SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company is using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in front of an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The application has a health check endpoint at /health. Recently, the ALB is marking instances as unhealthy even though the application is running. The health check settings are: interval 30 seconds, timeout 5 seconds, unhealthy threshold 2. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
SAP-C02 often tests whether candidates blame the interval or threshold settings when the real culprit is a timeout that is shorter than the application's response time — a classic false-unhealthy scenario.
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
✓
The health check timeout of 5 seconds is too short for the application to respond.
The most likely cause is that the health check timeout of 5 seconds is too short for the application to respond to /health within the allotted time (C). If the application takes longer than 5 seconds to respond — due to slow database calls, cold starts, or heavy load — the ALB marks the check as failed. After two consecutive failures (unhealthy threshold 2), the instance is marked unhealthy even though the process is running.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The health check interval of 30 seconds is too long.
Why it's wrong here
A 30-second interval is a normal ALB health check setting and does not itself cause unhealthy marking; the timeout of 5 seconds against a slow /health response is the likely culprit. A longer interval would be the answer if the concern were reducing health check frequency to lower load on instances.
- ✗
The unhealthy threshold of 2 is too high.
Why it's wrong here
A higher unhealthy threshold makes the ALB more tolerant, not less, so it cannot cause instances to be marked unhealthy. It is tempting because threshold values look like tuning knobs, and raising the threshold would be correct if the goal were to avoid flapping due to a single transient health check failure.
- ✓
The health check timeout of 5 seconds is too short for the application to respond.
Why this is correct
When the application's response exceeds five seconds, the ALB health check times out and counts a failure; two consecutive failures within the 30-second interval mark the instance unhealthy. Lengthening the timeout above the application's response time resolves the false unhealthy status.
- ✗
The health check path /health is not accessible from the ALB.
Why it's wrong here
The ALB cannot reach /health, so it marks instances unhealthy after two failed checks; the path may be wrong or blocked by a security group. It is tempting because ALB health checks do require a reachable endpoint, and this would be the cause if the application itself were failing to serve that route.
About these practice questions
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JA
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.