ANS-C01 Network Design Practice Question
A company is designing a highly available architecture for a web application using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) across multiple Availability Zones. The application requires that user sessions are maintained (sticky sessions) and that the ALB can offload SSL/TLS termination. Which configuration should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse the capabilities of a Network Load Balancer (Layer 4) with those of an Application Load Balancer (Layer 7), assuming that NLB supports sticky sessions and SSL termination, or they may overcomplicate the solution by adding reverse proxies when the ALB already provides the required features natively.
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
✓
Create an Application Load Balancer with a target group that has stickiness enabled and an HTTPS listener that terminates SSL.
An Application Load Balancer (ALB) natively supports both sticky sessions (via a generated cookie or application-based cookie) and SSL/TLS termination at the HTTPS listener. This allows the ALB to decrypt traffic before forwarding it to targets over HTTP, reducing backend processing overhead while maintaining session affinity across multiple Availability Zones for high availability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a Network Load Balancer with a target group that has stickiness enabled and an SSL listener.
Why it's wrong here
NLB does not support sticky sessions based on cookies; it only supports source IP stickiness.
- ✗
Launch EC2 instances as reverse proxy servers in front of the application servers, configure SSL on the reverse proxy, and use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic to the reverse proxies.
Why it's wrong here
This adds unnecessary complexity and a single point of failure.
- ✗
Create a Classic Load Balancer with sticky sessions and SSL termination.
Why it's wrong here
Classic Load Balancer is legacy and not recommended for new applications.
- ✓
Create an Application Load Balancer with a target group that has stickiness enabled and an HTTPS listener that terminates SSL.
Why this is correct
ALB supports sticky sessions using duration-based cookies and SSL termination on the listener.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,621 original ANS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.