Abstract: Technologies are described herein for managing the activation of software containers, for throttling of requests directed to tenants executing in a software container, and for priming the execution of software containers. The activation of software containers and tenants may be managed by maintaining an activation queue for storing requests to activate software containers or tenants on a host computer. Requests may be retrieved from the queue and utilized to determine whether a software container or a tenant is to be activated on a host. “Bounce” or hot swap tenant activations may be performed. Tenant activation requests might also be throttled by denying the requests or by postponing the requests until a later time. A software container might also be configured to throttle incoming requests to tenants executing therein. The execution of a software container might also be primed by replaying previously recorded network traffic to the software container.