Create a mixed instances group using attribute-based instance type selection - Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
How attribute-based instance type selection worksPrice protectionPrerequisitesCreate a mixed instances group with attribute-based instance type selection (console)Create a mixed instances group with attribute-based instance type selection (Amazon CLI)Example configurationPreview your instance typesRelated resources
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Create a mixed instances group using attribute-based instance type selection

Instead of manually choosing instance types for your mixed instances group, you can specify a set of instance attributes that describe your compute requirements. As Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling launches instances, any instance types used by the Auto Scaling group must match your required instance attributes. This is known as attribute-based instance type selection.

This approach is ideal for workloads and frameworks that can be flexible about which instance types they use, such as containers, big data, and CI/CD.

The following are benefits of attribute-based instance type selection:

  • Optimal flexibility for Spot Instances – Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling can select from a wide range of instance types for launching Spot Instances. This meets the Spot best practice of being flexible about instance types, which gives the Amazon EC2 Spot service a better chance of finding and allocating your required amount of compute capacity.

  • Easily use the right instance types – With so many instance types available, finding the right instance types for your workload can be time consuming. When you specify instance attributes, the instance types will automatically have the required attributes for your workload.

  • Automatic use of new instance types – Your Auto Scaling groups can use newer generation instance types as they're released. Newer generation instance types are automatically used when they match your requirements and align with the allocation strategies you choose for your Auto Scaling group.

How attribute-based instance type selection works

With attribute-based instance type selection, instead of providing a list of specific instance types, you provide a list of instance attributes that your instances require, such as:

  • vCPU count – The minimum and maximum number of vCPUs per instance.

  • Memory – The minimum and maximum GiBs of memory per instance.

  • Local storage – Whether to use EBS or instance store volumes for local storage.

  • Burstable performance – Whether to use the T instance family, including T4g, T3a, T3, and T2 types.

There are many options available for defining your instance requirements. For a description of each option and the default values, see InstanceRequirements in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling API Reference.

When your Auto Scaling group needs to launch an instance, it will search for instance types that match your specified attributes and are available in that Availability Zone. The allocation strategy then determines which of the matching instance types to launch. By default, attribute-based instance type selection has a price protection feature enabled to prevent your Auto Scaling group from launching instance types that exceed your budget thresholds.

By default, you use the number of instances as the unit of measurement when setting the desired capacity of your Auto Scaling group, meaning each instance counts as one unit.

Alternatively, you can set the value for desired capacity to the number of vCPUs or the amount of memory. To do so, use the Desired capacity type dropdown field in the Amazon Web Services Management Console or the DesiredCapacityType property in the CreateAutoScalingGroup or UpdateAutoScalingGroup API operation. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling then launches the number of instances required to meet the desired vCPU or memory capacity. For example, if you use vCPUs as the desired capacity type and use instances with 2 vCPUs each, a desired capacity of 10 vCPUs would launch 5 instances. This is a useful alternative to instance weights.

Price protection

With price protection, you can specify the maximum price you are willing to pay for EC2 instances launched by your Auto Scaling group. Price protection is a feature that prevents your Auto Scaling group from using instance types that you would consider too expensive even if they happen to fit the attributes that you specified.

Price protection is enabled by default and has separate price thresholds for On-Demand Instances and Spot Instances. When Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling needs to launch new instances, any instance types priced above the relevant threshold are not launched.

On-Demand price protection

For On-Demand Instances, you define the maximum On-Demand price you're willing to pay as a percentage higher than an identified On-Demand price. The identified On-Demand price is the price of the lowest priced current generation C, M, or R instance type with your specified attributes.

If an On-Demand price protection value is not explicitly defined, a default maximum On-Demand price of 20 percent higher than the identified On-Demand price will be used.

Spot price protection

By default, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling will automatically apply optimal Spot Instance price protection to consistently select from a wide range of instance types. You can also manually set the price protection yourself. However, letting Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling do it for you can improve the likelihood that your Spot capacity is fulfilled.

You can manually specify the price protection using one of the following options. If you manually set the price protection, we recommend using the first option.

  • A percentage of an identified On-Demand price – The identified On-Demand price is the price of the lowest priced current generation C, M, or R instance type with your specified attributes.

  • A percentage higher than an identified Spot price – The identified Spot price is the price of the lowest priced current generation C, M, or R instance type with your specified attributes. We do not recommend using this option because Spot prices can fluctuate, and therefore your price protection threshold might also fluctuate.

Customize price protection

You can customize the price protection thresholds in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling console or using the Amazon CLI or SDKs.

