SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company runs a critical application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. They want to be notified immediately if any instance fails a status check. What is the simplest solution?
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
✓
Create a CloudWatch alarm on the StatusCheckFailed metric with an SNS action.
CloudWatch can monitor the EC2 StatusCheckFailed metric and trigger an SNS notification when an instance fails a status check. This is the simplest solution because it uses built-in metrics and requires no custom scripting. Option A uses ELB health checks which monitor load balancer target health, not instance status checks. Option B uses Systems Manager Automation which is not real-time. Option D uses CloudTrail which logs API calls, not status checks.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure an ELB health check and monitor the unhealthy host count.
Why it's wrong here
ELB health checks only mark instances unhealthy for load-balancer routing; they do not notify anyone, and the unhealthy host count is not an immediate alert. Tempting because it touches instance health, it is correct for removing failing targets from rotation, not for notification.
- ✗
Use AWS Systems Manager Automation to check instance status periodically.
Why it's wrong here
Systems Manager Automation polls on a schedule, so notification is delayed rather than immediate, and it adds runbook overhead. It is tempting for remediation workflows, where it would be correct for automatically restarting or patching instances, not for instant status-check alerting.
- ✓
Create a CloudWatch alarm on the StatusCheckFailed metric with an SNS action.
Why this is correct
CloudWatch's StatusCheckFailed metric directly reports EC2 instance health, and an alarm on it triggers an SNS notification the moment a check fails. This satisfies the immediate-notification requirement with minimal configuration, avoiding custom scripts or Lambda polling. Auto Scaling group events alone would not surface individual instance status-check failures promptly.
- ✗
Enable AWS CloudTrail and create a metric filter for EC2 instance failures.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API activity, not EC2 status-check state, so a metric filter would never match instance failures. It is tempting because CloudTrail feeds CloudWatch Logs, but it is correct for auditing who called which API, not for alerting on health.
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JA
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.