ANS-C01 Network Design Practice Question
A company is designing a multi-Region Active-Active architecture using Application Load Balancers (ALBs) behind AWS Global Accelerator. The application requires sticky sessions (session affinity) and must maintain session persistence even during failover. Which configuration should be used to achieve this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume Global Accelerator can provide session affinity natively, similar to an ALB's stickiness feature, but Global Accelerator is a Layer 3/4 service and cannot maintain application-layer session state; the solution requires a custom cookie approach at the application level.
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
✓
Use a custom application cookie for stickiness that is consistent across all ALBs, and set the cookie domain to the Global Accelerator DNS name.
AWS Global Accelerator does not natively support session affinity (sticky sessions). To maintain session persistence across multi-Region ALBs during failover, you must use a custom application cookie that is consistent across all ALBs and set the cookie domain to the Global Accelerator DNS name. This ensures the client's browser sends the same cookie to any healthy ALB in any Region, preserving the session even when traffic shifts due to a failover.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable stickiness on each ALB individually and use a single Regional endpoint group.
Why it's wrong here
ALB stickiness is per ALB, not cross-Region, so failover would lose sessions.
- ✗
Configure Global Accelerator to use session affinity with the 'two-tuple' protocol.
Why it's wrong here
Global Accelerator does not support session affinity; traffic is distributed based on traffic dials and health.
- ✗
Configure Route 53 with latency-based routing and enable stickiness on each ALB.
Why it's wrong here
Route 53 does not provide session persistence; stickiness is per ALB and not maintained on failover.
- ✓
Use a custom application cookie for stickiness that is consistent across all ALBs, and set the cookie domain to the Global Accelerator DNS name.
Why this is correct
A custom cookie with a shared domain allows session persistence across ALBs in different Regions.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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