PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
Exhibit
Refer to the exhibit. Health check failed on target group 'tg-app' with the following: - Target: i-0abc123def456 (10.0.1.5:8080) - Health check protocol: HTTP - Health check path: /health - Health check response: 503 Service Unavailable - The application logs show: "Health check endpoint /health is returning 503 due to database connection timeout."
Refer to the exhibit. An Application Load Balancer is configured to route traffic to an Auto Scaling group of web servers. The health check for the target group is failing. The web servers are healthy and running, but the health check endpoint is returning a 503 status code because the application cannot connect to the database. The database is an Amazon RDS instance in the same VPC. Which action should the solutions architect take to resolve the health check failure?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently think the health check must reflect the full application stack (including database connectivity), but AWS best practice is to keep health checks lightweight and independent of external dependencies to prevent cascading failures.
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
✓
Change the health check endpoint to a static page that does not require database connectivity.
The health check endpoint should validate the web server's ability to serve traffic, not the database's availability. By changing the health check to a static page (e.g., /health.html) that does not depend on database connectivity, the load balancer will correctly assess the web server's health independently. This decouples the health check from the database, preventing cascading failures where a database outage causes all web servers to be marked unhealthy and removed from the target group.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Restart the web server instances to reset the database connection.
Why it's wrong here
Restarting does not fix the root cause of the database connection timeout.
- ✓
Change the health check endpoint to a static page that does not require database connectivity.
Why this is correct
A static health check page will return 200 even if the database is down, allowing the instance to pass the health check.
- ✗
Modify the application's health check endpoint to return a 200 OK status even when the database is unavailable.
Why it's wrong here
Masking the failure would cause traffic to be sent to unhealthy instances.
- ✗
Increase the health check interval to allow more time for the database to respond.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the interval does not fix the underlying database connectivity issue.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 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 PAS-C01 exam.