Implement Auto Scaling with Docker and AWS

Abstract: Cloud computing has become an essential technology for modern software development and deployment. One of the key advantages of cloud computing is the ability to scale resources according to application demand. In traditional systems, servers are configured with fixed resources, which can cause performance problems when user traffic increases and resource wastage when traffic decreases. Auto scaling is a cloud computing feature that helps solve this issue by automatically increasing or decreasing computing resources based on workload.
This project focuses on implementing an auto scaling infrastructure using Docker containers and AWS EC2 instances. Docker is a containerization platform that allows developers to package applications and their dependencies into lightweight containers. These containers ensure that the application runs consistently across different environments. AWS EC2 provides virtual machines in the cloud that can host these containers.
In the proposed architecture, an Elastic Load Balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances. Each instance runs a Docker container that hosts the application. AWS Auto Scaling monitors system metrics such as CPU utilization and automatically launches additional instances when the load increases. Similarly, when the load decreases, extra instances are terminated to optimize resource usage and reduce cost.
This system demonstrates how containerization and cloud auto scaling technologies can work together to create scalable, reliable, and cost‑efficient cloud applications.