Environment scaling

Cloud Composer 1 | Cloud Composer 2

This page describes how environment scaling works in Cloud Composer 1.

For information about scaling your environments, see Scale environments.

Resizable environments

Cloud Composer 1 has environments that run a constant number of workers.

When you create an environment, you specify the number of nodes. This number corresponds to the number of workers in your environment. Cloud Composer distributes load between all workers in your environment. In addition to running Airflow workers, your environment nodes also run schedulers and other environment components.

You can scale your environment by changing the number of nodes in your environment.

Scale and performance parameters

You can control the scale and performance parameters of your environment by adjusting the machine types used by the Airflow database and web server components of your environment. By doing so you can scale your environment vertically, in addition to the horizontal scaling provided by the number of nodes setting. You can adjust machine types of the Airflow database and web server at any time.

You set the machine type for environment nodes when you create an environment. You cannot change this parameter later. It means that you cannot scale Airflow workers vertically in Cloud Composer 1.

Multiple schedulers

Airflow 2 can use more than one Airflow scheduler at the same time. This Airflow feature is also known as the HA scheduler. In Cloud Composer 1, you can set the number of schedulers for your environment and adjust it at any time. Cloud Composer does not automatically scale the number of schedulers in your environment.

For more information about configuring the number of schedulers for your environment, see Scale environments.

Database disk space

Disk space for the Airflow database automatically increases to accommodate the demand.

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