SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company is using AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. The operations team wants to be notified when a stack operation fails. Which approach is the MOST efficient?
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 an SNS topic as a notification option in the CloudFormation stack
CloudFormation can directly publish to SNS topics on stack events, including failures. Option A is inefficient because it requires polling. Option C is not native. Option D is expensive and complex.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a scheduled CloudWatch Events rule that calls the DescribeStacks API and sends an alert if status is FAILED
Why it's wrong here
Polling is inefficient and not real-time.
- ✓
Configure an SNS topic as a notification option in the CloudFormation stack
Why this is correct
CloudFormation sends real-time notifications on stack events.
- ✗
Use a Lambda function that is invoked by CloudFormation via custom resource
Why it's wrong here
Custom resources are for provisioning, not event notification.
- ✗
Use Amazon EventBridge to monitor CloudFormation API calls and trigger a Lambda function
Why it's wrong here
Monitoring CloudFormation API calls via EventBridge (often sourced from CloudTrail) is a valid mechanism for auditing specific API actions or reacting to security-related events, such as unauthorised resource changes. However, for detecting a stack operation failure, it is not the most efficient. CloudFormation directly publishes detailed stack status events, including failures, to Amazon SNS or EventBridge itself. Reacting to these specific, high-level stack status events provides a more direct and precise notification mechanism than parsing lower-level API call logs to infer a failure.
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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.