The Problem with Auto Scaling in AWS
Auto scaling is one of AWS’s most powerful features, but many teams struggle with it in practice. Common issues include:
- Over-provisioning resources — keeping too many instances running even during off-peak hours.
- Under-provisioning during spikes — failing to allocate enough capacity during traffic surges.
- Reactive scaling delays — scaling kicks in too late, leaving users with performance issues.
- High costs — without proper scheduling, teams end up paying for unused compute resources.
For high growth tech teams, these challenges make it clear that time-based auto scaling is essential. Instead of relying only on reactive scaling, scheduled scaling ensures that infrastructure automatically adjusts based on predictable usage patterns.
How Time-Based Auto Scaling Fixes These Problems
Unlike reactive scaling, time-based scheduling allows teams to plan ahead. Using AWS Lambda, EventBridge, ArgoCD, and EKS, resources can be scaled up before peak traffic and scaled down when usage is low.
- AWS Lambda executes the scaling logic and triggers updates.
- EventBridge schedules these events based on known traffic patterns (e.g., scale up at 9 AM, scale down at midnight).
- ArgoCD applies changes across Kubernetes clusters, ensuring consistency.
- EKS executes the scaling at the pod level for smooth workload adjustments.
This approach makes scaling proactive rather than reactive, which is key to cost efficiency and performance.
Outcomes You Can Expect
By implementing time-based auto scaling in AWS, your team can expect to achieve:
- Automated scaling — resources adjust automatically with no manual intervention.
- Improved performance — services remain responsive during peak traffic.
- Cost savings — unnecessary infrastructure is eliminated during low traffic hours.
- Clear visibility — notifications via Jenkins and Slack provide updates on every scaling event.
Why It Matters for FinOps
Scaling is not just a performance challenge but a cost challenge too. Without optimization, cloud bills rise uncontrollably. With schedule-based cloud resource optimization, teams avoid waste and align infrastructure costs with actual usage.
This is where FinOps Services come into play. FinOps ensures cloud cost management is built into scaling strategies, helping organizations balance performance and expenses effectively.
IAMOPS Insight
At IAMOPS, we help high growth companies design AWS scaling strategies that combine performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. Our engineers integrate AWS EC2 auto scaling strategies with Kubernetes workloads to ensure infrastructure responds predictably to demand.
With our expertise in automation tools like Lambda, EventBridge, and ArgoCD, we build scaling solutions that eliminate waste and keep costs under control.