  • In the console, use the On-Demand price protection and Spot price protection settings in Additional instance attributes.

  • In the InstanceRequirements structure, to specify the On-Demand Instance price protection threshold, use the OnDemandMaxPricePercentageOverLowestPrice property. To specify the Spot Instance price protection threshold, use either the MaxSpotPriceAsPercentageOfOptimalOnDemandPrice or the SpotMaxPricePercentageOverLowestPrice property.

If you set Desired capacity type (DesiredCapacityType) to vCPUs or Memory GiB, the price protection applies based on the per vCPU or per memory price instead of the per instance price.

You can also turn off price protection. To indicate no price protection threshold, specify a high percentage value, such as 999999.

Note

If no current generation C, M, or R instance types match your specified attributes, price protection is still applicable. When no match is found, the identified price is from the lowest priced current generation instance types, or failing that, the lowest priced previous generation instance types, that match your attributes.

Prerequisites

Create a mixed instances group with attribute-based instance type selection (console)

Use the following procedure to create a mixed instances group by using attribute-based instance type selection. To help you move through the steps efficiently, some optional sections are skipped.

For most general purpose workloads, it's enough to specify the number of vCPUs and memory that you need. For advanced use cases, you can specify attributes like storage type, network interfaces, CPU manufacturer, and accelerator type.

To review the best practices for a mixed instances group, see Setup overview.

To create a mixed instances group

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/ec2/, and choose Auto Scaling Groups from the navigation pane.

  2. On the navigation bar at the top of the screen, choose the same Amazon Web Services Region that you used when you created the launch template.

  3. Choose Create an Auto Scaling group.

  4. On the Choose launch template or configuration page, for Auto Scaling group name, enter a name for your Auto Scaling group.

  5. To choose your launch template, do the following:

    1. For Launch template, choose an existing launch template.

    2. For Launch template version, choose whether the Auto Scaling group uses the default, the latest, or a specific version of the launch template when scaling out.

    3. Verify that your launch template supports all of the options that you are planning to use, and then choose Next.

  6. On the Choose instance launch options page, do the following:

    1. For Instance type requirements, choose Override launch template.

      Note

      If you chose a launch template that already contains a set of instance attributes, such as vCPUs and memory, then the instance attributes are displayed. These attributes are added to the Auto Scaling group properties, where you can update them from the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling console at any time.

    2. Under Specify instance attributes, start by entering your vCPUs and memory requirements.

      • For vCPUs, enter the desired minimum and maximum number of vCPUs. To specify no limit, select No minimum, No maximum, or both.

      • For Memory (GiB), enter the desired minimum and maximum amount of memory. To specify no limit, select No minimum, No maximum, or both.

    3. (Optional) For Additional instance attributes, you can optionally specify one or more attributes to express your compute requirements in more detail. Each additional attribute adds further constraints to your request.

    4. Expand Preview matching instance types to view the instance types that have your specified attributes.

    5. Under Instance purchase options, for Instances distribution, specify the percentages of the group to launch as On-Demand Instances and as Spot Instances. If your application is stateless, fault tolerant, and can handle an instance being interrupted, you can specify a higher percentage of Spot Instances.

    6. (Optional) When you specify a percentage for Spot Instances, select Include On-Demand base capacity and then specify the minimum amount of the Auto Scaling group's initial capacity that must be fulfilled by On-Demand Instances. Anything beyond the base capacity uses the Instances distribution settings to determine how many On-Demand Instances and Spot Instances to launch.

    7. Under Allocation strategies, Lowest price is automatically selected for the On-Demand allocation strategy and cannot be changed.

    8. For Spot allocation strategy, choose an allocation strategy. Price capacity optimized is selected by default. Lowest price is hidden by default and only appears when you choose Show all strategies. If you choose Lowest price, enter the number of lowest priced pools to diversify across for Lowest priced pools.

    9. For Capacity Rebalancing, choose whether to enable or disable Capacity Rebalancing. Use Capacity Rebalancing to automatically respond when your Spot Instances approach termination from a Spot interruption. For more information, see Use Capacity Rebalancing to handle Amazon EC2 Spot interruptions.

    10. Under Network, for VPC, choose a VPC. The Auto Scaling group must be created in the same VPC as the security group you specified in your launch template.

    11. For Availability Zones and subnets, choose one or more subnets in the specified VPC. Use subnets in multiple Availability Zones for high availability. For more information, see Considerations when choosing VPC subnets.

    12. Choose Next, Next.

  7. For the Configure group size and scaling policies step, do the following:

    1. To measure your desired capacity in units other than instances, choose the appropriate option for Group size, Desired capacity type. Units, vCPUs, and Memory GiB are supported. By default, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling specifies Units, which translates into number of instances.

