An application runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The instances are in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. On the first day of every month at midnight, a month-end financial batch runs and immediately causes instance CPU to spike to 100%, disrupting the application. What should a solutions architect recommend so the application can handle the workload and avoid downtime?

The correct answer is to configure an EC2 Auto Scaling scheduled scaling policy based on the monthly schedule. This approach directly addresses the predictable, recurring spike in CPU utilization by proactively scaling out the EC2 instances before the batch job begins. This ensures sufficient capacity to handle the increased load, preventing performance degradation and downtime. Configuring an Amazon CloudFront distribution would not help as it is a content delivery network and does not scale backend compute resources. An EC2 Auto Scaling simple scaling policy based on CPU utilization would react after the CPU spikes, leading to a delay in scaling and potential downtime