DOP-C02 Monitoring and Logging Practice Question
A DevOps engineer needs to monitor the memory utilization of an Amazon EC2 instance running a critical application. Which AWS service should be used to collect and track this metric?
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 CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service for monitoring memory utilization of EC2 instances. CloudWatch can collect custom metrics like memory utilization via the CloudWatch Agent. AWS CloudTrail (A) records API calls, not memory metrics. AWS X-Ray (B) traces application requests, not system metrics. AWS Config (C) records resource configuration changes, not utilization metrics.
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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AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail is an auditing service that logs user activity and API calls made within an AWS account, capturing who made the request, from which IP, when, and what actions were taken. It does not collect or expose operating-system-level metrics like memory utilization from EC2 instances. For memory monitoring, you need an in-instance agent that publishes custom metrics to CloudWatch, not CloudTrail.
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AWS X-Ray
Why it's wrong here
AWS X-Ray is a distributed tracing service that analyzes and debugs microservices and serverless applications by capturing request paths, latency, errors, and downstream calls. It provides visibility into application performance from the perspective of individual requests, but it does not gather host-level memory utilization. Memory metrics are time-series measurements of system resources, which X-Ray is not designed to collect or store.
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AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config is a governance and compliance service that evaluates AWS resource configurations against desired policies, recording changes to resource properties, relationships, and compliance over time. It does not monitor the runtime performance or utilization of your resources. Memory utilization is a metric emitted by an operating system or application, not a configuration item, so Config cannot track it.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Why this is correct
Amazon CloudWatch is the native monitoring service for AWS, collecting metrics, logs, and events from AWS resources and applications. The CloudWatch Agent, installed on EC2 instances or on-premises servers, can collect memory utilization metrics (such as mem_used_percent) and publish them as custom metrics to CloudWatch, enabling alarms and dashboards. Without the agent, standard EC2 metrics include CPU, disk, and network but not memory, so using CloudWatch with the agent is the appropriate solution.
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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.