SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new microservices architecture on AWS. They need a solution for service discovery that allows services to register themselves and discover other services dynamically. The solution must be highly available and integrated with AWS-native services. Which AWS service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Amazon ECS Service Discovery (Option A) as a separate service, when it is actually a feature of AWS Cloud Map, leading them to overlook Cloud Map as the correct, standalone service for dynamic service discovery.
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
✓
AWS Cloud Map
AWS Cloud Map is the correct choice because it is a fully managed service discovery service that allows microservices to register themselves dynamically and discover other services via DNS or HTTP API calls. It integrates natively with AWS services like Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, and AWS Lambda, and provides high availability through automatic health checking and resource synchronization across AWS Regions.
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 ECS Service Discovery
Why it's wrong here
ECS Service Discovery registers tasks only within ECS, using Cloud Map namespaces; it does not serve services running on EC2, Lambda or other platforms. It is tempting as an AWS-native discovery option, and would be correct for ECS-only workloads, not the broader microservices estate described.
- ✗
Application Load Balancer (ALB)
Why it's wrong here
An ALB distributes traffic to registered targets but does not provide a queryable registry that services use to discover each other's endpoints. It is tempting because target groups track healthy instances, and would be correct for load balancing, not for service-to-service discovery.
- ✓
AWS Cloud Map
Why this is correct
AWS Cloud Map provides service discovery where instances register themselves via API and consumers resolve them dynamically through DNS or HTTP. It is fully AWS-native, highly available across Regions, and integrates with ECS, EKS and Lambda, meeting the dynamic registration requirement.
- ✗
Amazon Route 53 private hosted zones
Why it's wrong here
Route 53 private hosted zones resolve DNS names but require you to register and deregister records yourself; instances cannot self-register dynamically. It is tempting because DNS is a discovery mechanism, and would be correct for resolving static internal endpoints, not dynamic microservice registration.
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 |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 984 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.