A containerized application on Amazon ECS (Fargate) requires SSL-initiated connections, must accept private connectivity from other AWS accounts, and must scale predictably. Which design satisfies these requirements?

The correct design uses a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with a VPC endpoint service. NLBs support SSL termination and are highly performant, suitable for predictable scaling. A VPC endpoint service allows private connectivity from other AWS accounts to the NLB without traversing the public internet, satisfying the private connectivity requirement. The NLB is specified directly in the ECS service definition for integration. Incorrect options: Gateway Load Balancer (GLB) is designed for third-party virtual appliances, not direct application load balancing, and lifecycle hooks are not typically used for adding Fargate tasks to target groups; ECS service auto-scaling handles this. Using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with VPC peering would expose the ALB directly to peered VPCs, but it doesn't offer the same private connectivity and controlled access as a VPC endpoint service for cross-account access. An ALB with a VPC endpoint service is possible, but the question specifies "SSL-initiated connections" and predictable scaling, which an NLB handles very efficiently at Layer 4, often with lower latency and higher throughput than an ALB for direct TCP/SSL passthrough.