Ray Serve: configure autoscaling for a deployment (min_replicas, max_replicas, target_ongoing_requests)
domain: ml-ops · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Decorate your deployment with @serve.deployment(...) and either set num_replicas="auto" to use Ray Serve's autoscaling defaults, or explicitly pass autoscaling_config={"min_replicas": 1, "max_replicas": 10, "target_ongoing_requests": 2} to control it yourself.
Separately set max_ongoing_requests on the deployment (a top-level option, not part of autoscaling_config) to a value above target_ongoing_requests so Serve can queue requests while it scales.
Deploy the app with `serve run` (or a YAML config listing `num_replicas: auto` under the deployment); the Serve autoscaler polls each replica's queue and adds/removes replicas to keep ongoing requests near target_ongoing_requests.
Set min_replicas=0 if traffic has long idle windows and you can tolerate extra latency on the first request while a replica cold-starts; otherwise size it for your low-traffic floor.
Set max_replicas to roughly 20% above your estimated peak-traffic replica need.
Known gotchas
If you configure autoscaling_config manually without num_replicas="auto", the base default for max_replicas is 1 — the deployment will silently never scale beyond 1 replica unless you raise it explicitly.
num_replicas="auto" is shorthand for target_ongoing_requests=2, min_replicas=1, max_replicas=100, and max_ongoing_requests=5 — you can override any of these by supplying your own autoscaling_config alongside num_replicas="auto".
min_replicas=0 saves resources during idle periods but adds tail latency to the first request after idle while a new replica starts.
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