A Cloud Run website is slow during traffic spikes. To improve responsiveness, what should you do with application configuration and static data?

Packaging application configuration and static data into the application image at build time is the most effective solution for improving responsiveness during traffic spikes. This approach ensures that the data is immediately available to the Cloud Run instance upon startup, eliminating the need for external calls to a database or other services. Reading from a database on startup introduces latency, especially under load, as each new instance would contend for database resources. Performing work in the background after returning a response is a good general practice for improving perceived responsiveness but doesn't address the initial load time of the application itself. Ensuring quick exits for timed-out instances is a strategy for fault tolerance and recovery, not for improving the performance of individual requests or instance startup.