DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question
This DVA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of development with aws services. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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 developer is building an application that needs to store session state data for a web application running on multiple EC2 instances behind an ALB. The data is ephemeral and should not persist if an instance is terminated. Which storage option should the developer use?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon ElastiCache is the correct choice because it provides a managed in-memory cache (e.g., Redis or Memcached) that is ideal for storing ephemeral session state data. Session data is temporary and must be shared across multiple EC2 instances behind an ALB, and ElastiCache offers sub-millisecond latency and automatic key expiration, ensuring data is not persisted if an instance terminates. This aligns with the requirement for non-persistent, high-performance session storage that survives individual instance 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.
✓
Amazon ElastiCache
Why this is correct
ElastiCache is an in-memory cache that provides low-latency access and ephemeral storage, perfect for session state.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Amazon RDS
Why it's wrong here
RDS is a persistent relational database; session data would persist even after instance termination, which is not desired.
✗
Amazon DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is a persistent NoSQL database; data remains after instance termination, which is not required.
✗
Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
S3 is object storage with higher latency and is not designed for frequent, low-latency session reads/writes.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse durable storage (like DynamoDB or RDS) with ephemeral storage, failing to recognize that the requirement 'should not persist if an instance is terminated' explicitly calls for a non-persistent, in-memory solution like ElastiCache, not a database that guarantees data durability.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, ElastiCache for Redis uses an in-memory data store with optional persistence (RDB snapshots or AOF logs), but for ephemeral session state, developers typically disable persistence and set TTL (time-to-live) values on keys (e.g., using the EXPIRE command) so data is automatically evicted. A real-world scenario is a high-traffic e-commerce site where session data must be shared across a fleet of EC2 instances; using ElastiCache ensures that if an instance is terminated, other instances can still access the session data from the cache, but the data itself is not written to disk and will be lost if the cache cluster is deleted.
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 media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
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.
Development with AWS Services — This question tests Development with AWS Services — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Amazon ElastiCache — Amazon ElastiCache is the correct choice because it provides a managed in-memory cache (e.g., Redis or Memcached) that is ideal for storing ephemeral session state data. Session data is temporary and must be shared across multiple EC2 instances behind an ALB, and ElastiCache offers sub-millisecond latency and automatic key expiration, ensuring data is not persisted if an instance terminates. This aligns with the requirement for non-persistent, high-performance session storage that survives individual instance failures.
What should I do if I get this DVA-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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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.
Question Discussion
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