DOP-C02 SDLC Automation Practice Question
A developer wants to automate the creation of a new Amazon ECS service whenever a new Docker image is pushed to Amazon ECR. Which AWS service should be used to orchestrate this workflow?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse AWS Step Functions as the primary orchestrator for event-driven workflows, but EventBridge is the correct service for reacting to AWS service events like ECR pushes, while Step Functions is for coordinating multi-step processes after the event is received.
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 can capture ECR image push events (via the 'ECR Image Action' event type) and route them to a target such as an ECS service or a Lambda function that triggers an ECS service update or creation. This serverless event bus natively integrates with ECR and ECS, making it the simplest and most direct service to orchestrate the workflow without custom polling or additional orchestration logic.
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 EventBridge
Why this is correct
Amazon EventBridge natively ingests ECR lifecycle events such as an image push or scan, publishing them as event objects. You can define a rule with an event pattern matching the aws.ecr source and ECR Image Action detail-type, then route that event to a Lambda function that calls the ECS CreateService or UpdateService API. This is the correct mechanism because it is event-driven and requires no polling or manual invocation.
- ✗
AWS Step Functions
Why it's wrong here
AWS Step Functions is a state-machine orchestration service that coordinates Lambda functions, ECS tasks, and other AWS APIs, but it is not a source of ECR events. A Step Functions state machine cannot watch for an image push by itself; it must be invoked explicitly via the StartExecution API, an API Gateway call, or an EventBridge rule. If you used Step Functions, you would still need EventBridge to detect the ECR event and start the execution, so Step Functions alone does not solve the automation requirement.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudWatch Logs is a central place to store, monitor, and query log data from applications and AWS services, not an event source for orchestrating ECS service creation. ECR image-push actions do not automatically produce corresponding log events in CloudWatch Logs; ECR emits event information to EventBridge instead. While a Lambda function could write a log entry after creating the ECS service, reading or searching CloudWatch Logs does not trigger downstream infrastructure changes.
- ✗
Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 is an object storage service and is not directly involved in Amazon ECR event processing. Although ECR stores container image layers in S3 behind the scenes, image push operations are exposed through the ECR API and emitted as EventBridge events, not as S3 object-level events. An S3 bucket event notification would only fire when an object is created or modified in a bucket you own and have configured, which does not happen for ECR pushes.
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 |
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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.