The t3 Instance Got Slow. Just Size It Up?
An app on a t3 instance crawls under steady load and a teammate wants a bigger instance. Defend what is actually throttling it.
the decision you defend
Your service runs fine for a while, then gets slow under sustained traffic on a t3.medium. CPU looks pinned near a flat ceiling. A teammate says just upgrade to a bigger t3. What is really happening, and what do you do?
the situation
A service runs smoothly for the first stretch of the day, then noticeably slows down during busy hours. The CPU graph rises and then flattens against a hard line well below 100 percent, staying there while requests pile up.
context
The instance is a t3.medium. Traffic is steady and growing during business hours rather than spiky. A teammate looked at the slow response times and proposed upgrading to a t3.large or t3.xlarge to give it more headroom. Nobody has looked at the CPU credit metrics yet.
How this challenge works
Take a position on the decision above and defend it. A senior-engineer AI will push back over up to 4 rounds. When you are done, you are scored against a verified rubric so you can see exactly what a complete answer covers - these are learning prompts, not gotchas.