ANS-C01 Network Design Practice Question
A company has a VPC with multiple subnets across two AZs. The VPC is connected to an on-premises data center via AWS Direct Connect. The company wants to ensure that traffic between the VPC and on-premises is load-balanced across two Direct Connect virtual interfaces (VIFs) for high availability. Which configuration should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume VPN tunnels are required for load-balancing or that a single high-bandwidth connection is sufficient, missing the core requirement for active-active load-balancing and high availability via BGP ECMP across multiple VIFs.
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
✓
Configure two VIFs and use BGP to advertise the same prefixes with equal metrics to enable ECMP.
Configuring two Direct Connect virtual interfaces (VIFs) with BGP and advertising the same prefixes with equal metrics (e.g., equal MED or AS-path length) enables Equal-Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) routing. This allows the VPC and on-premises routers to load-balance traffic across both VIFs, providing high availability and active-active utilization of the Direct Connect connections.
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 two VIFs and use BGP to advertise the same prefixes with equal metrics to enable ECMP.
Why this is correct
BGP ECMP allows load balancing across multiple VIFs.
- ✗
Configure a VPN connection over each VIF and use equal-cost routes between the VPN tunnels.
Why it's wrong here
VPN adds overhead and complexity.
- ✗
Configure a single Direct Connect VIF with a 10 Gbps connection and a single BGP session.
Why it's wrong here
A single VIF with one BGP session cannot provide load-balanced traffic across two physical connections, as the scenario requires two VIFs—one per Direct Connect link—each with its own BGP session to enable active-active or active-passive failover. This configuration is tempting because a single 10 Gbps VIF offers high bandwidth and simplicity, and would be correct if the goal were merely to maximise throughput over one link without needing redundancy across separate physical paths.
- ✗
Configure two VIFs with static routes pointing to different on-premises IPs.
Why it's wrong here
Static routes do not provide active load balancing.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ANS-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 ANS-C01 exam.