- A
Elasticity
Why wrong: Elasticity is the ability to automatically provision and de-provision resources in response to changing demand. While a multi-instance setup can support elasticity, the primary goal of the described architecture is to maintain service availability despite failures, not to dynamically adjust capacity.
- B
High availability
High availability ensures that a system remains operational even when components fail. Deploying EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones behind a load balancer eliminates single points of failure and keeps the application accessible if an instance or an Availability Zone goes down. This directly addresses the requirement for resilience.
- C
Scalability
Why wrong: Scalability is the ability to handle growing amounts of work by adding resources. Although deploying multiple instances can support scalability, the scenario specifically focuses on maintaining uptime during failures, not on handling increased traffic or growth.
- D
Cost optimization
Why wrong: Cost optimization involves rightsizing resources and eliminating waste to minimize spending. The described architecture may increase costs due to running a second instance and a load balancer. While high availability can be part of a cost-benefit analysis, it is not the primary benefit the architecture aims to achieve.
CLF-C02 Cloud Concepts Practice Question
This CLF-C02 practice question tests your understanding of cloud concepts. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company runs a customer-facing web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. To improve resilience, the solutions architect decides to deploy a second EC2 instance in a different Availability Zone and configure an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic. The goal is to ensure that the application remains accessible even if one instance or one Availability Zone becomes unavailable. Which cloud computing benefit does this architecture primarily aim to achieve?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
High availability
By deploying a second EC2 instance in a different Availability Zone and using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic, the architecture ensures that if one instance or one Availability Zone fails, the ALB automatically routes traffic to the healthy instance in the other AZ. This design directly achieves high availability by eliminating a single point of failure and maintaining application uptime during infrastructure failures.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Elasticity
Why it's wrong here
Elasticity is the ability to automatically provision and de-provision resources in response to changing demand. While a multi-instance setup can support elasticity, the primary goal of the described architecture is to maintain service availability despite failures, not to dynamically adjust capacity.
- ✓
High availability
Why this is correct
High availability ensures that a system remains operational even when components fail. Deploying EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones behind a load balancer eliminates single points of failure and keeps the application accessible if an instance or an Availability Zone goes down. This directly addresses the requirement for resilience.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Scalability
Why it's wrong here
Scalability is the ability to handle growing amounts of work by adding resources. Although deploying multiple instances can support scalability, the scenario specifically focuses on maintaining uptime during failures, not on handling increased traffic or growth.
- ✗
Cost optimization
Why it's wrong here
Cost optimization involves rightsizing resources and eliminating waste to minimize spending. The described architecture may increase costs due to running a second instance and a load balancer. While high availability can be part of a cost-benefit analysis, it is not the primary benefit the architecture aims to achieve.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates confuse high availability with scalability or elasticity, mistakenly thinking adding more instances is always about handling more traffic rather than ensuring fault tolerance across Availability Zones.
Trap categories for this question
Scenario analysis trap
Scalability is the ability to handle growing amounts of work by adding resources. Although deploying multiple instances can support scalability, the scenario specifically focuses on maintaining uptime during failures, not on handling increased traffic or growth.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The Application Load Balancer operates at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and performs health checks on each target instance using configurable intervals (e.g., every 30 seconds) and thresholds (e.g., 2 consecutive failures marks an instance unhealthy). When an instance in one AZ fails, the ALB stops sending traffic to it and distributes all requests to the remaining healthy instance, ensuring zero downtime for users. This architecture also supports cross-zone load balancing, which distributes traffic evenly across all healthy instances in all AZs, further optimizing resource utilization.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this CLF-C02 question test?
Cloud Concepts — This question tests Cloud Concepts — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: High availability — By deploying a second EC2 instance in a different Availability Zone and using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic, the architecture ensures that if one instance or one Availability Zone fails, the ALB automatically routes traffic to the healthy instance in the other AZ. This design directly achieves high availability by eliminating a single point of failure and maintaining application uptime during infrastructure failures.
What should I do if I get this CLF-C02 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.
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