SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new application that will run on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application must be able to distribute incoming traffic across multiple instances. Which TWO AWS services can be used for this purpose? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The SAP-C02 exam often tests the distinction between services that perform actual load balancing (ALB, NLB) versus services that provide DNS-based routing (Route 53) or content delivery (CloudFront) or global traffic optimization (Global Accelerator), leading candidates to mistakenly select Route 53 or CloudFront as load balancers.
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
✓
Network Load Balancer
Option C (Network Load Balancer) is correct because it is an Elastic Load Balancing service that operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP/TLS) and distributes incoming traffic across targets such as EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group, using listeners and target groups. Option D (Application Load Balancer) is correct because it is an Elastic Load Balancing service that operates at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and also distributes incoming traffic across EC2 instances registered in target groups within an Auto Scaling group. Both load balancers integrate with Auto Scaling groups so that instances added or removed by scaling are automatically registered or deregistered as targets. Option A (Amazon CloudFront) is a content delivery network that caches and serves content from edge locations, not a load balancer for distributing traffic across EC2 instances. Option B (AWS Global Accelerator) improves global reachability and performance by routing traffic over the AWS global network to endpoints, but it is not the primary service for distributing traffic across multiple EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. Option E (Amazon Route 53) is a DNS service that can perform DNS-based routing, but it does not distribute incoming traffic across EC2 instances at the connection level like a load balancer.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches and serves content from edge locations; it does not load-balance traffic across EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. It is tempting because it fronts origins, but the required distribution is handled by Application Load Balancer or Network Load Balancer.
- ✗
AWS Global Accelerator
Why it's wrong here
Global Accelerator routes traffic over the AWS global network to regional endpoints using static anycast IP addresses; it does not balance requests across EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. It is tempting for multi-Region failover, but the required distribution uses Application Load Balancer or Network Load Balancer.
- ✓
Network Load Balancer
Why this is correct
Network Load Balancer operates at layer 4, distributing TCP and UDP traffic across targets in the Auto Scaling group by flow hash. It satisfies the traffic-distribution requirement while preserving the client source IP address and supporting extreme throughput and low latency.
- ✓
Application Load Balancer
Why this is correct
Application Load Balancer operates at layer 7, distributing HTTP and HTTPS requests across the Auto Scaling group's instances using routing rules, health checks and target groups. It satisfies the traffic-distribution requirement and adds content-based routing and TLS termination.
- ✗
Amazon Route 53
Why it's wrong here
Route 53 is a DNS service that resolves names to endpoints, including weighted and latency routing; it does not distribute traffic across instances within an Auto Scaling group. It is tempting because it can steer traffic between regions, but here the load balancing is done by Application Load Balancer or Network Load Balancer.
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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.