DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to decouple components of a microservices architecture?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Elastic Load Balancing (a synchronous traffic distributor) with asynchronous decoupling services, or mistakenly think Route 53's routing capabilities can decouple services, when in fact only message/event-based services like SQS and EventBridge achieve true decoupling.
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
✓
Amazon EventBridge
Amazon EventBridge (Option B) is correct because it provides a serverless event bus that decouples microservices by allowing them to communicate asynchronously via events. Services publish events to EventBridge, and other services consume them without direct coupling, enabling loose coupling and scalability.
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 Route 53
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. Its primary function is to translate human-readable domain names into numerical IP addresses, directing client requests to the correct service endpoint. While essential for service discovery and connectivity, Route 53 does not inherently decouple components by enabling asynchronous communication or mediating message exchange. It facilitates direct synchronous connections rather than abstracting producers from consumers.
- ✓
Amazon EventBridge
Why this is correct
Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that enables event-driven architectures, significantly decoupling service components. It allows services to publish events to a central bus, which then routes them to various targets based on defined rules, without direct knowledge of the consumers. This pattern ensures producers and consumers operate independently, enhancing scalability, fault tolerance, and maintainability by eliminating direct point-to-point integrations.
- ✗
Elastic Load Balancing
Why it's wrong here
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, in multiple Availability Zones. While ELB enhances availability and scalability by efficiently managing synchronous client requests to backend services, it does not decouple components in an asynchronous manner. Services communicating via an ELB still engage in direct, synchronous request-response interactions, meaning the caller typically waits for a response from the called service.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service that provides data and actionable insights for AWS resources and applications. It collects metrics, logs, and events, enabling users to set alarms, visualize operational data, and react to changes in their AWS environment. However, CloudWatch's function is purely observational and analytical; it does not facilitate communication between services or abstract their dependencies, thus it cannot be used to decouple components.
- ✓
Amazon SQS
Why this is correct
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables asynchronous communication between distributed system components. By placing messages into a queue, a producing service can send data without waiting for a consumer to be available or process the message immediately. This buffering and asynchronous processing inherently decouples producers from consumers, improving fault tolerance, scalability, and responsiveness by eliminating direct dependencies and allowing independent scaling.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DVA-C02
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A service needs loosely coupled asynchronous communication where one producer sends events to many different AWS service targets using rules. Which service fits best?
medium- A.Amazon EFS
- B.AWS CloudHSM
- ✓ C.Amazon EventBridge
- D.AWS DataSync
Why C: Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that enables loosely coupled asynchronous communication. It allows a single producer to publish events, and then uses rules to route those events to multiple AWS service targets (e.g., Lambda, SQS, Step Functions) simultaneously, fulfilling the requirement exactly.
JA
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.