources, delete the resource group and all its resources with az group delete:

az group delete --name myResourceGroup --yes --no-wait

Next steps

In this tutorial, you learned how to automatically scale in or out a scale set with the Azure CLI:

  • Use autoscale with a scale set
  • Create and use autoscale rules
  • Stress-test VM instances and trigger autoscale rules
  • Autoscale back in as demand is reduced