The correct answer is to configure a minimum healthy hosts threshold in the CodeDeploy deployment group and add a manual approval step before the deploy stage. The minimum healthy hosts setting ensures that a specified percentage or number of EC2 instances remain operational during the deployment, preventing the process from continuing if too many instances are unavailable, which directly addresses intermittent failures due to insufficient capacity. The manual approval step acts as a pre-deployment gate, allowing you to verify instance health—for example, through AWS Systems Manager or custom scripts—before the pipeline proceeds, catching availability issues early. On the AWS Certified Developer Associate DVA-C02 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of CodeDeploy’s deployment configuration and CodePipeline’s approval actions as reliability mechanisms; a common trap is to focus only on scaling or retry logic instead of these proactive controls. Remember the mnemonic “Check before you wreck” to recall that verifying health manually and setting a healthy host floor are your two reliability anchors.
DVA-C02 Deployment Practice Question
This DVA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of deployment. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. 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 using AWS CodePipeline to deploy a web application. The pipeline has a source stage from Amazon S3, a build stage using AWS CodeBuild, and a deploy stage using AWS CodeDeploy. The developer notices that the deploy stage fails intermittently due to EC2 instances not being available. Which TWO actions should the developer take to improve the reliability of the deployment? (Choose two.)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Configure the CodeDeploy deployment group to have a minimum healthy hosts threshold.
Option B is correct because configuring a minimum healthy hosts threshold in the CodeDeploy deployment group ensures that a certain percentage or number of EC2 instances remain healthy during the deployment. This prevents the deployment from proceeding if too many instances are unavailable, reducing the risk of failure due to insufficient capacity. Option E is correct because adding a manual approval step before the deploy stage allows the developer to verify instance health (e.g., via AWS Systems Manager or custom scripts) before triggering the deployment, catching availability issues early.
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.
✗
Increase the number of EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group to ensure availability.
Why it's wrong here
More instances do not guarantee availability if the existing ones are unhealthy.
✓
Configure the CodeDeploy deployment group to have a minimum healthy hosts threshold.
Why this is correct
This ensures that deployments proceed only when enough healthy hosts are available.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Reduce the deployment timeout to fail faster.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing timeout does not improve reliability.
✗
Use a different deployment type, such as blue/green, instead of in-place.
Why it's wrong here
Blue/green also requires healthy instances.
✓
Add a manual approval step in the pipeline before the deploy stage to verify instance health.
Why this is correct
Manual approval allows checking instance health before deployment.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse increasing instance count (Option A) with improving deployment reliability, but the question specifically targets intermittent unavailability during the deploy stage, which is better addressed by health checks and approval gates rather than raw capacity.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The minimum healthy hosts threshold in CodeDeploy is defined as a percentage or count (e.g., 75% or 1 instance) and is enforced during the deployment lifecycle. CodeDeploy uses this threshold to decide whether to proceed with traffic shifting or to halt the deployment, leveraging the DeploymentGroup's 'minimumHealthyHosts' configuration. In a real-world scenario, if an Auto Scaling group has a mix of healthy and unhealthy instances, this threshold prevents a deployment from failing entirely by ensuring enough capacity remains to serve traffic.
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.
Deployment — This question tests Deployment — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Configure the CodeDeploy deployment group to have a minimum healthy hosts threshold. — Option B is correct because configuring a minimum healthy hosts threshold in the CodeDeploy deployment group ensures that a certain percentage or number of EC2 instances remain healthy during the deployment. This prevents the deployment from proceeding if too many instances are unavailable, reducing the risk of failure due to insufficient capacity. Option E is correct because adding a manual approval step before the deploy stage allows the developer to verify instance health (e.g., via AWS Systems Manager or custom scripts) before triggering the deployment, catching availability issues early.
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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Question Discussion
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