Last Updated: July 21, 2025 Job Queue Autoscaling in SaladCloud dynamically adjusts the number of container instances based on the number of jobs in your SaladCloud job queues. This ensures that your infrastructure scales up when job volume increases and scales down during low usage periods, optimizing both performance and cost efficiency. Job Queue autoscaling integrates directly with SaladCloud’s managed queue service and the Job Queue Worker to provide seamless scaling for batch processing and job-based workloads.

​
Prerequisites

Before you can enable Job Queue autoscaling, you must configure the Job Queue:
  1. Ensure that SaladCloud Job Queues are enabled for your container group.
  2. Verify that your application can handle scaling with multiple container instances.
  3. Review the Job Queue Autoscaling Settings to understand how to fine-tune autoscaling for your workloads.

​
Example Use Case

Let’s say you run a batch processing workload, but the number of jobs you receive is inconsistent. Sometimes, there are no jobs at all, and you want to scale down to zero instances to avoid paying for unused compute resources. By setting the Minimum Replicas to 0, the Job Queue autoscaler will automatically scale down to zero when the queue is empty, which means you don’t pay for any resources when there is no workload. However, this will result in cold starts when new jobs arrive. Cold starts occur when the system needs to initialize new instances, which can introduce a delay while containers are started from an inactive state. At other times, you might experience a spike where thousands of jobs need to be processed quickly. By setting the Maximum Replicas to 100, you can scale up and process all the jobs much faster. Even though you’re using more instances, you’re still paying for the same amount of compute hours you would have spent on one instance, but the jobs are completed 100 times faster, reducing overall processing time.
Ready to configure Job Queue autoscaling? Learn more about the available Settings or Set Up Job Queue Autoscaling in SaladCloud.