Horizontal Autoscaling

What is Horizontal Autoscaling?

In eCommerce, scaling your server to accommodate increased traffic and demand is a challenge that every developer faces during peak seasons like Black Friday, major sales, or the holiday season. This often needs to be planned in advance to enhance eCommerce performance and growth, as poorly planned scaling can lead to performance issues when server resources fall short.

There are primarily two methods for server scaling: vertical and horizontal autoscaling. Vertical scaling involves enhancing the capabilities of an existing machine, such as increasing its CPU power, memory, or storage. However, in this article, we will focus on horizontal autoscaling, as we aim to explore the ultimate zero-downtime autoscaling experience for online stores.

So, what is horizontal autoscaling?

Horizontal scaling, often called “scaling out,” according to Kumari it was stated that it involves adding more machines to your existing pool of resources. This strategy is akin to adding more lanes to a highway to accommodate increased traffic. Horizontal scaling comes with limitations as it is more complex in terms of the system; for example, it must be designed in a cluster setup to handle the load effectively, and maintaining it is difficult.

Horizontal autoscaling might seem challenging for developers, but at Hypernode, we prioritise user-friendliness to make it your most reliable ally. In this guide, we’ll walk you through its key features, explain why Hypernode’s horizontal autoscaling actually works and stands out, and show you how to enable it seamlessly for your application.

“All our extended knowledge in automation, scaling, and eCommerce applications comes together in our Horizontal Autoscaling solution.”

— Timon de Groot , Hypernode’s Tech Team Lead

Key Features of Horizontal Autoscaling

Below are some highlights that set Hypernode Horizontal Autoscaling apart:

1. Zero Downtime
   • No reconfiguration or IP changes. When scaling up or down, your store remains live and fully accessible.
2. Real-Time Resource Provisioning
   • Autoscaling is triggered based on CPU load and a user-defined threshold, so resources are only added when truly necessary.
3. Optimized Cost Management
   • During quieter periods, autoscaling retracts resources automatically, ensuring you only pay for what you use.
4. Seamless Integration
   • Plug-and-play approach: the extra nodes spin up swiftly, attach to your main Hypernode, and take on PHP-fpm workloads without forcing changes on your application’s side.
5. Intelligent Cooldowns
   • Allows enough time to observe newly allocated resources before adding more or removing them. Minimizes over-scaling and ensures performance is balanced.

Why Hypernode Horizontal Autoscaling Works

Hypernode’s mission has always been to give eCommerce brands a robust yet flexible hosting environment. When we noticed our customers facing  strain during unpredictable traffic spikes, we knew it was time for an innovation—an innovation that brings autoscaling power while keeping zero downtime and minimum complexity at the forefront and how do we do that exactly?

Strict Eligibility Check: We’re committed to delivering 100% reliable service and ensure your application meets essential requirements (Debian Bookworm, Varnish, Redis cache & sessions) before activation. If anything’s missing, we guide you through the necessary steps.

One-Time Setup: Once your application meets the Eligibility Criteria, you only need to configure your thresholds once. Then, sit back and let the system automatically handle traffic surges—no repetitive reconfiguration required.

Zero Downtime: During traffic surges, additional resources are activated behind the scenes, ensuring your store remains fully operational with zero downtime. This seamless, uninterrupted scaling means you never miss a sale or risk a poor customer experience.

The Eligibility Test: Making Sure Your Store Is Ready Works

We introduced an eligibility test to ensure that customers who enable Horizontal Autoscaling get the smoothest experience possible. By checking a few critical items, we ensure that your store will flawlessly expand its capacity when traffic spikes.

Key Criteria

• Operating System: Must be running on Debian Bookworm.
• Varnish: Must be enabled and properly configured (including the correct purge ACLs).
• Redis: Redis cache & sessions must be enabled, using a persistent Redis instance.
• Remote Storage: Must be configured with AWS S3 for Object Storage (or a supported driver) so assets can be shared across multiple nodes.
• MySQL Version: Must be 5.7 or higher
• Magento Version: Magento 2.4.7 or higher.
• Supervisor & Podman: Must be disabled to allow multiple Hypernodes to function seamlessly.

By ticking these boxes, you ensure your application is best prepared for autoscaling, to prevent risk of data inconsistency or service disruption

How to Enable Horizontal Autoscaling

We’ve designed the process to be straightforward and user-friendly. In just a few clicks, you can activate Horizontal Autoscaling inside our Hypernode Control Panel (HNCP):

1. Access Hypernode Control Panel 
   • Log in and navigate to the Horizontal Autoscaling section.
2. Check Requirements
   • Make sure your Hypernode meets the criteria (Debian Bookworm, Varnish enabled, Redis configured, remote storage, etc.) with our dedicated eligibility checker.
3. Configure Thresholds
   • • Set your CPU Load Threshold (e.g., 70%) and your Minimum Duration (e.g., 15 minutes) to determine when and how frequently scaling occurs.
4. Enable Autoscaling
   • Toggle the Horizontal Autoscaling option on. Once enabled, you’ll see the real-time metrics and auto-provisioning in action whenever your load exceeds the specified threshold.

   

 To see how to enable Horizontal Autoscaling click here.

Why Object Storage is Essential for Hypernode Horizontal Autoscaling?

Object storage is a critical component for enabling effective Horizontal Autoscaling in Hypernode. In Horizontal Autoscaling, multiple Hypernodes are provisioned to handle increased traffic, but traditional file systems cannot share data seamlessly across these nodes. Object storage solves this by providing a centralized, scalable, and resilient solution for storing application assets, session data, and other persistent files.

By using object storage, merchants can ensure that all Hypernodes in their cluster have instant access to the same files without redundancy or synchronization issues. This eliminates bottlenecks, reduces downtime, and allows for true horizontal scalability. Furthermore, object storage enables better performance for asset delivery and allows applications to adhere to best practices for scaling modern eCommerce platforms.

Hypernode’s Solution for Object Storage

To support horizontal autoscaling, Hypernode is developing an end-to-end object storage solution integrated directly into the Hypernode platform. This solution will allow customers to:

1. Create Object Storage Work spaces: Easily configure and manage centralized storage through the Hypernode Control Panel.
2. Seamlessly Link to Hypernodes: Attach work spaces to Hypernodes, ensuring shared access to critical assets.
3. Flexible Plans: Choose from storage plans tailored to meet varying needs, with options for auto-upgrades as usage increases.
4. Simplified Integration: Use tools like awscli to synchronize data with minimal configuration, supported by detailed documentation.

A solution tailored to be your ultimate backup in your peak season or even unexpected traffic. This innovative feature automatically adjusts server resources to match traffic demand. During peak surges, it scales up to provide sufficient resources, and during quieter periods, it scales back to optimise costs. The result? Complete peace of mind and significant savings!  Seamless and efficient, it keeps your online store running smoothly, no matter the circumstances.

Hypernode developed Horizontal Autoscaling so we can ensure your online stores will always perform at its best…

Are you ready to be part of this revolutionary solution?

If you have question please contact us here → support@hypernode.com