elb/auto-weight-away
Load-balancer management that pre-allocates surge capacity and weighs out affected LBs — no human in the loop.
problem
Surge traffic could overload a load balancer faster than a human operator could react, and once an LB was affected, leaving it in rotation degraded every request routed behind it.
approach
Built a load-balancer management service that pre-allocates dedicated capacity ahead of anticipated traffic and automatically weighs affected LBs out of rotation, with no human in the loop.
trade-offs considered
The weight-away pattern trades automation speed against false-positive weigh-outs: react fast enough to matter, and a transient blip risks pulling a healthy LB out of rotation unnecessarily. Pre-allocating dedicated capacity ahead of anticipated surges also costs idle headroom the rest of the time — a direct trade against surge readiness.
impact
-10% peak-hour latency; 90% of capacity adjustments automated.