Create an image acceleration task to enhance auto-scaling efficiency for a scaling group - Auto Scaling

Some images may have performance issues during auto scaling, which slows down Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance startup and reduces scaling group efficiency. You can use the image acceleration feature to optimize image performance and speed up instance startup, enhancing the scaling group's auto-scaling capability.

Feature introduction

The image acceleration feature helps you detect performance issues in images used for scaling configurations or launch templates. If an issue is found in an image, the system optimizes the image to create an accelerated version. You can then replace the original image with the accelerated one, which improves instance startup speed and your scaling group efficiency.

Important

For image acceleration tasks, you must create multiple intermediate ECS instances to build images. These instances are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go.

Prerequisites

If you are using a Resource Access Management (RAM) user, make sure that the RAM user has both Auto Scaling permissions and the necessary image-building permissions.

This sample policy contains full Auto Scaling permissions (ess:*). Modify it according to your business needs.

{
  "Version": "1",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "ess:*",
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ecs:CreateImagePipeline",
        "ecs:StartImagePipelineExecution",
        "ecs:DescribeImagePipelineExecutions"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Procedure

Step 1: Create an image acceleration task

Enter the scaling group detail page.
1. Log on to the Auto Scaling console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Scaling Groups.
3. In the top navigation bar, select the region where Auto Scaling is activated.
4. On the Scaling Groups page, find the scaling group for which you want to create an image acceleration task and click Details in the Actions column. Choose Scaling Configurations > Image Acceleration Tasks to enter the Image Acceleration Tasks tab.
Enable image acceleration.
Click Accelerate Image. In the dialog box that appears, specify the scaling configuration or launch the template whose image you want to accelerate. Click OK and wait for the task to complete. Check the task status in the Status column.
Important
For image acceleration tasks, multiple pay-as-you-go ECS instances are created as intermediates for image building. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go.

Step 2: Verify the new image

Once the image acceleration task finishes, a new custom image is created. Use this image to launch an instance and verify it works correctly before applying it to your scaling group, which avoids errors from faulty images. To learn how to create an instance from an image, see Create an instance from custom image or shared image.

Step 3: Apply the new image

Once you confirm the image is correct, click Update in the Actions column of the image acceleration task to apply it to the scaling configuration or launch template.

What to do next

To have your scaling group instances use the new image, enable the instance refresh feature. For more information, see Instance refresh.