Best approach for fast auto scaling of VMs inside a vApp

[adamalsalman]

I am interested in auto scaling a vApp i.e. adding another VM into the vApp when certain metrics of the contained VMs reach a threshold.

I know I can use the Recompose API call to add another VM either using a vAppTemplate href or a VM href (provided the VM is powered off) both of which take a few minutes.

Is there a way to move an existing VM from one vApp to another without the time delay of cloning it? I think setting setSourceDelete( true ) still clones it?

Or is the only way to quickily autoscale to have a pool of VMs inside a vApp powered off and configured, and then power them on when needed? Which is fine for a autoscaling a single application but maybe not so efficient for creating an autoscaling infrastructure for any application.

[kirilk]

My thinking on the subject has been on slimming the disk footprint of the VMs - this is the piece that takes long to clone.

You may want to have fileserver in the vApp to contain the resources for the VMs you scale.

You may also want to have storage (DB?) on separate VM(s)

I am not sure if this can be taken to extreme to load parts of the OS from the fileserver.

ANother guess is that your strategy will depend on the problem at hand. Is it web server farm or some sort of computaiton grid that you want to scale.

[pkhatri]

Hi,

Can you please give some information how to start on VM auto scaling?

Thanks,

PK