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"An Azure Application Gateway instance can support around 10 Capacity Units" - Explanation in simple word


I've red the documentation and searched the internet for a simple explanation on Azure application gateway auto-scaling and the above quoted line but failed. It would be really helpful if you can explain/provide a explanation link related to the same for better understanding. Thank you!


Solution

  • When you enable auto scaling you need to set a minimum and maximum instance count. How do you know how many instances you need to handle the minimum amount of traffic you want to be able to handle? That is where Capacity Units play a role:

    Capacity Unit is the measure of capacity utilization for an Application Gateway across multiple parameters.

    A single Capacity Unit consists of the following parameters:

    2500 Persistent connections
    2.22-Mbps throughput
    1 Compute Unit

    If any one of these parameters are exceeded, then another n capacity unit(s) are necessary, even if the other two parameters don’t exceed this single capacity unit’s limits. The parameter with the highest utilization among the three above will be internally used for calculating capacity units, which is in turn billed.

    When configuring the minimum and maximum number of instances you can now calculate how many instances you need because a single instance can handle up to 10 Capacity Units, so for example a maximum number of 10 * 2500 = 25.000 persistent connections.

    For example: if you expect to have to deal with 6000 persistent connections you will need at least 3 instances (3 * 2500 = up to 7500 persistent connections)