SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application experiences intermittent latency spikes. The operations team has enabled detailed CloudWatch metrics and EC2 instance status checks. The team needs to identify the root cause of the latency. Which TWO actions should the team take to diagnose the issue? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse network-level diagnostics (VPC Flow Logs) or aggregate metrics (ALB detailed monitoring) with the application-level, user-experience-focused diagnostics needed to pinpoint the root cause of latency spikes in a web application.
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
✓
Set up an Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics canary that follows a step-by-step guide through the application and monitor the step durations.
CloudWatch Synthetics canaries simulate user workflows step by step, and monitoring step durations helps pinpoint which specific part of the application is causing latency spikes. This provides granular, end-to-end visibility into the user experience beyond what aggregate metrics offer. Option D is correct because ALB access logs contain detailed information about each request, including timestamps, processing times, and response times. Analyzing these logs can help identify specific requests that contribute to high latency, such as those with long target response times or backend errors.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable detailed monitoring (1-minute metrics) on the ALB and create a CloudWatch dashboard to view the RequestCount and TargetResponseTime metrics.
Why it's wrong here
Detailed monitoring provides aggregated metrics, not per-request timing.
- ✗
Integrate the application with AWS X-Ray and enable tracing on the EC2 instances to capture trace data for all requests.
Why it's wrong here
X-Ray is useful but requires code changes; the question asks for two actions, and A and D are more immediate.
- ✓
Set up an Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics canary that follows a step-by-step guide through the application and monitor the step durations.
Why this is correct
Correct: Canaries can measure end-to-end latency and pinpoint slow steps.
- ✓
Enable access logging on the ALB and analyze the logs to find requests with high latency.
Why this is correct
Correct: ALB access logs contain per-request fields like target_processing_time and response_time.
- ✗
Enable VPC Flow Logs on the subnets where the EC2 instances reside and analyze the logs for packet loss.
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs show network flows but not application-level latency.
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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.