DVA-C02 Deployment Practice Question
A company uses AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy a web application. The development team wants to deploy a new version of the application to a separate environment for testing before switching production traffic. Which deployment strategy should be used?
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
✓
Blue/green deployment.
Blue/green deployment (Option C) creates a separate, independent environment (green) for the new version, allowing thorough testing before swapping the environment's URLs to route production traffic to the green environment. This minimizes risk and enables quick rollback. Option A (immutable) launches a new Auto Scaling group in the same environment but does not isolate the new version in a separate environment; Option B (all at once) updates all instances simultaneously in the same environment, causing downtime; Option D (rolling) updates instances in batches in the same environment, exposing some users to the new version during deployment.
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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Immutable deployment.
Why it's wrong here
Immutable deployments in Elastic Beanstalk achieve updates by launching a completely new set of instances with the new application version alongside the old ones, then swapping traffic and terminating the old instances. While this ensures consistency and simplifies rollback by replacing the entire Auto Scaling group within the *same* environment, it does not provide a separate, isolated environment for pre-production testing that can be swapped into production via a URL change. This strategy is primarily for ensuring a consistent environment update, not for isolated pre-release validation.
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All at once deployment.
Why it's wrong here
An "all at once" deployment strategy updates every instance in the existing Elastic Beanstalk environment simultaneously to the new application version. This method is the fastest but results in significant downtime as all instances are taken offline for the update. Crucially, it does not create a separate, isolated environment for testing the new version independently before it impacts live traffic, making it unsuitable for applications requiring high availability or thorough pre-release validation.
- ✓
Blue/green deployment.
Why this is correct
Blue/green deployment is the correct strategy because it involves provisioning an entirely new, separate Elastic Beanstalk environment (the "green" environment) running the updated application version. This new environment can be thoroughly tested and validated in isolation without affecting the live "blue" environment. Once testing is complete, traffic is seamlessly redirected to the new environment by swapping the CNAME URL, enabling zero-downtime updates and providing an immediate rollback path by simply reverting the URL swap.
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Rolling deployment.
Why it's wrong here
Rolling deployments update the application version on instances in batches within the *same* existing Elastic Beanstalk environment. As each batch is updated, it begins serving traffic, meaning both old and new versions of the application coexist and serve requests during the deployment process. While this approach minimizes downtime compared to "all at once," it does not create a fully isolated, separate environment for comprehensive testing and validation of the new version before it is exposed to any live traffic.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-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 DVA-C02 exam.