7.2

Scaling and Reconfiguring Deployments
You can scale provisioned deployments to adjust to changing workload demands. You use the scale in or
scale out actions for horizontal scale, and the machine recongure action for vertical scale. You govern scale
and recongure actions by using entitlements, approval policies, or by designing constraints directly into
blueprints.
Scale In or Scale Out
After you provision a deployment, you can adjust to changing workload demands by increasing or
decreasing the number of instances of virtual or cloud machines in your deployment. For example, you
deployed a three-tiered banking application with a clustered application server node, a database node, and a
load balancer node. Demand increases, and you nd that the two instances of your application server node
cannot handle all the trac. Because your blueprint supports up to ten instances of the application server,
and you are entitled to scale actions, you can scale out your application. You navigate to your provisioned
application item in vRealize Automation and select the scale out action to add another instance of your
application server node to the deployment. vRealize Automation provisions a new machine, installs the
application software component, and updates your load balancer so your application can handle the
increased demands.
If demand decreases, you can scale the deployment in. The newest machines and software components are
destroyed rst, and your networking and security components are updated so that your deployed
application isn't using any unnecessary resources.
Table 9. Support for Scalable Components
Component Type
Suppor
ted Notes
Machine components Yes Scale out provisions additional instances of your machines, and scale in
destroys machines in last in, rst out order.
Software components Yes Software components are provisioned or destroyed along with machines
that are scaled, and the update life cycle scripts are run for any software
components that depend on the scaled machine components.
Networking and security
components
Yes Networking and security components, including NSX load balancers,
security groups and security tags, are updated for the new deployment
conguration.
Scaling impacts the network and security, including load balancer, seings
for the deployment. When you scale in or scale out a deployment that
contains one or more nodes, the associated NSX networking components are
updated. For example, if there is an on-demand NAT networking
component associated with the deployment, the NAT rules are updated in
accordance with the scaling request.
When you scale in or scale out a deployment that contains an associated
load balancer, the load balancer is automatically congured to include
newly added machines or to stop load balancing machines that are targeted
for tear down.
When you scale out a deployment that contains a load balancer, secondary
IP addresses are added to the load balancer. Depending on whether you
scale in or scale out, virtual machines are added or removed from the load
balancer and saved or removed in the IaaS database.
Foundations and Concepts
32 VMware, Inc.