DOP-C02 Monitoring and Logging Practice Question
A company runs a web application on an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The operations team uses CloudWatch alarms to monitor the application. They have set up a CPUUtilization alarm that triggers when the average CPU exceeds 70% for 5 minutes. The alarm triggers a scaling policy to add instances. Recently, the team noticed that the alarm frequently triggers during the day, but the application performance is acceptable. They suspect the alarm is too sensitive and want to reduce the number of false alarms. The team wants to keep the alarm responsive to real CPU spikes but avoid triggering on short bursts. What should the team change in the alarm configuration?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is confusing period with evaluation periods; candidates might think reducing the period makes the alarm less sensitive, but it actually makes it more granular and can increase false positives if evaluation periods are low.
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
✓
Increase the number of evaluation periods to 3, so the alarm triggers only if CPU is high for 3 consecutive periods.
To reduce false alarms while remaining responsive to real CPU spikes, increase the number of evaluation periods. With 3 consecutive periods, the alarm triggers only if CPU exceeds 70% for 15 minutes (assuming 5-minute periods), filtering out short bursts. This maintains responsiveness to sustained spikes while avoiding triggers on transient spikes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a composite alarm that combines CPUUtilization with MemoryUtilization.
Why it's wrong here
A composite alarm combines multiple alarms, but it does not reduce sensitivity to short bursts. It would still react to individual CPU spikes unless the composite condition requires both metrics to be high simultaneously, which is not the issue here.
- ✗
Reduce the metric period to 1 minute and keep evaluation periods at 1.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing the metric period to 1 minute and keeping evaluation periods to 1 means the CloudWatch alarm samples CPUUtilization every 60 seconds and immediately transitions to ALARM after a single high-CPU sample. This eliminates any temporal smoothing, so a momentary pulse of activity triggers a scale-out action before you can ascertain whether the load is durable. The request specifically asks to avoid reacting to short bursts, and this configuration maximizes reactivity to exactly those bursts, making it the opposite of the desired tuning.
- ✓
Increase the number of evaluation periods to 3, so the alarm triggers only if CPU is high for 3 consecutive periods.
Why this is correct
Increasing evaluation periods to 3 (with the same period of e.g., 5 minutes) means the alarm triggers only if CPU exceeds 70% for 3 consecutive periods (15 minutes). This filters out short bursts and reduces false alarms while still catching sustained high CPU.
- ✗
Lower the threshold to 60% to catch more CPU spikes.
Why it's wrong here
Lowering the threshold to 60% makes the alarm more sensitive to CPU utilization, so it will enter the ALARM state whenever even modest CPU work crosses the lower boundary. Since the complaint is already that transient spikes cause false alarms, this change increases the frequency of alarm triggers rather than reducing them. Consequently, the Auto Scaling group would scale out more often, incurring unnecessary cost and instability, while still not distinguishing a sustained load from a brief spike.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This DOP-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 DOP-C02 exam.