SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of design for new solutions. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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.
Network Topology
A company has three EC2 instances as shown in the exhibit. The company wants to use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic across these instances with cross-zone load balancing enabled. How will the traffic be distributed?
Network Topology
A
Traffic is distributed evenly across the two availability zones.
Why wrong: Cross-zone enabled means distribution is across instances, not AZs.
B
Instances in us-east-1a receive 67% of traffic, us-east-1b receives 33%.
Why wrong: That would be without cross-zone.
C
Each instance receives an equal share of traffic.
Cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic evenly across all instances.
D
Traffic is sent to the instance with the least outstanding requests.
Why wrong: That's the default routing algorithm, but not related to cross-zone distribution.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Each instance receives an equal share of traffic.
With cross-zone load balancing enabled on an Application Load Balancer, traffic is distributed evenly across all registered targets regardless of the availability zone they reside in. Since there are three EC2 instances, each instance receives an equal share (33.3%) of the incoming traffic, ensuring balanced load across all instances.
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.
✗
Traffic is distributed evenly across the two availability zones.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-zone enabled means distribution is across instances, not AZs.
✗
Instances in us-east-1a receive 67% of traffic, us-east-1b receives 33%.
Why it's wrong here
That would be without cross-zone.
✓
Each instance receives an equal share of traffic.
Why this is correct
Cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic evenly across all instances.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Traffic is sent to the instance with the least outstanding requests.
Why it's wrong here
That's the default routing algorithm, but not related to cross-zone distribution.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse cross-zone load balancing with zone-level distribution, mistakenly thinking traffic is split by availability zone count rather than by individual instance count, or they incorrectly attribute the least outstanding requests algorithm to the Application Load Balancer.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, when cross-zone load balancing is enabled, each ALB node distributes traffic to all targets across all zones, effectively ignoring the zone boundaries. The default routing algorithm for ALB is round-robin, which cycles through the list of healthy targets in order, ensuring each target receives an approximately equal number of requests over time. In contrast, the least outstanding requests algorithm is a feature of the Network Load Balancer (NLB) and is not available for ALB.
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: Each instance receives an equal share of traffic. — With cross-zone load balancing enabled on an Application Load Balancer, traffic is distributed evenly across all registered targets regardless of the availability zone they reside in. Since there are three EC2 instances, each instance receives an equal share (33.3%) of the incoming traffic, ensuring balanced load across all instances.
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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