SOA-C02 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation Practice Question
A company is deploying a microservices application on AWS using Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type. The SysOps administrator needs to automate the deployment process so that when a new Docker image is pushed to Amazon ECR, the ECS service is updated with the new image. Which THREE AWS services should be used together to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)
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
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AWS CodePipeline
The correct combination to automate deployment when a new Docker image is pushed to Amazon ECR is AWS CodePipeline, Amazon ECR, and Amazon ECS. CodePipeline orchestrates the CI/CD pipeline triggered by an ECR push event. ECR stores the Docker images. ECS with Fargate runs the containers and updates the service with the new image. Option A (CloudFormation) is for infrastructure provisioning, not continuous deployment. Option E (Systems Manager) is for management and operations, not CI/CD.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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AWS CloudFormation
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudFormation is infrastructure as code; it defines resources like the ECS cluster, task definitions, and services, but it does not natively detect ECR image pushes or orchestrate the build-test-deploy sequence. While custom resource triggers could couple it to ECR events, that would require building a custom pipeline component, which is neither automated nor standard. Therefore, CloudFormation is not the right choice for continuous deployment of microservices.
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AWS CodePipeline
Why this is correct
AWS CodePipeline is the fully managed CI/CD orchestrator for exactly this scenario. You can configure an ECR source action that listens for new image pushes, then run build/test stages, and finally use the ECS deployment action (with imagedefinitions.json) to update an ECS service. It automatically creates the task definition revision and applies rolling updates to containers, making it the correct component for continuous delivery.
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Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
Why this is correct
Amazon ECR stores the Docker images for each microservice and emits an event whenever a new image is pushed to a repository. CodePipeline can subscribe to those events (through an ECR source action or EventBridge) and use the image URI as the trigger for the deployment workflow. Without ECR there would be no image registry acting as the versioned source of truth for the pipeline.
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Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
Why this is correct
Amazon ECS is the compute tier that runs the microservices as tasks and services. When CodePipeline deploys, it updates the ECS service with a new task definition that references the fresh image, and ECS performs a rolling replacement of running containers. Your application actually executes here, so ECS is an integral part of the target environment for this pipeline.
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AWS Systems Manager
Why it's wrong here
AWS Systems Manager provides operational capabilities like Run Command, Patch Manager, OpsCenter, and Parameter Store, but it does not provide a native CI/CD pipeline or an ECS deployment action. Although SSM automation documents can trigger API calls, using them to watch ECR pushes and update ECS services would require significant custom scripting and still wouldn't match CodePipeline's built-in ECS integration. It's therefore not the correct service for this continuous-deployment requirement.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.