SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new application that will run on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application needs to store session state. Which AWS service provides a fully managed, highly scalable solution for session state management?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates choose Amazon DynamoDB because it is fully managed and scalable, but they overlook the fact that session state requires extremely low latency and automatic TTL expiration, which are native strengths of Redis but require additional configuration (e.g., DynamoDB TTL) and still cannot match Redis's in-memory performance.
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 ElastiCache for Redis
Amazon ElastiCache for Redis is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, in-memory data store that is ideal for session state management. Redis offers sub-millisecond latency, built-in replication, and automatic failover, making it highly scalable and durable for session data. The Application Load Balancer can be configured with stickiness (session affinity) to route requests to the same EC2 instance, but using ElastiCache for Redis decouples session state from the compute layer, enabling stateless application tiers and seamless scaling.
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 DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value and document database, not a session state management service; it lacks built-in session replication, expiry, and locking mechanisms that a dedicated service like ElastiCache for Redis provides. It is tempting because its low-latency performance and fully managed scaling make it ideal for storing session data in a custom implementation, and it would be correct if the question asked for a durable, serverless database for session persistence rather than a managed caching layer.
- ✓
Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
Why this is correct
ElastiCache for Redis is a fully managed, highly scalable, in-memory data store ideal for session state.
- ✗
Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
S3 is object storage and not designed for low-latency session state access.
- ✗
Amazon RDS for MySQL
Why it's wrong here
RDS is a relational database, which adds latency and overhead compared to in-memory caching.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,660 original SAP-C02 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.