CLF-C02 Cloud Concepts Practice Question
The AWS Well-Architected Framework's Reliability pillar recommends automatically recovering from failure. Which AWS feature directly enables automated recovery when an EC2 instance status check fails?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse EC2 Auto Recovery with EC2 Auto Scaling, assuming that Auto Scaling's health check replacement is the same as recovering the same instance, but Auto Recovery preserves the instance identity while Auto Scaling terminates and creates a new one.
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
✓
Amazon EC2 Auto Recovery
Amazon EC2 Auto Recovery is a feature that automatically recovers an impaired EC2 instance by restarting it on a new healthy host when a system status check fails. This directly aligns with the Reliability pillar's recommendation to automatically recover from failure without manual intervention.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
EC2 Auto Scaling
Why it's wrong here
EC2 Auto Scaling monitors the health of instances in an Auto Scaling group and replaces an unhealthy instance by terminating it and launching a new one from a launch template, often in a different Availability Zone. This new instance has a different instance ID and does not preserve the original instance's identity or associated resources, unlike EC2 Auto Recovery which restores the same instance to its original state.
- ✓
Amazon EC2 Auto Recovery
Why this is correct
Amazon EC2 Auto Recovery uses a CloudWatch alarm based on EC2 status checks (system status) to automatically restart the failed instance on new hardware, preserving its private and public IP addresses, instance ID, and attached EBS volumes. It does not replace the instance; it restores the exact same instance to a healthy state, making it the correct choice for recovering from underlying host failure.
- ✗
Elastic Load Balancing health checks
Why it's wrong here
Elastic Load Balancing health checks continuously monitor target health and stop routing traffic to an unhealthy instance, directing requests to healthy targets instead. They do not perform any automated repair or restart of the instance itself, so the failed instance remains in place until a separate mechanism (like EC2 Auto Recovery or manual intervention) addresses it.
- ✗
AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager
Why it's wrong here
AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is an operational tool for automating OS and software patching, compliance reporting, and patch baseline maintenance across a fleet of instances. It has no capability to detect failed instances or trigger recovery actions, and thus cannot address the scenario of an instance that has experienced a hardware or underlying-host failure.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.