SOA-C02 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation Practice Question
A company is using AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy a web application. The application uses a custom Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that must be updated periodically. The SysOps administrator creates a new AMI and updates the Elastic Beanstalk environment's configuration. However, new instances are still launched with the old AMI. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
SOA-C02 often tests the misconception that updating the environment configuration automatically updates all underlying resources; candidates forget that launch templates are separate entities that must be explicitly updated.
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
✓
The environment is configured to use a launch template, and the AMI was not updated in the launch template.
When an Elastic Beanstalk environment is configured to use a launch template, the AMI ID is specified in the launch template, not in the environment's configuration. Updating the environment configuration alone does not change the launch template, so new instances continue to use the old AMI. The administrator must update the launch template with the new AMI ID.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The environment is configured to use a launch template, and the AMI was not updated in the launch template.
Why this is correct
When an Elastic Beanstalk environment uses a custom AMI through a launch template, the template holds the exact AMI ID. Updating the source AMI or rebuilding the environment does not change that ID. You must explicitly edit the launch template's ImageId (or use a new launch template version) and then rebuild, otherwise EC2 instances continue to launch with the original AMI. This is the direct cause of the environment still running the old configuration.
- ✗
The environment is using an immutable update policy.
Why it's wrong here
An immutable update policy is a deployment strategy that provisions a temporary Auto Scaling group with fresh instances, deploys the new application version to them, and then swaps traffic. Those new instances are created from the same launch template and thus the same AMI ID as the current environment. Therefore, if the launch template contains the stale AMI, an immutable deployment will simply reproduce the same stale image on the replacement instances. It does not refresh the AMI reference itself.
- ✗
The environment's platform version is pinned to an older version.
Why it's wrong here
The Elastic Beanstalk platform version refers to the managed platform stack (for example, Python 3.11 on Amazon Linux 2023), not to a custom AMI. Even if you pin the platform version, the environment will still use whatever AMI ID is specified in the launch template for your custom image. Pinning only prevents automatic updates to the base platform components; it has no mechanism to alter or rotate a user-supplied AMI ID. Thus an older pinned platform is unrelated to an outdated custom AMI being deployed.
- ✗
The old AMI was not deregistered.
Why it's wrong here
Deregistering an AMI only removes it from the EC2 console and prevents it from being used to launch new instances by AMI ID. The launch template for the Elastic Beanstalk environment continues to reference that AMI ID, and existing instances are unaffected by deregistration. If the AMI is still registered, the environment can still launch with it, so the failure to deregister is not what keeps the old AMI in use. The actual problem is the unchanged template reference, not whether the AMI was removed from the catalog.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.