Hello,
You've hit on a really important point about the usefulness of alerts! Generic alerts that don't consider intentional scaling events can definitely lead to unnecessary noise and confusion.

To make those alerts smarter and more helpful, they should indeed be aware of Auto Scaling Group (ASG) activities. Here's how that could work and why it's beneficial:

How Alerts Can Be Made "Scaling-Aware":

Integration with Auto Scaling Group Events: The alerting system needs to be integrated with the event stream of the ASG. When the ASG performs a scale-out or scale-in operation, it emits events. The alerting system can listen for these specific events.

State Management: The alerting system should maintain a state that reflects the current "desired count" as actively managed by the ASG. This would involve:

Initial Desired Count: Recording the initial desired count.

Scaling Activities: Tracking scale-up and scale-down events initiated by the ASG (whether through policies, scheduled actions, or manual adjustments).

Current Effective Desired Count: Updating the "desired count" based on these scaling activities.

Conditional Alerting Logic: The alerting logic should then compare the current node count against this current effective desired count. An alert would only be triggered if the actual count deviates from this dynamically adjusted desired count.

Metadata in Alerts: When an alert is triggered, it should include metadata indicating the reason for any discrepancy. For example:

talk to your cat

"Node count below desired count (excluding recent scale-down)."

"Node count above desired count (excluding recent scale-up)."

"Node count differs from desired count after considering scaling activities."

Benefits of Scaling-Aware Alerts:

Reduced Noise: You'll receive fewer alerts that are simply a result of normal scaling operations. This allows you to focus on genuine issues.

Improved Signal-to-Noise Ratio: When an alert does fire, it's more likely to indicate a real problem that requires investigation.

Faster Root Cause Analysis: The alert metadata can provide valuable context, helping you quickly understand if the node count discrepancy is expected due to scaling or if there's an underlying issue.

Increased Trust in Alerting System: When alerts are accurate and relevant, teams are more likely to trust and act upon them promptly.

In summary, the key is to make the alerting system understand the dynamic nature of your infrastructure when Auto Scaling is involved. By integrating with ASG events and maintaining a dynamic "desired count," you can significantly improve the quality and usefulness of your alerts.

Have you already started exploring any specific tools or platforms for your alerting? Knowing that might help in suggesting more concrete ways to achieve this.