SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new web application that will run on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application must handle sudden spikes in traffic without manual intervention. Which scaling approach should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse simple scaling policies with target tracking, assuming any policy based on CloudWatch alarms is sufficient, but simple scaling's cooldown period and single-step adjustment make it inadequate for sudden, sustained spikes that require rapid, continuous scaling.
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
✓
Target tracking scaling policies
Target tracking scaling policies are the correct choice because they allow Auto Scaling to automatically adjust capacity based on a target value for a specific CloudWatch metric (e.g., average CPU utilization or request count per target). This approach handles sudden traffic spikes without manual intervention by continuously monitoring the metric and adding or removing EC2 instances to maintain the target, making it ideal for unpredictable workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Manual scaling
Why it's wrong here
Manual scaling requires human intervention and is not automatic.
- ✗
Scheduled scaling
Why it's wrong here
Scheduled scaling is for predictable traffic patterns, not sudden spikes.
- ✓
Target tracking scaling policies
Why this is correct
Target tracking automatically adjusts capacity to maintain a target metric value.
- ✗
Simple scaling policies
Why it's wrong here
Simple scaling requires cooldown periods and may not handle spikes well.
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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.