A SysOps administrator runs an application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer in a simple scaling Auto Scaling group using default settings. The group scales on the RequestCountPerTarget metric. The administrator observes that RequestCountPerTarget exceeded the threshold twice within 180 seconds. What will happen to the Auto Scaling group in this scenario?

When an Auto Scaling group scales out, it launches the specified number of instances and then enters a cooldown period. During this period, the group ignores subsequent scaling activities triggered by alarms, preventing it from launching too many instances too quickly. The default cooldown period is 300 seconds (5 minutes). Even though the RequestCountPerTarget metric exceeded the threshold twice within 180 seconds, the Auto Scaling group will only launch one instance for the initial trigger and then wait for the cooldown to expire before evaluating further scaling actions. The other options are incorrect because Auto Scaling groups do not launch an instance for every threshold breach within a short period, nor do they rebalance traffic or redistribute load before scaling out; their primary function is to adjust instance count based on defined policies.