Techniques described herein can optimize usage of computing resources in a data system. Dynamic throttling can be performed locally on a computing resource in the foreground and autoscaling can be performed in a centralized fashion in the background. Dynamic throttling can lower the load without overshooting while minimizing oscillation and reducing the throttle quickly. Autoscaling may involve scaling in or out the number of computing resources in a cluster as well as scaling up or down the type of computing resources to handle different types of situations.