Announcing horizontal autoscaling in Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached

Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached now supports horizontal autoscaling enabling you to automatically adjust capacity of your self-designed Memcached caches without the need for manual intervention. ElastiCache for Memcached leverages AWS Application Auto Scaling to manage the scaling process and Amazon CloudWatch metrics to determine when to scale in or out, ensuring your Memcached caches maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost.

Hundreds and thousands of customers use ElastiCache to improve their database and application performance and optimize costs. ElastiCache for Memcached supports target tracking and scheduled auto scaling policies. With target tracking, you define a target metric and ElastiCache for Memcached adjusts resource capacity in response to live changes in resource utilization. For instance, when memory utilization rises, ElastiCache for Memcached will add nodes to your cache to increase memory capacity and reduce utilization back to the target level. This enables your cache to adjust capacity automatically to maintain high performance. Conversely, when memory utilization drops below the target amount, ElastiCache for Memcached will remove nodes from your cache to reduce over-provisioning and lower costs. With scheduled scaling, you can set specific days and times for ElastiCache to scale your cache to accommodate predictable workload capacity changes.

Horizontal autoscaling on ElastiCache for Memcached is now available in all AWS commercial regions. You can get started using the AWS Management Console, Software Development Kit (SDK), or Command Line Interface (CLI). For more information, please visit the ElastiCache features page and documentation.