The correct choice is to use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to direct traffic to an Application Load Balancer in each region. This approach works because latency-based routing automatically routes each user to the AWS Region that provides the lowest latency, while the ALB in each region distributes incoming traffic across healthy ECS Fargate tasks and performs health checks, ensuring both high availability and stateless operation. On the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of global traffic management patterns for containerized workloads, often appearing as a distractor where candidates might mistakenly choose Global Accelerator or a single-region setup. A common trap is forgetting that ALB is required for regional load balancing and service discovery with Fargate, as Route 53 alone cannot distribute traffic within a region. Memory tip: think "Latency first, then ALB" — Route 53 picks the fastest region, and ALB handles the local distribution.
SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of design for new solutions. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. 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 wants to design a highly available, stateless web application using Amazon ECS with Fargate. They need to distribute traffic across multiple AWS Regions for low latency. Which approach should they use?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to direct traffic to an Application Load Balancer in each region.
Option B is correct because Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs users to the region with the lowest latency, and using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in each region provides regional traffic distribution and health checks for the stateless ECS Fargate tasks. This combination ensures high availability and low latency across multiple AWS Regions, as the ALB handles HTTP/HTTPS traffic and integrates with ECS service discovery.
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.
✗
Use a single Network Load Balancer in the primary region with cross-zone load balancing.
Why it's wrong here
Single region does not provide multi-region distribution.
✓
Use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to direct traffic to an Application Load Balancer in each region.
Why this is correct
Latency routing and ALB are appropriate for stateless web apps.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Use Amazon CloudFront with origins in each region.
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is for static content caching.
✗
Use AWS Global Accelerator with Network Load Balancers in each region.
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse AWS Global Accelerator with Route 53 latency-based routing, assuming Global Accelerator is always better for multi-region latency, but the question specifically asks for a stateless web application using ECS Fargate, where an ALB is the natural fit and Route 53 latency-based routing provides the simplest and most cost-effective solution for HTTP/HTTPS traffic distribution across regions.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Route 53 latency-based routing works by maintaining a latency database between AWS regions and client IP ranges; when a DNS query arrives, Route 53 returns the IP of the resource (e.g., ALB) in the region with the lowest estimated latency. This approach relies on DNS resolution, which can be cached by clients and ISPs, potentially causing stale routing decisions; however, for stateless web applications, this is acceptable because each request is independent and can be handled by any region. In contrast, AWS Global Accelerator uses static Anycast IPs and leverages the AWS global network to route traffic to the optimal regional endpoint without DNS caching issues, but it is typically used with NLB for TCP/UDP traffic, not ALB for HTTP/HTTPS, unless you use a custom port mapping.
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.
TExam Day Tips
→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
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Design for New Solutions — This question tests Design for New Solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to direct traffic to an Application Load Balancer in each region. — Option B is correct because Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs users to the region with the lowest latency, and using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in each region provides regional traffic distribution and health checks for the stateless ECS Fargate tasks. This combination ensures high availability and low latency across multiple AWS Regions, as the ALB handles HTTP/HTTPS traffic and integrates with ECS service discovery.
What should I do if I get this SAP-C02 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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