SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is building a new microservices architecture on AWS using Amazon ECS with Fargate. The services need to communicate with each other using RESTful APIs. The company wants to implement an API gateway to handle authentication, rate limiting, and request routing. Which AWS service should be used as the API gateway?
⚠ Common exam trap
SAP-C02 often tests the distinction between load balancers and API gateways — candidates pick ALB because it does Layer 7 routing, but ALB lacks the authentication, usage plans, and rate-limiting features that define an API gateway.
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
✓
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway is the AWS-managed service purpose-built for creating, publishing, and managing RESTful APIs, with native support for authentication (IAM, Cognito, Lambda authorizers), rate limiting (usage plans and throttling), and request routing. It integrates directly with ECS/Fargate services via HTTP integrations or VPC Link, making it the correct choice for the described requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Network Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
A Network Load Balancer operates at layer 4, forwarding TCP connections without parsing HTTP, so it cannot perform REST authentication, rate limiting or path-based routing. It is tempting because it does provide load balancing and TLS termination, and would be correct for raw TCP or UDP traffic needing extreme throughput.
- ✗
Application Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
An ALB balances HTTP traffic but provides no API-key or JWT authorisation, usage plans, or per-client throttling, so authentication and rate limiting cannot be enforced. It is tempting because ALBs do route REST requests to ECS targets, and would suit internal load balancing behind an actual gateway.
- ✓
Amazon API Gateway
Why this is correct
Amazon API Gateway provides native RESTful API management, satisfying the authentication, rate limiting and request routing requirements. It integrates with Microsoft Entra ID via JWT authorisers or Lambda authorisers for token validation, and supports usage plans with throttling limits per API key. This offloads cross-cutting concerns from Fargate tasks, which otherwise need custom middleware.
- ✗
Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront caches and accelerates content delivery; it cannot issue API keys, validate JWTs, or apply per-method usage-plan throttling. It is tempting because CloudFront fronts APIs and terminates TLS, and would be correct for caching static assets or global content distribution rather than API management.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SAP-C02 question from scratch — 984 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.