SAP-C02 Practice Question: Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization
A company is migrating a multi-tier web application to AWS. The application consists of a stateless web tier and a stateful application tier that uses sticky sessions. The company wants to reduce operational overhead and improve elasticity. Which architecture should the solutions architect recommend?
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 an Application Load Balancer with sticky sessions for the web tier. Store session data in Amazon ElastiCache.
Using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with sticky sessions (session affinity) enables the web tier to be stateless and scale horizontally. The application tier can use ElastiCache for session state storage, making it stateless as well. This reduces overhead and improves elasticity. NLB with EFS is not suitable for session state; ALB with DynamoDB is overkill; CloudFront does not support sticky sessions.
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 an Application Load Balancer with sticky sessions for the web tier. Store session data in Amazon ElastiCache.
Why this is correct
ALB sticky sessions route requests to the same instance, but session data is stored externally in ElastiCache, allowing any instance to serve requests.
- ✗
Use Amazon CloudFront with an origin load balancer and store session data in the web tier's local storage.
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is a CDN, not suitable for sticky sessions or stateful web tiers.
- ✗
Use an Application Load Balancer with cross-zone load balancing and store session data in Amazon DynamoDB.
Why it's wrong here
While possible, DynamoDB adds latency and cost compared to ElastiCache for session storage, and cross-zone balancing is not relevant.
- ✗
Use a Network Load Balancer with instance targets and Amazon EFS to share session data.
Why it's wrong here
NLB does not support sticky sessions (HTTP cookies) and EFS is not designed for high-frequency session data updates.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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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.