George Reese of enStratus (who makes some interesting tools for cloud infrastructure management) posted a somewhat surprising position on auto-scaling resources in the cloud.  I have to admit that I’ve generally found the idea of the auto-magically expanding and contracting cloud to be very appealing, especially now that IT budgets are tightening.  I hadn’t honestly thought about the possibilities for a DDoS attack and its impact on both the cloud infrastructure and the clients’ costs as the cloud expands beyond any reasonable maximum.  Reese’s article brings this concern to light and emphasizes the importance of continuing to pursue capacity planning, even in the cloud.

As I think about it more, I agree that IT should develop a pre-defined configuration and take advantage of the auto-magic within the bounds of that configuration.  Such an approach will benefit the business by engendering confidence in IT’s capabilities for capacity management and by ultimately reducing costs for the repetitive tasks that dynamic capacity changes can provide.