DOP-C02 Configuration Management and IaC Practice Question
An organization uses AWS OpsWorks for configuration management. They want to migrate to AWS Systems Manager to reduce costs and improve flexibility. Their current stack includes custom Chef recipes that manage package installations and service configurations. What is the MOST effective migration strategy?
⚠ Common exam trap
DOP-C02 often tests whether candidates conflate provisioning (CloudFormation) or deployment (CodeDeploy) with configuration management; the trap is picking CloudFormation because it 'manages infrastructure' when the requirement is ongoing state enforcement.
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
✓
Translate Chef recipes into Systems Manager State Manager associations and use Run Command for ad-hoc tasks.
Systems Manager State Manager associations can enforce desired-state configuration (package installs, service states) on a schedule, directly replacing the convergent behavior of Chef recipes, while Run Command handles ad-hoc or one-off execution. This maps OpsWorks Chef functionality onto native Systems Manager capabilities without introducing new tooling.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use AWS CloudFormation to recreate the entire infrastructure and manage configurations.
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudFormation is an infrastructure-as-code service that provisions and manages AWS resources, not a configuration management tool for instance OS state. Recreating the entire infrastructure to apply Chef-style desired-state configurations is wasteful and brittle, and it does nothing to continuously remediate drift on running instances. While CloudFormation can call SSM associations as custom resources, the correct configuration-management replacement is State Manager, not CFN itself.
- ✗
Use AWS CodeDeploy to replace OpsWorks and manage configurations.
Why it's wrong here
AWS CodeDeploy handles application deployments by pushing or pulling revisions to compute instances, but it lacks an idempotent, desired-state configuration model for system-level settings, packages, and services. It has no concept of run lists or cookbooks, and its lifecycle hooks are not designed for ongoing configuration enforcement. CodeDeploy therefore cannot replace OpsWorks's configuration-management capability; it only automates release delivery.
- ✓
Translate Chef recipes into Systems Manager State Manager associations and use Run Command for ad-hoc tasks.
Why this is correct
Systems Manager State Manager associations can enforce a desired state on EC2 instances by running SSM documents that are idempotent, similar to Chef's converge model, and can directly execute existing Chef recipes using the built-in AWS-ApplyChefRecipes document. Run Command complements this by providing on-demand, ad-hoc command execution without needing a managed node group or persistent agent configuration. Migrating to SSM removes OpsWorks per-node costs and creates a more flexible, hybrid-amenable control plane integrated with IAM and CloudWatch.
- ✗
Keep OpsWorks but integrate it with Systems Manager for hybrid management.
Why it's wrong here
Keeping OpsWorks while adding Systems Manager integration preserves the paid OpsWorks layer and its associated operational overhead, so it does not reduce costs or improve flexibility. OpsWorks is a legacy service with limited custom lineage and no first-class support for modern SSM automation features; hybrid management would be better served by moving entirely to SSM State Manager. This option merely adds a second tool rather than consolidating on a single, flexible, cost-effective configuration management platform.
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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
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