SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
Network Topology
A CloudFormation stack deployment failed with the status ROLLBACK_COMPLETE. What is the most likely cause?
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
✓
The IAM role used by CloudFormation does not have permission to create EC2 instances.
A stack status of ROLLBACK_COMPLETE indicates that CloudFormation successfully initiated resource creation but one or more resources failed, triggering a rollback. The most common cause is that the IAM role associated with the stack lacks permissions to create the required resources (e.g., EC2 instances). A template syntax error would cause a validation error before any resource creation begins, resulting in a status like CREATE_FAILED without a rollback. Wrong region selection would not cause a rollback after resources start being created; the stack would either succeed or fail due to availability issues. Option C is correct because insufficient IAM permissions are a frequent cause of resource creation failures leading to rollback.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The stack was created in the wrong AWS region.
Why it's wrong here
Region is specified at creation; rollback would not occur due to wrong region.
- ✗
The EC2 instance type is not available in the region.
Why it's wrong here
This could cause failure, but the error message would be different.
- ✓
The IAM role used by CloudFormation does not have permission to create EC2 instances.
Why this is correct
Insufficient permissions cause resource creation to fail, leading to rollback.
- ✗
The CloudFormation template has a syntax error.
Why it's wrong here
Syntax errors are caught before stack creation, not during resource creation.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-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 SAP-C02 exam.