Question

A startup runs an image-thumbnail generator that is triggered only when users occasionally upload photos—sometimes hundreds per minute during promotions, but often zero requests for hours overnight. The team wants to minimize compute cost during idle periods while still handling sudden bursts without manual capacity planning. Which cloud native approach best fits this workload?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the generator as a Function-as-a-Service (serverless) workload that scales on demand and to zero when idle

Answer

Run the generator as a fixed-size Deployment with three always-on replicas behind a LoadBalancer

Answer

Package the generator as a monolithic application on a single large, permanently provisioned virtual machine

Answer

Schedule the generator as a nightly CronJob that batches all uploads received during the day