SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a multi-account environment with over 500 accounts. They need to enforce that all EC2 instances are launched only in approved instance families (e.g., t3, m5, c5). Which combination of AWS services provides the MOST scalable and effective enforcement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently choose reactive options like AWS Config or Lambda-based termination because they seem simpler, but the question asks for the 'MOST scalable and effective enforcement,' which requires preventive controls (SCPs and CloudFormation hooks) that block non-compliant launches entirely, rather than cleaning up after the fact.
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 service control policy (SCP) to deny ec2:RunInstances if the instance type is not in the approved list, and use AWS CloudFormation hooks to enforce the same.
SCPs provide preventive, account-level enforcement that blocks unauthorized EC2 instance launches before they occur, while CloudFormation hooks add a second layer of preventive control at the infrastructure-as-code level. This combination is the most scalable for 500+ accounts because SCPs are applied centrally via AWS Organizations and CloudFormation hooks operate at deployment time, ensuring no non-compliant instance is ever created.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use a service control policy (SCP) to deny ec2:RunInstances if the instance type is not in the approved list, and use AWS CloudFormation hooks to enforce the same.
Why this is correct
Preventive at the API level and works for CloudFormation deployments.
- ✗
Use AWS CloudTrail to trigger an AWS Lambda function that terminates non-compliant instances.
Why it's wrong here
Reactive and has latency.
- ✗
Use AWS Systems Manager to scan instances and apply a tag for non-compliance.
Why it's wrong here
Does not prevent launch.
- ✗
Use AWS Config rules to detect non-compliant instances and automatically terminate them.
Why it's wrong here
Reactive and may cause disruption.
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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.