SAP-C02 Practice Question: Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization
A company is migrating a critical application to AWS. The application requires consistent performance and low latency. The company has selected an instance type that meets the performance requirements. However, during testing, the application experiences variable performance due to CPU stealing from other instances on the same physical host. What should the company do to mitigate this issue?
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
✓
Use Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts for the instances
Dedicated Hosts provide dedicated physical servers, eliminating CPU stealing. Option B (placement group) helps with network performance, not CPU isolation. Option C (T2/T3 unlimited) is for burstable instances, not dedicated. Option D (C5 instance) does not prevent CPU stealing.
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 Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts for the instances
Why this is correct
Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts give the instance exclusive use of a physical server, so no other tenants share the host and CPU stealing cannot occur. This satisfies the requirement for consistent performance and low latency.
- ✗
Launch instances in a cluster placement group
Why it's wrong here
Cluster placement groups pack instances into a single Availability Zone to reduce network latency between them; they do not isolate CPU. The stem's CPU stealing requires a Dedicated Instance or Dedicated Host, which gives exclusive physical-core allocation. Cluster groups suit tightly-coupled HPC workloads needing low inter-node latency, not noisy-neighbour CPU contention.
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Use T2 or T3 instances with the unlimited credit option
Why it's wrong here
T2/T3 unlimited credits address burst-credit exhaustion, not CPU stealing: they let burstable instances sustain beyond baseline by paying surplus credits, but the underlying host still shares physical cores with other tenants. Dedicated Hosts or dedicated tenancy remove that contention. Unlimited mode suits spiky, low-average workloads needing occasional bursts, not consistent low-latency performance.
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Switch to a compute-optimized instance type such as C5
Why it's wrong here
Compute-optimised instances still run on shared hosts, so CPU stealing persists; the fix is dedicated tenancy or a dedicated host, which removes co-tenancy. It is tempting because C5 offers a higher CPU-to-memory ratio, and it would be the right choice when the workload is CPU-bound but co-tenancy is not the constraint.
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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.