About Elastic Scaling

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This document explains Segura’s Elastic Scaling feature, which enables the cluster to adjust its operational capacity automatically or manually according to demand. This ensures performance, resilience, and continuity in environments with load variation, 24x7 operations, and rapid growth.

Definition and objective

Elastic Scaling is the cluster’s ability to dynamically add or remove nodes based on usage events, environment growth, or high availability strategies.

Supported modes

  • Manual scaling: Administrators can expand or reduce the cluster via web interface, API, or provisioning scripts (Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation), following the “Deploying and Removing Nodes” procedures.

  • Automatic scaling: The system continuously monitors metrics such as CPU, memory, active sessions, and throughput. Based on customizable thresholds, it automatically provisions or shuts down nodes, supporting AWS, Azure, GCP, and virtualized environments, with native orchestration tool integration.

How to configure

Manual scaling

  • Monitor metrics through the dashboard.
  • Add or remove nodes via admin panel, API, or automation.
  • The cluster redistributes sessions ensuring continuity without downtime.

Automatic scaling

  • Configure integration with the cloud platform, including credentials and instance templates.
  • Set scaling parameters: thresholds, expansion/reduction policies, and node limits.
  • The system automatically provisions or shuts down nodes, with synchronized and auditable events and logs.

Limitations and considerations

  • Test auto-scaling policies in a controlled environment before production.
  • Adapt integration for multiple cloud providers in hybrid setups.
  • Misconfigured thresholds can cause “flapping”; conservative limits are recommended for critical environments.

Use cases

  • Automatic management of spikes during campaigns, seasonal events, or unexpected surges.
  • Rapid expansion or contraction for new branches, acquisitions, or temporary projects.
  • Compliance and SLA fulfillment with automated redundancy.
  • Continuous operation in global or mission-critical environments.

Best practices

  • Configure alerts to anticipate possible overloads.
  • Document and validate scaling policies with the operations team.
  • Monitor auto-scaling logs to adjust thresholds based on real environment behavior.