DVA-C02 Deployment Practice Question
A developer is using AWS CodeDeploy to deploy a revision to an EC2/On-Premises deployment group. The deployment fails because the specified deployment configuration requires a minimum of 1 healthy host, but the deployment group has 0 instances. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume the error is due to a missing CodeDeploy agent or an Auto Scaling group requirement, but the specific error message 'minimum of 1 healthy host' with '0 instances' directly points to an empty deployment group.
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
✓
The deployment group does not have any Amazon EC2 instances registered.
The deployment failed because the deployment group had zero registered instances, making it impossible to meet the minimum of 1 healthy host required by the deployment configuration. Option D is correct because the error message directly indicates that the deployment group contains no EC2 instances, so there are no hosts to deploy to.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The deployment group is not associated with any Auto Scaling group.
Why it's wrong here
A CodeDeploy deployment group can target either manually registered Amazon EC2 instances or instances provisioned by an Auto Scaling group. While integrating with an Auto Scaling group is a common practice for dynamic scaling and instance replacement, it is not a mandatory prerequisite for a deployment to succeed. A deployment group can function perfectly well by targeting a static list of EC2 instances, provided those instances are properly registered and available. Therefore, the absence of an Auto Scaling group association alone does not inherently prevent a deployment if other target instances exist.
- ✗
The deployment configuration requires too many healthy hosts.
Why it's wrong here
CodeDeploy deployment configurations define the minimum number or percentage of healthy instances required during a deployment. While setting an overly aggressive configuration (e.g., requiring 100% healthy hosts with only one instance) can cause a deployment to fail, it typically results in a deployment *error* rather than a complete lack of deployment targets. If there are no instances registered in the deployment group at all, the issue is the absence of targets, not the health host threshold itself. A minimum of one healthy host is a common and reasonable setting, which would still fail if no instances exist.
- ✗
The CodeDeploy agent is not installed on the instances.
Why it's wrong here
The CodeDeploy agent is essential for instances to receive and execute deployment commands from the CodeDeploy service. If the agent is not installed or running on specific Amazon EC2 instances, those particular instances will fail to participate in the deployment process. However, this is an instance-level issue that would cause individual instances to fail or be marked as unhealthy, not a group-level problem preventing the deployment group from having any registered targets whatsoever. The deployment would still *attempt* to target the registered instances, even if they ultimately fail due to agent issues.
- ✓
The deployment group does not have any Amazon EC2 instances registered.
Why this is correct
A CodeDeploy deployment group must have target Amazon EC2 instances explicitly registered with it, either individually or dynamically via an Auto Scaling group, for a deployment to proceed. If no instances are associated with or discovered by the deployment group, CodeDeploy has no endpoints to send the application revision to. Consequently, the deployment will fail immediately because there are simply no target hosts available to receive the deployment, regardless of deployment configuration or agent status. This is a foundational requirement for any deployment.
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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.