Overview

The current AWS deployment setup provisions static infrastructure without elasticity. This enhancement introduces auto-scaling support to improve resilience, cost efficiency, and performance during high scanning workloads.

Auto-scaling enables dynamic adjustment of compute resources based on demand, ensuring optimal resource usage and better scalability.

Motivation

• OWTF workloads are unpredictable; auto-scaling helps reduce idle costs and avoid performance bottlenecks.
• Elastic infrastructure aligns with DevOps and cloud-native deployment principles.
• Enables users to deploy OWTF at scale with minimal manual intervention.

Proposed Solution

Integrate AWS Auto Scaling Groups (ASG) into the existing EC2-based infrastructure.

Implementation Plan

1. Launch Template

   • Reuse existing OWTF AMI or instance configurations.
   • Define launch template parameters including security groups, instance type, and key pair.

2. Scaling Policy

   • Configure dynamic scaling based on CPU utilization, network load, or queue length.
   • Support both target tracking and step scaling policies.

3. Terraform Updates

   • Update infra/aws-terraform modules:
     • Create a new .tf file for ASG configuration.
     • Add variables for min_capacity, max_capacity, and desired_capacity.
     • Expose outputs for ASG name and scaling policy ARNs.
   • Maintain backward compatibility with static setups.

4. Documentation Updates

   • Extend this README.md to include auto-scaling instructions.
   • Provide configuration examples for enabling/disabling ASG.
   • Add sample thresholds for custom scaling behavior.

5. Optional Enhancements

   • Integrate CloudWatch alarms for monitoring and alerting.
   • Extend support for AWS Application Auto Scaling (ECS) for containerized deployments.

Benefits

• Automatically scales resources up or down based on load.
• Reduces operational costs during idle periods.
• Improves fault tolerance and resilience.
• Simplifies scaling for distributed workloads.

Impact

• Affects infrastructure configuration only.
• No changes to OWTF core codebase.
• Fully backward compatible: manual/static provisioning continues to work.

Next Steps

• Get maintainer approval for approach and implementation direction.
• Prepare a pull request including:
  • New Terraform module for auto-scaling.
  • Updated documentation and examples.

Checklist

• Maintainer review and feedback
• Implement Terraform ASG module
• Add input variables and outputs
• Update infra/README.md with usage guide
• Test auto-scaling in staging environment
• Submit PR for review