CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A company wants to test a new version of their application by sending 10% of user traffic to the new version and 90% to the existing version, gradually increasing traffic to the new version as confidence grows. Which Amazon Route 53 routing policy supports this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse weighted routing with latency routing, thinking that latency-based routing can also distribute traffic proportionally, but latency routing only optimizes for response time and cannot enforce a fixed percentage split.
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
✓
Weighted routing
Weighted routing (C) is correct because it allows you to assign a percentage of traffic to each resource, such as 10% to the new version and 90% to the existing version. As confidence grows, you can adjust the weights to gradually shift more traffic to the new version. This policy is specifically designed for load balancing between multiple endpoints in a controlled, proportional manner.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Failover routing
Why it's wrong here
Failover routing uses health checks to send all active traffic to a primary record and only switches to a secondary record if the primary fails the health check. It is designed for high availability, not for splitting traffic between an existing version and a new version, because it never sends a fraction of requests to the secondary while the primary is healthy. Therefore, it cannot implement a canary deployment where 10% of users see the new version and 90% see the old version simultaneously.
- ✗
Geolocation routing
Why it's wrong here
Geolocation routing in Route 53 selects the record based on the requester's physical location (e.g., continent, country, or US state), not on a weight or percentage. Because it maps entire geographic blocks to a single endpoint, it cannot send 10% of users to a new version and 90% to the existing one — the split would be 100% for users in a location mapped to the new version and 0% elsewhere. This makes it unsuitable for canary testing, which requires a proportional traffic split rather than a location-based split.
- ✓
Weighted routing
Why this is correct
Weighted routing assigns relative weights to route records. A weight of 10 for the new version and 90 for the existing version routes approximately 10% of requests to the new version — ideal for gradual canary deployments.
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Latency routing
Why it's wrong here
Latency routing directs each request to the endpoint that provides the lowest network latency for that user, which is determined by measuring round-trip time between the user's resolver and the various AWS regions. It does not consider traffic percentages, so it cannot deliver a deliberate 10/90 split; instead, every user is sent to whichever region responds fastest. Using it for an A/B test would create an unpredictable distribution based purely on geography and network conditions, not on a controlled weight.
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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.