MLA-C01 Practice Question: ML Solution Monitoring, Maintenance, and Security
A company uses SageMaker Model Monitor to detect data drift. They want to receive alerts when drift is detected and automatically trigger a retraining pipeline. Which TWO steps should they implement? (Select TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates think Model Monitor can directly trigger pipelines or emit EventBridge events, but in reality it relies on CloudWatch metrics and SNS for downstream automation.
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
✓
Set up an SNS subscription that triggers a Lambda function to start the SageMaker Pipeline
Amazon SNS can be used to publish a notification when Model Monitor detects data drift, and a Lambda function subscribed to that SNS topic can invoke the SageMaker Pipeline to trigger retraining. This decouples the monitoring from the pipeline execution, allowing for flexible, event-driven automation. Option D is correct because Model Monitor emits CloudWatch metrics for data quality violations, and you can create a CloudWatch Alarm on those metrics to publish to an SNS topic, which can then trigger a retraining pipeline via Lambda or other integrations.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure Model Monitor to directly invoke a SageMaker Pipeline when drift is detected
Why it's wrong here
Model Monitor does not directly invoke pipelines; it publishes metrics to CloudWatch.
- ✗
Configure a SageMaker Processing job to run periodically and check drift
Why it's wrong here
This is an alternative to Model Monitor, not part of the alert/retraining flow.
- ✓
Set up an SNS subscription that triggers a Lambda function to start the SageMaker Pipeline
Why this is correct
Lambda function subscribed to SNS can start the pipeline programmatically.
- ✓
Create a CloudWatch Alarm on the data quality violation metric that publishes to an SNS topic
Why this is correct
CloudWatch Alarm triggered by violation metric sends alarm state to SNS.
- ✗
Create an EventBridge rule that triggers on Model Monitor drift events to start the pipeline
Why it's wrong here
Model Monitor does not emit events to EventBridge.
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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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This MLA-C01 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 MLA-C01 exam.