SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new web application that will run on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application must be highly available across multiple Availability Zones. The company wants to ensure that if an EC2 instance fails, the load balancer stops sending traffic to it. Which two steps should the architect take? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers think simply using an ALB or a single target group automatically provides health-based traffic routing, but without explicitly configuring a health check on the target group, the ALB will continue sending traffic to failed instances.
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
✓
Configure a health check on the ALB for the target group
Configuring a health check on the ALB for the target group allows the load balancer to periodically send health check requests to each registered EC2 instance. If an instance fails to respond with a healthy status (e.g., HTTP 200) within the configured interval and threshold, the ALB automatically deregisters it and stops routing traffic to it, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.
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 Network Load Balancer instead of an ALB
Why it's wrong here
NLB is for TCP/UDP traffic, not HTTP.
- ✗
Use an Application Load Balancer with a single target group
Why it's wrong here
This is not a step for high availability; multiple target groups are not required.
- ✓
Configure a health check on the ALB for the target group
Why this is correct
Health checks allow ALB to detect unhealthy instances and stop routing traffic.
- ✓
Use an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of two instances across two Availability Zones
Why this is correct
Auto Scaling ensures instances are replaced and distributed across AZs.
- ✗
Launch all EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone
Why it's wrong here
Single AZ does not provide high availability.
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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.