Can you vertically scale an EC2 instance in AWS without downtime? If not, what’s the workaround?

Question

Anirudh C S · Accepted Answer

No. An instance must be stopped before vertically scaling it. However, the downtime can be removed, if multiple servers are used to run the same application, the traffic can be rerouted to available servers.

Gowtham Hari Dhandapani · Answer

While vertically scaling an EC2 instance (changing its instance type) is possible in AWS, it typically involves downtime as it requires stopping and restarting the instance. The workaround is to use Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) to achieve near-zero downtime scaling by swapping out instances instead of modifying a single instance.Changing an EC2 instance type (e.g., from t2.micro to t2.large) requires stopping the instance, applying the new instance type, and then restarting it, which results in a period of downtime.

Can you vertically scale an EC2 instance in AWS without downtime? If not, what’s the workaround?

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