    2. For Desired capacity, the initial size of your Auto Scaling group.

    3. In the Scaling section, under Scaling limits, if your new value for Desired capacity is greater than Min desired capacity and Max desired capacity, the Max desired capacity is automatically increased to the new desired capacity value. You can change these limits as needed. For more information, see Set scaling limits for your Auto Scaling group.

  8. Choose Skip to review.

  9. On the Review page, choose Create Auto Scaling group.

Create a mixed instances group with attribute-based instance type selection (Amazon CLI)

To create a mixed instances group using the command line

Use one of the following commands:

Example configuration

To create an Auto Scaling group with attribute-based instance type selection by using the Amazon CLI, use the following create-auto-scaling-group command.

The following instance attributes are specified:

  • VCpuCount – The instance types must have a minimum of four vCPUs and a maximum of eight vCPUs.

  • MemoryMiB – The instance types must have a minimum of 16,384 MiB of memory.

  • CpuManufacturers – The instance types must have an Intel manufactured CPU. 

aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group --cli-input-json file://~/config.json

The following is an example config.json file. 

{
    "AutoScalingGroupName": "my-asg",
    "DesiredCapacityType": "units",
    "MixedInstancesPolicy": {
        "LaunchTemplate": {
            "LaunchTemplateSpecification": {
                "LaunchTemplateName": "my-launch-template",
                "Version": "$Default"
            },
            "Overrides": [{
                "InstanceRequirements": {
                    "VCpuCount": {"Min": 4, "Max": 8},
                    "MemoryMiB": {"Min": 16384},
                    "CpuManufacturers": ["intel"]
                }
            }]
        },
        "InstancesDistribution": {
            "OnDemandPercentageAboveBaseCapacity": 50,
            "SpotAllocationStrategy": "price-capacity-optimized"
        }
    },
    "MinSize": 0,
    "MaxSize": 100,
    "DesiredCapacity": 4,
    "DesiredCapacityType": "units",
    "VPCZoneIdentifier": "subnet-5ea0c127,subnet-6194ea3b,subnet-c934b782"
}

To set the value for desired capacity as the number of vCPUs or the amount of memory, specify "DesiredCapacityType": "vcpu" or "DesiredCapacityType": "memory-mib" in the file. The default desired capacity type is units, which sets the value for desired capacity as the number of instances.

Alternatively, you can use the following create-auto-scaling-group command to create the Auto Scaling group. This references a YAML file as the sole parameter for your Auto Scaling group.

aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group --cli-input-yaml file://~/config.yaml

The following is an example config.yaml file. 

---
AutoScalingGroupName: my-asg
DesiredCapacityType: units
MixedInstancesPolicy:
  LaunchTemplate:
    LaunchTemplateSpecification:
      LaunchTemplateName: my-launch-template
      Version: $Default
    Overrides:
    - InstanceRequirements:
         VCpuCount:
           Min: 2
           Max: 4
         MemoryMiB:
           Min: 2048
         CpuManufacturers:
         - intel
  InstancesDistribution:
    OnDemandPercentageAboveBaseCapacity: 50
    SpotAllocationStrategy: price-capacity-optimized
MinSize: 0
MaxSize: 100
DesiredCapacity: 4
DesiredCapacityType: units
VPCZoneIdentifier: subnet-5ea0c127,subnet-6194ea3b,subnet-c934b782

To set the value for desired capacity as the number of vCPUs or the amount of memory, specify DesiredCapacityType: vcpu or DesiredCapacityType: memory-mib in the file. The default desired capacity type is units, which sets the value for desired capacity as the number of instances.

Preview your instance types

You can preview the instance types that match your compute requirements without launching them and adjust your requirements if necessary. When creating your Auto Scaling group in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling console, a preview of the instance types appears in the Preview matching instance types section on the Choose instance launch options page.

Alternatively, you can preview the instance types by making an Amazon EC2 GetInstanceTypesFromInstanceRequirements API call using the Amazon CLI or an SDK. Pass the InstanceRequirements parameters in the request in the exact format that you would use to create or update an Auto Scaling group. For more information, see Preview instance types with specified attributes in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

To learn more about attribute-based instance type selection, see Attribute-Based Instance Type Selection for EC2 Auto Scaling and EC2 Fleet on the Amazon Blog.

You can declare attribute-based instance type selection when you create an Auto Scaling group using Amazon CloudFormation. For more information, see the example snippet in the Auto scaling template snippets section of the Amazon CloudFormation User Guide.