DVA-C02 Deployment Practice Question
Which THREE are best practices for deploying applications with AWS Elastic Beanstalk? (Choose THREE.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers think manual EC2 updates (Option A) are acceptable for quick fixes, but Elastic Beanstalk's managed updates and immutable deployments are designed to prevent configuration drift and ensure environment consistency.
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
✓
Use environment configuration files (.ebextensions) to manage settings.
Ebextensions configuration files allow you to define environment settings, software configurations, and custom resources declaratively, ensuring consistent and repeatable deployments without manual intervention. This aligns with the best practice of infrastructure as code, as Elastic Beanstalk automatically applies these settings during environment creation and updates.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Manually update EC2 instances in the environment.
Why it's wrong here
Manually updating EC2 instances within an Elastic Beanstalk environment is an anti-pattern that introduces significant risks. This approach leads to configuration drift, inconsistency across instances, and human error, making troubleshooting and scaling extremely difficult. Elastic Beanstalk is designed to automate instance management and configuration, so bypassing its control plane negates its core benefits and leads to an unmanageable, unreliable state.
- ✓
Use environment configuration files (.ebextensions) to manage settings.
Why this is correct
Utilizing `.ebextensions` configuration files is a fundamental best practice for Elastic Beanstalk deployments. These YAML or JSON files allow developers to customize and extend the environment by defining custom resources, installing packages, modifying server configurations, and running scripts. This declarative approach ensures that every deployment consistently applies the desired settings and infrastructure modifications, promoting repeatability and reducing configuration drift across environments.
- ✓
Use a blue/green deployment to minimize downtime.
Why this is correct
Implementing blue/green deployments is a highly recommended strategy for minimizing downtime and mitigating risks during application updates. This method involves deploying the new version to a separate, identical environment ("green") while the current version ("blue") remains active. Once the "green" environment is thoroughly tested, traffic is seamlessly shifted, allowing for instant rollback to "blue" if issues arise, thus ensuring a smooth user experience.
- ✓
Deploy to a staging environment before production.
Why this is correct
Deploying applications to a dedicated staging environment prior to production is a critical best practice for ensuring application quality and stability. A staging environment closely mirrors the production setup, enabling comprehensive testing of new features, performance, and integrations under realistic conditions. This crucial step helps identify and resolve potential issues, bugs, or performance bottlenecks before they impact actual end-users in the live production system.
- ✗
Always use the default Elastic Beanstalk domain for production.
Why it's wrong here
Relying solely on the default Elastic Beanstalk domain (e.g., `your-env.region.elasticbeanstalk.com`) for production applications is not a best practice. Default domains lack professional branding, are difficult for users to remember, and do not inspire trust or facilitate SEO. For production, it is essential to configure a custom domain name (e.g., `www.yourcompany.com`) using Route 53 or another DNS service, often secured with an SSL/TLS certificate from AWS Certificate Manager.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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