What does the "Auto Scaling" feature in Alibaba Cloud do?

The "Auto Scaling" feature in Alibaba Cloud is designed to automatically adjust the number of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances in response to fluctuating demand. This capability allows organizations to efficiently manage resources by scaling up (adding instances) during periods of high demand and scaling down (removing instances) when demand decreases. This dynamic adjustment helps maintain optimal performance and ensures that resources are used cost-effectively, as users only pay for what they need at any given time.

In contrast, the other options refer to different functionalities within cloud services. Regular data backup is a separate feature related to data management and protection, while network traffic distribution is typically managed by load balancers, which ensure that workloads are balanced across multiple servers. User access permission management focuses on securing and controlling who can access certain resources, which is not the primary function of Auto Scaling. Each of these functionalities serves a vital role in cloud computing, but they do not overlap with the primary purpose of the Auto Scaling feature.