DOP-C02 Monitoring and Logging Practice Question
A company wants to monitor the number of messages that are published to an Amazon SNS topic. Which CloudWatch metric should be used?
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
✓
NumberOfMessagesPublished
The CloudWatch metric 'NumberOfMessagesPublished' tracks the number of messages published to an SNS topic. Option A (SMSMonthToDateSpentUSD) tracks monthly SMS spend, not messages published. Option B (PublishSize) is not a standard SNS metric; the relevant metric is 'PublishSize' for message size, but it's not for counting messages. Option C (NumberOfNotificationsDelivered) counts messages delivered to subscribers, not published.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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SMSMonthToDateSpentUSD
Why it's wrong here
SMSMonthToDateSpentUSD is a billing-related metric that reports the cumulative amount of money spent on SMS text messages sent via Amazon SNS during the current month. It is expressed in US dollars, not as a raw count of messages published, and it only applies to SMS delivery costs, not to the total volume of messages published to a topic. Therefore, it is irrelevant for measuring publication counts.
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PublishSize
Why it's wrong here
PublishSize is not a valid Amazon SNS CloudWatch metric. The actual metric name for message size is PublishedNotificationSize, which reports the size in bytes of a single notification payload. Because this option represents a nonexistent metric and measures dimensions of bytes rather than a count of published messages, it cannot be used to monitor message volume.
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NumberOfNotificationsDelivered
Why it's wrong here
NumberOfNotificationsDelivered tracks the number of messages successfully delivered to subscribers' endpoints, not the number of messages published to the SNS topic. For a single published message, multiple deliveries can occur when the topic has many subscriptions, and delivery failures or successful delivery to an HTTP endpoint do not reflect publish activity itself. Thus, this metric is unsuitable for monitoring publish throughput.
- ✓
NumberOfMessagesPublished
Why this is correct
NumberOfMessagesPublished is the correct Amazon SNS CloudWatch metric for monitoring message volume. It increments for every successful publish operation to an SNS topic, including individual messages sent via the Publish API and each message within a PublishBatch request. This metric provides the exact count of messages accepted by the topic, making it the appropriate choice for tracking publication activity.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.