Background: A cloud-based web application, with a sudden increase in user traffic, such as during a promotional event or a major product launch. Auto-scaling features are available and configured.

Response: The system automatically detects the increase in load and provisions additional resources to handle the increased traffic, without human intervention.

Metric:

• Time to Scale: The system should begin scaling up additional resources within 2 minutes of detecting a 50% increase in traffic load.
• Resource Utilization: After scaling, CPU and memory utilization should stabilize at approximately 70%, ensuring that resources are neither underutilized (wasteful) nor overburdened (which could degrade performance).
• Performance Maintenance: The response time of the web application should not exceed 3 seconds for 95% of the requests, even during peak traffic. Cost Efficiency: The cost of scaled resources should not exceed a 150% increase despite a 200% increase in traffic, emphasizing cost-effective scaling.