Question

A company runs a stateless web application on an EC2 Auto Scaling group. During sudden traffic surges, newly launched instances take about 8 minutes to complete a lengthy bootstrapping process (installing packages, downloading large data files, and warming an application cache) before they can serve traffic. This delay causes request latency and dropped connections during scale-out events. The application code and dependencies change infrequently. Which solution BEST reduces the time to serve traffic when scaling out, with the least ongoing operational effort?

Accepted Answer

Configure a warm pool for the Auto Scaling group so pre-initialized instances are held in a stopped state and can quickly join service during scale-out.

Answer

Increase the Auto Scaling group's health check grace period and desired capacity to keep more instances running at all times.

Answer

Replace the target tracking policy with a scheduled scaling action that launches instances every hour regardless of demand.

Answer

Switch the Auto Scaling group to use larger instance types so the bootstrapping process completes faster.