SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
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?
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
✓
The ALB connection draining is enabled with a very short timeout, causing in-flight connections to be dropped.
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.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The ALB connection draining is enabled with a very short timeout, causing in-flight connections to be dropped.
Why this is correct
Connection draining with a short timeout can cause 503 errors when the ALB stops sending traffic to an instance before in-flight requests complete.
- ✗
The EC2 instances are running out of memory.
Why it's wrong here
Memory exhaustion would typically cause application errors, not 503 errors from the ALB.
- ✗
The Auto Scaling group launch configuration uses an AMI that is not compatible with the instance type.
Why it's wrong here
An incompatible AMI would cause instances to fail to launch or be unhealthy, but would not cause intermittent 503 errors.
- ✗
The ALB health check is misconfigured, causing healthy instances to be marked unhealthy.
Why it's wrong here
Misconfigured health checks would cause the ALB to stop sending traffic to healthy instances, but this would not typically result in 503 errors.
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