When Amazon chose the name "Elastic Cloud" it was a stroke of genius because elastic is something that expands and contracts at will, which is the ultimate breakthrough of cloud computing. Theoretically (since nobody has done this as far as I know) it should be possible not only to insure against a crash but to guarantee top performance at all times - if one server starts to drag, just spin up another one and add it to the load balancer - problem solved! Extra capacity can be delivered on demand when needed and released when not.
I'd like to throw down my gauntlet here (and if I had one I would) about how NO static or non-elastic web site is immune from crashes and slow downs, a claim I can easily prove with any site. To me it seems obvious that only through the elasticity the cloud offers can we have a consistent, high performance Internet, not like the one we have today, which is prone to overloads and wide variability.
In the noble tradition of eating one's own dog food I have devised a way to scale the CapCal server itself, to "elasticize" it on EC2, so that it will grow and shrink on demand based on moment by moment performance measurements (i.e., the CapCal Web Speedometer). I'll be reporting my experience in undertaking this adventure so check back for an update!
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