SAP-C02 Practice Question: Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization
A company is modernizing its legacy PHP application to run on AWS. The application is currently deployed on a single on-premises server with a LAMP stack. The company wants to use containerization to improve scalability and deployment speed. Which AWS service should be used to run the containers with minimal operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
SAP-C02 often tests the distinction between 'containerized' and 'serverless functions' — candidates incorrectly pick Lambda for containerized web apps, ignoring Lambda's execution model and time limits.
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
✓
Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate
Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate is correct because Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that eliminates the need to provision, configure, or manage EC2 instances. The company can run its containerized PHP application without patching hosts or scaling clusters, delivering minimal operational overhead while supporting containerization for scalability and faster deployments.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda runs event-driven functions with a 15-minute execution limit and no persistent container runtime, so a long-running PHP LAMP application cannot be hosted there. It is tempting because Lambda does deploy code without server management, and would suit short, stateless, event-triggered tasks rather than a continuously served web application.
- ✓
Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate
Why this is correct
Fargate removes the need to provision or patch EC2 instances, since ECS schedules the PHP container tasks onto AWS-managed compute. This directly satisfies the minimal operational overhead constraint while delivering the containerisation-based scalability and faster deployments the LAMP migration requires.
- ✗
Amazon EKS with Amazon EC2
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EKS requires you to manage EC2 worker nodes, patching and cluster control-plane configuration, which adds operational overhead. It is tempting because EKS suits complex Kubernetes workloads needing fine-grained control, but the stem asks for minimal overhead, which AWS Fargate removes by running containers serverlessly.
- ✗
Amazon ECS with Amazon EC2 launch type
Why it's wrong here
Amazon ECS with the EC2 launch type leaves patching, scaling and capacity management of the underlying instances to you, so it does not deliver minimal operational overhead. It suits workloads needing GPU instances, specific instance families, or fine-grained host-level control that Fargate cannot provide.
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 |
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.