The correct choice is to increase the health check timeout and decrease the unhealthy threshold. This resolves 503 errors caused by health check failures by giving the target instance more time to respond before being marked unhealthy, while also requiring fewer consecutive failures to remove it from rotation—preventing false negatives from transient latency spikes. On the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of how Application Load Balancer health check settings directly impact application availability, often appearing in questions about intermittent errors where the root cause is overly aggressive health checking. A common trap is confusing timeout with interval: remember that timeout is the maximum wait for a response, while interval is how often the check runs. For a memory tip, think “timeout up, threshold down” to keep healthy instances serving traffic during brief slowdowns.
SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of continuous improvement for existing solutions. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Users report intermittent 503 errors. The ALB target group health checks are failing. Which step is MOST likely to resolve the issue?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "most likely"
Why it matters: Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Increase the health check timeout and decrease the unhealthy threshold.
Option C is correct because increasing the timeout for health checks can prevent false negatives due to transient delays. Option A is wrong because it does not address health check failures. Option B is wrong because it reduces the chance of healthy instances being marked unhealthy. Option D is wrong because it does not change health check behavior.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Change the health check protocol from HTTP to HTTPS.
Why it's wrong here
Protocol change does not address timeout or threshold issues.
✗
Use a Network Load Balancer instead of ALB.
Why it's wrong here
NLB does not have application-layer health checks needed for HTTP errors.
✗
Increase the number of instances in the target group.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling does not fix health check configuration issues.
✓
Increase the health check timeout and decrease the unhealthy threshold.
Why this is correct
Gives instances more time to respond and reduces sensitivity to transient failures.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "most likely" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
→Underline the problem statement mentally.
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A healthcare organisation deploys an application with a public-facing web tier and a private database tier. The database subnet has no public IP and only accepts connections from the web tier's security group. Questions like this test whether you can design cloud network isolation using VNets/VPCs, subnets, and security group rules.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which SAP-C02 exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions — This question tests Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Increase the health check timeout and decrease the unhealthy threshold. — Option C is correct because increasing the timeout for health checks can prevent false negatives due to transient delays. Option A is wrong because it does not address health check failures. Option B is wrong because it reduces the chance of healthy instances being marked unhealthy. Option D is wrong because it does not change health check behavior.
What should I do if I get this SAP-C02 question wrong?
Identify which SAP-C02 exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "most likely". Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. Users report intermittent 503 errors. CloudWatch logs show the ALB's healthy host count occasionally drops to zero during traffic spikes. Which design change should a solutions architect implement to improve availability?
medium
A.Enable EC2 instance refresh for the Auto Scaling group.
✓ B.Increase the size of the Auto Scaling group and adjust scaling policies.
C.Purchase Reserved Instances for the existing EC2 fleet.
D.Replace the ALB with a larger Network Load Balancer.
Why B: The correct answer is D because increasing the number of instances and adding an Auto Scaling group ensures capacity can handle spikes, preventing all hosts from becoming unhealthy. Option A is wrong because Reserved Instances don't help with scaling. Option B is wrong because instance refresh is for updates, not capacity. Option C is wrong because a larger ALB does not fix the root cause of insufficient capacity.
Variation 2. A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. Users report intermittent 503 errors. The Auto Scaling group has a minimum of 2 and maximum of 10 instances. CloudWatch metrics show that CPU utilization rarely exceeds 30%. What is the MOST likely cause of the 503 errors?
medium
✓ A.The ALB connection draining is enabled with a very short timeout, causing in-flight connections to be dropped.
B.The EC2 instances are running out of memory.
C.The Auto Scaling group launch configuration uses an AMI that is not compatible with the instance type.
D.The ALB health check is misconfigured, causing healthy instances to be marked unhealthy.
Why A: The 503 errors are likely due to the ALB connection draining setting. If connection draining is enabled and the drain timeout is too short, in-flight requests may be terminated, causing 503 errors. Low CPU utilization suggests the instances are not overloaded.
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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.
Question Discussion
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