SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
Network Topology
A company has three EC2 instances as shown in the exhibit. The company wants to use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic across these instances with cross-zone load balancing enabled. How will the traffic be distributed?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse cross-zone load balancing with zone-level distribution, mistakenly thinking traffic is split by availability zone count rather than by individual instance count, or they incorrectly attribute the least outstanding requests algorithm to the Application Load Balancer.
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
✓
Each instance receives an equal share of traffic.
With cross-zone load balancing enabled on an Application Load Balancer, traffic is distributed evenly across all registered targets regardless of the availability zone they reside in. Since there are three EC2 instances, each instance receives an equal share (33.3%) of the incoming traffic, ensuring balanced load across all instances.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Traffic is distributed evenly across the two availability zones.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-zone enabled means distribution is across instances, not AZs.
- ✗
Instances in us-east-1a receive 67% of traffic, us-east-1b receives 33%.
Why it's wrong here
That would be without cross-zone.
- ✓
Each instance receives an equal share of traffic.
Why this is correct
Cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic evenly across all instances.
- ✗
Traffic is sent to the instance with the least outstanding requests.
Why it's wrong here
That's the default routing algorithm, but not related to cross-zone distribution.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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