Question

A CloudOps engineer manages a stateless web application running on an EC2 Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. Traffic is unpredictable and fluctuates throughout the day. The team wants the group to automatically maintain average CPU utilization at approximately 50% across all instances, adding or removing capacity smoothly as load changes, with minimal manual tuning of thresholds. Which scaling configuration best meets this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Configure a target-tracking scaling policy using the ASGAverageCPUUtilization metric with a target value of 50%.

Answer

Configure two step scaling policies triggered by CloudWatch alarms at 40% and 70% CPU to add and remove instances.

Answer

Configure a scheduled scaling action that increases capacity during business hours and decreases it overnight.

Answer

Configure a simple scaling policy with a 300-second cooldown that adds one instance when CPU exceeds 50%.