SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new application that will be deployed on EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. The application must be highly available and must automatically recover from instance failures. Which solution should the architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'high availability' with 'fault tolerance' and assume that simply having two instances in different AZs (Option C) is sufficient, but without an auto-recovery mechanism like Auto Scaling, a failed instance remains down and requires manual remediation.
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 an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of two instances across two Availability Zones
An Auto Scaling group with a minimum of two instances across two Availability Zones ensures that if one instance or an entire AZ fails, the remaining instance continues to serve traffic, and Auto Scaling automatically launches a replacement instance to restore the desired count. This architecture provides both high availability and automatic recovery from instance failures without manual intervention.
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 single EC2 instance in one AZ and a standby instance in another AZ
Why it's wrong here
Requires manual failover, not automatic recovery.
- ✗
Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk with a single instance environment
Why it's wrong here
Single instance is not highly available.
- ✗
Use AWS CloudFormation to launch a single instance in each AZ
Why it's wrong here
CloudFormation does not automatically recover from failures.
- ✓
Use an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of two instances across two Availability Zones
Why this is correct
Auto Scaling automatically replaces failed instances and distributes across AZs.
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Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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