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Tutorial: Autoscale virtual machine scale sets in Azure using Ansible

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Important

Ansible 2.7 (or later) is required to run the sample playbooks in this article.

Azure virtual machine scale sets is an Azure feature that lets you configure a group of identical, load balanced VMs. There's no additional cost to scale sets and they're built from virtual machines. You pay only for the underlying compute resources such as the VM instances, load balancers, or Managed Disk storage. With scale sets, the management and automation layers are provided to run and scale your applications. You could instead manually create and manage individual VMs. However, there are two key benefits to using scale sets. They're built into Azure and they automatically scale your virtual machines to meet application needs.

The feature of automatically adjusting the number of VM instances is called autoscale. The benefit of autoscale is that it reduces the management overhead to monitor and optimize the performance of your application. Autoscale can be configured in response to demand or on a defined schedule. Using Ansible, you can specify the autoscale rules that define the acceptable performance for a positive customer experience.

In this article, you learn how to:

  • Define an autoscale profile
  • Autoscale based on a recurring schedule
  • Autoscale based on app performance
  • Retrieve autoscale settings information
  • Disable an autoscale setting

Prerequisites

  • Azure subscription: If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Autoscale based on a schedule

To enable autoscale on a scale set, you first define an autoscale profile. This profile defines the default, minimum, and maximum scale set capacity. These limits let you control cost by not continually creating VM instances, and balance acceptable performance with a minimum number of instances that remain in a scale-in event.

Ansible allows you to scale your scale sets on a specific date or recurring schedule.

The playbook code in this section increases the number of VM instances to three at 10:00 every Monday.

Save the following playbook as vmss-auto-scale.yml:

---
- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    resource_group: myResourceGroup
    vmss_name: myScaleSet
    name: autoscalesetting
  tasks: 
    - name: Create autoscaling
      azure_rm_autoscale:
         resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"
         name: "{{ name }}"
         target:
           namespace: "Microsoft.Compute"
           types: "virtualMachineScaleSets"
           name: "{{ vmss_name }}"
         enabled: true
         profiles:
         - count: '3'
           min_count: '3'
           max_count: '3'
           name: Auto created scale condition
           recurrence_timezone: Pacific Standard Time
           recurrence_frequency: Week
           recurrence_days:
              - Monday
           recurrence_mins:
              - '0'
           recurrence_hours:
              - '10'

Run the playbook using ansible-playbook

ansible-playbook vmss-auto-scale.yml

Autoscale based on performance data

If your application demand increases, the load on the VM instances in your scale sets increases. If this increased load is consistent, rather than just a brief demand, you can configure autoscale rules to increase the number of VM instances in the scale set. When these VM instances are created and your applications are deployed, the scale set starts to distribute traffic to them through the load balancer. Ansible allows you to control what metrics to monitor, such as CPU usage, disk usage, and app-load time. You can scale in and scale out in scale sets based on performance metric thresholds, by a recurring schedule, or by a particular date.

The playbook code in this section checks the CPU workload for the previous 10 minutes at 18:00 every Monday.

Based on the CPU percentage metrics, the playbook does one of the following actions:

  • Scales out the number of VM instances to four
  • Scales in the number of VM instances to one

Save the following playbook as vmss-auto-scale-metrics.yml:

---
- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    resource_group: myResourceGroup
    vmss_name: myScaleSet
    name: autoscalesetting
  tasks:
  - name: Get facts of the resource group
    azure_rm_resourcegroup_facts:
      name: "{{ resource_group }}"
    register: rg

  - name: Get scale set resource uri
    set_fact:
      vmss_id: "{{ rg.ansible_facts.azure_resourcegroups[0].id }}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachineScaleSets/{{ vmss_name }}"
    
  - name: Create autoscaling
    azure_rm_autoscale:
      resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"
      name: "{{ name }}"
      target: "{{ vmss_id }}"
      enabled: true
      profiles:
      - count: '1'
        max_count: '1'
        min_count: '1'
        name: 'This scale condition is executed when none of the other scale condition(s) match'
        recurrence_days:
          - Monday
        recurrence_frequency: Week
        recurrence_hours:
          - 18
        recurrence_mins:
          - 0
        recurrence_timezone: Pacific Standard Time
      - count: '1'
        min_count: '1'
        max_count: '4'
        name: Auto created scale condition
        recurrence_days:
          - Monday
        recurrence_frequency: Week
        recurrence_hours:
          - 18
        recurrence_mins:
          - 0
        recurrence_timezone: Pacific Standard Time
        rules:
          - cooldown: 5
            direction: Increase
            metric_name: Percentage CPU
            metric_resource_uri: "{{ vmss_id }}"
            operator: GreaterThan
            statistic: Average
            threshold: 70
            time_aggregation: Average
            time_grain: 1
            time_window: 10
            type: ChangeCount
            value: '1'
          - cooldown: 5
            direction: Decrease
            metric_name: Percentage CPU
            metric_resource_uri: "{{ vmss_id }}"
            operator: LessThan
            statistic: Average
            threshold: 30
            time_aggregation: Average
            time_grain: 1
            time_window: 10
            type: ChangeCount
            value: '1'

Run the playbook using ansible-playbook

ansible-playbook vmss-auto-scale-metrics.yml

Get autoscale settings information

The playbook code in this section uses the azure_rm_autoscale_facts module to retrieve the details of autoscale setting.

Save the following playbook as vmss-auto-scale-get-settings.yml:

- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    resource_group: myResourceGroup
    name: autoscalesetting
  tasks: 
    - name: Retrieve autoscale settings information
      azure_rm_autoscale_facts:
        resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"
        name: "{{ name }}"
      register: autoscale_query
    
    - debug:
        var: autoscale_query.autoscales[0]

Run the playbook using ansible-playbook

ansible-playbook vmss-auto-scale-get-settings.yml

Disable autoscale settings

There are two ways to disable autoscale settings. One way is to change the enabled key from true to false. The second way is to delete the setting.

The playbook code in this section deletes the autoscale setting.

Save the following playbook as vmss-auto-scale-delete-setting.yml:

- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    resource_group: myResourceGroup
    name: autoscalesetting
  tasks: 
    - name: Delete autoscaling
      azure_rm_autoscale:
         resource_group: "{{ resource_group }}"
         name: "{{ name }}"
         state: absent

Run the playbook using ansible-playbook

vmss-auto-scale-delete-setting.yml

Next steps

Tutorial: Update custom image of Azure virtual machine scale sets using Ansible