- A
Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Gateway Load Balancer to distribute traffic evenly across all firewall instances in all Availability Zones.
Cross-zone load balancing ensures that traffic is balanced across all healthy targets, improving scaling and reducing latency.
- B
Increase the size of the firewall instances to larger instance types to handle more traffic per instance.
Why wrong: This may help but does not solve the scaling issue; the auto-scaling group should scale out, not up.
- C
Create additional Gateway Load Balancer endpoints in each Availability Zone and use a separate transit gateway route table for each AZ.
Why wrong: This increases complexity and does not guarantee even distribution.
- D
Configure the auto-scaling group to use a step scaling policy based on network throughput.
Why wrong: This helps scaling but does not address the distribution of traffic across instances.
Quick Answer
The answer is to enable cross-zone load balancing on the Gateway Load Balancer. This is correct because by default, a Gateway Load Balancer only routes traffic to firewall instances within the same Availability Zone as the GWLB endpoint, which can overload a single zone’s resources and prevent the auto-scaling group from scaling based on overall demand. Enabling cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic evenly across all healthy firewall instances in all Availability Zones, ensuring the firewall can handle the full traffic load and maintain low latency. On the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of Gateway Load Balancer cross-zone load balancing for firewall inspection in a multi-account transit gateway architecture—a common trap is assuming GWLB distributes traffic across zones by default. Remember the mnemonic: “GWLB stays in its lane until you flip the cross-zone switch.”
SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of design solutions for organizational complexity. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. 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 large enterprise has a multi-account AWS environment managed through AWS Organizations. The central networking team uses a transit gateway in a shared services VPC to connect all VPCs. The security team requires that all traffic between VPCs be inspected by a third-party firewall appliance that is deployed in an auto-scaling group in the shared services VPC. The firewall appliance is configured as a Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) endpoint. The transit gateway has a route table that sends all inter-VPC traffic to the GWLB endpoint. Recently, the operations team noticed that some applications are experiencing high latency and packet loss when communicating across VPCs. Upon investigation, they found that the firewall appliance is not scaling properly. Which solution should be implemented to ensure that the firewall can handle the traffic load and maintain low latency?
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
Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Gateway Load Balancer to distribute traffic evenly across all firewall instances in all Availability Zones.
Option A is correct because Gateway Load Balancers (GWLB) by default do not distribute traffic across Availability Zones (AZs); they only send traffic to targets in the same AZ as the GWLB endpoint. Enabling cross-zone load balancing allows the GWLB to distribute traffic evenly across all healthy firewall instances in all AZs, which prevents overloading a single AZ's instances and ensures the auto-scaling group can scale effectively based on overall load, reducing latency and packet loss.
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.
- ✓
Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Gateway Load Balancer to distribute traffic evenly across all firewall instances in all Availability Zones.
Why this is correct
Cross-zone load balancing ensures that traffic is balanced across all healthy targets, improving scaling and reducing latency.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Increase the size of the firewall instances to larger instance types to handle more traffic per instance.
Why it's wrong here
This may help but does not solve the scaling issue; the auto-scaling group should scale out, not up.
- ✗
Create additional Gateway Load Balancer endpoints in each Availability Zone and use a separate transit gateway route table for each AZ.
Why it's wrong here
This increases complexity and does not guarantee even distribution.
- ✗
Configure the auto-scaling group to use a step scaling policy based on network throughput.
Why it's wrong here
This helps scaling but does not address the distribution of traffic across instances.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates assume Gateway Load Balancers inherently distribute traffic across all Availability Zones like Application Load Balancers do, but in reality, GWLB endpoints are zonal by default and require explicit cross-zone load balancing to spread traffic across AZs.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Gateway Load Balancers operate at the network layer (Layer 3) and use GENEVE encapsulation (port 6081) to tunnel traffic to firewall appliances. By default, GWLB endpoints are zonal, meaning traffic from a given subnet is only sent to targets in the same AZ. Enabling cross-zone load balancing changes this behavior, allowing the GWLB to distribute flows across all AZs, which is critical for auto-scaling groups that rely on aggregate metrics like average CPU or network throughput to trigger scaling events. Without cross-zone load balancing, a single AZ's instances may become saturated while others remain idle, causing the auto-scaling group to not scale out because the aggregate metric stays low.
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.
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Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity — study guide chapter
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SAP-C02 question test?
Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity — This question tests Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Gateway Load Balancer to distribute traffic evenly across all firewall instances in all Availability Zones. — Option A is correct because Gateway Load Balancers (GWLB) by default do not distribute traffic across Availability Zones (AZs); they only send traffic to targets in the same AZ as the GWLB endpoint. Enabling cross-zone load balancing allows the GWLB to distribute traffic evenly across all healthy firewall instances in all AZs, which prevents overloading a single AZ's instances and ensures the auto-scaling group can scale effectively based on overall load, reducing latency and packet loss.
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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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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.
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