Hi Jim,
Automatic tile layers are a great option for ArcGIS Online. They are fantastic at saving space and automatically updating tiles in the background. I would definitely go for this option in ArcGIS Online.
However, I believe your question was about Portal (ArcGIS Enterprise). My understanding is that automatic tile layers do not exist in ArcGIS Enterprise for hosted feature layers:
As per the link I provided before, it says:
"Edits to spatial attributes made to the hosted feature layer are not automatically reflected in the hosted tile layer. You must republish the hosted tile layer from the updated hosted feature layer."
It is possible to create a tiled map service that is not hosted, ie directly referencing a database or file based data source. Then you could use on demand caching but that also does not automatically update. You need to recreate tiles in the areas where feature updates have occurred:
Map caching on demand—Documentation | Documentation for ArcGIS Enterprise
Mark
Regards,
Mark