SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company wants to centrally manage backups for Amazon EBS volumes across multiple AWS accounts. They need a solution that can automatically back up volumes based on tags, retain backups according to a policy, and send notifications on failures. Which AWS service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates might confuse AWS Backup with native snapshot management or assume that a service like CloudFormation StackSets can handle backup automation, but only AWS Backup provides the centralized, policy-driven, cross-account backup management with notification capabilities required by the scenario.
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
✓
AWS Backup
AWS Backup is the correct service because it provides a centralized, policy-based backup solution for Amazon EBS volumes across multiple AWS accounts. It supports tag-based backup policies, retention rules, and integrates with Amazon CloudWatch Events and Amazon SNS to send notifications on failures, meeting all the stated requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS CloudFormation StackSets
Why it's wrong here
CloudFormation StackSets deploy and update resource templates across accounts, but they neither schedule tag-based EBS snapshots nor apply retention or failure notifications. It tempts because StackSets do provide cross-account orchestration. AWS Backup, with its backup plans and cross-account management, satisfies the tagging, retention and notification requirements.
- ✗
Amazon RDS automated backups
Why it's wrong here
RDS automated backups protect RDS database instances, not standalone EBS volumes, and cannot target volumes by tag across accounts. It tempts because RDS backups are automatic and policy-driven. AWS Backup is required to snapshot EBS volumes centrally with tag-based selection, retention rules and failure notifications.
- ✓
AWS Backup
Why this is correct
AWS Backup satisfies the cross-account, tag-driven requirement through backup policies applied at the organisation level, with lifecycle rules governing retention and Amazon EventBridge delivering failure notifications. Unlike EBS snapshots managed per-account, it centralises governance across accounts, meeting the centralised management constraint in the stem.
- ✗
Amazon S3 lifecycle policies
Why it's wrong here
S3 lifecycle policies transition or expire objects within S3 buckets; they cannot snapshot EBS volumes or notify on backup failures. It tempts because lifecycle rules do automate retention. AWS Backup provides the tag-driven EBS snapshot scheduling, retention policy and cross-account central management the scenario demands.
About these practice questions
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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.