SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A startup runs its application on Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type. The application uses an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic. During a recent marketing campaign, the application experienced high latency and some requests returned 503 errors. The team suspects that the tasks are hitting resource limits. The team wants to automatically scale the tasks based on CPU utilization. Which solution should the team implement?
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
✓
Configure Application Auto Scaling for the ECS service with a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization.
Uses Application Auto Scaling with a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization, which automatically adjusts the desired count of ECS tasks to maintain CPU utilization. Option B stops idle tasks via Lambda, but does not scale based on CPU utilization. Option C creates an Auto Scaling group for the ECS cluster, which is designed for EC2 instances, not Fargate tasks. Option D uses Lambda to periodically check CPU and update desired count, which is inefficient compared to native Application Auto Scaling. Therefore, Option A is correct.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure Application Auto Scaling for the ECS service with a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization.
Why this is correct
Target tracking automatically adjusts the desired count to maintain a target CPU utilization.
- ✗
Create a CloudWatch alarm that triggers a Lambda function to stop idle tasks.
Why it's wrong here
Stopping tasks does not address scaling up.
- ✗
Create an Auto Scaling group for the ECS cluster and configure it to scale based on CPU utilization.
Why it's wrong here
Auto Scaling groups manage EC2 instances, not ECS tasks directly.
- ✗
Use AWS Lambda to periodically check CPU utilization and update the desired count of the ECS service.
Why it's wrong here
Using Lambda to periodically poll CPU utilisation and manually adjust the desired count introduces a polling interval that cannot react quickly enough to sudden traffic spikes, whereas the correct solution—ECS Service Auto Scaling with a target tracking policy—adjusts capacity continuously based on real-time CloudWatch metrics. This approach is tempting because Lambda is often used for custom, event-driven scaling logic in systems that lack native auto-scaling support, such as when scaling third-party resources or performing scheduled capacity adjustments.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,660 original SAP-C02 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.