DOP-C02 SDLC Automation Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to implement a blue/green deployment for an application running on Amazon EC2 instances?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse AWS CloudFormation (which can define the infrastructure for blue/green deployments) with the actual deployment service that orchestrates the traffic shift, leading them to select CloudFormation instead of CodeDeploy or Elastic Beanstalk.
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
✓
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodeDeploy (Option B) is correct because it natively supports blue/green deployments for Amazon EC2 instances by allowing you to provision a new set of instances (the green environment), deploy the new application revision to them, and then shift traffic from the old (blue) environment to the new one. This is achieved through integration with an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) or Auto Scaling groups, where CodeDeploy manages the lifecycle of instances and traffic routing during the deployment process.
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 CloudFormation
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudFormation is an infrastructure-as-code service that provisions and manages AWS resources through templates. While it can create the EC2 instances or Auto Scaling groups used in a blue/green scenario, it does not inherently shift production traffic between two fixed environments or perform the routing swap itself. Achieving blue/green with CloudFormation would require custom UpdatePolicy hooks to CodeDeploy or manual stack updates, making it a supporting tool rather than the primary deployment orchestrator.
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AWS CodeDeploy
Why this is correct
AWS CodeDeploy is the correct choice because it provides a native blue/green deployment model for EC2/On-Premises and AWS Lambda workloads. During a blue/green deployment, CodeDeploy automatically provisions a new replacement fleet (green), registers it with the load balancer, and shifts traffic incrementally from the original fleet (blue) to the green fleet, with options for automatic rollback if deployment fails. Its built-in deployment lifecycle hooks and traffic-routing controls make it a fully managed service purpose-built for this strategy.
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AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Why this is correct
AWS Elastic Beanstalk supports blue/green deployments through its environment-swap feature: you deploy your new application version to a separate staging environment (green), then swap the CNAME of the blue environment with the green one to redirect production traffic instantly. This approach avoids downtime and allows quick rollback by swapping back if issues arise. Elastic Beanstalk is correct because it natively facilitates the environment-level traffic switch without requiring manual DNS or infrastructure reconfiguration.
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AWS OpsWorks
Why it's wrong here
AWS OpsWorks relies on Chef or Puppet for configuration management and supports rolling deployments by updating instances one at a time, but it lacks a native blue/green deployment mechanism. To implement blue/green with OpsWorks, you would need to manually create an entire second stack, re-run recipes, and then adjust routing—something OpsWorks does not orchestrate out of the box. Therefore, while it can manage existing instances, it is not tailored for the rapid environment swap required by blue/green.
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AWS CodeBuild
Why it's wrong here
AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces deployment artifacts. It has no functionality for deploying applications, managing server fleets, or shifting traffic between environments, so it could never handle blue/green staging and cutover. At most, it would be used in a pipeline to build a revision that a separate service like CodeDeploy or Elastic Beanstalk then deploys.
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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.