SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company runs a stateful web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application stores session data locally on the instances. The company wants to improve availability and scalability. What should a 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
✓
Move session state to Amazon ElastiCache and make the application stateless.
Moving session state to Amazon ElastiCache makes the application stateless, allowing EC2 instances to be added or removed without session loss, which improves both availability and scalability. Option B (Auto Scaling alone) is wrong because without external session storage, scaling out will cause new instances to lack existing session data, and terminating instances will lose sessions. Option C (sticky sessions) is wrong because it only routes a user to the same instance, but if that instance fails, the session is lost. Option D (larger instances) is wrong because it does not address scalability; it only increases capacity of individual instances, but does not allow for horizontal scaling or improve availability beyond a single instance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Move session state to Amazon ElastiCache and make the application stateless.
Why this is correct
This decouples session state from instances, enabling scaling and fault tolerance.
- ✗
Use Auto Scaling to add more EC2 instances.
Why it's wrong here
This does not address the stateful session issue.
- ✗
Enable sticky sessions on the ALB.
Why it's wrong here
Sticky sessions help but don't prevent loss if the instance fails.
- ✗
Use larger EC2 instances to handle more sessions.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling up does not improve availability.
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