[a-priori]

I wish Amazon would switch to a 'provisioned throughput' model for ELB like they have for DynamoDB, where you say what level of throughput you want to support and you're billed on that rather than actual traffic. Then they keep sufficient capacity available to support that service level.

So if you expect flash traffic, you just bump up your provisioned throughput. Simple and transparent.

[toomuchtodo]

You can contact AWS support if needed, and they'll warm up the ELB ahead of time.

http://serverfault.com/a/321371

https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=76834

It's not perfect, but works in a pinch.

[ceejayoz]

That would be a very cool offering.