SOA-C02 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation Practice Question
A company needs to deploy a new version of an application to an Auto Scaling group. The deployment must ensure that the new version is deployed to all instances, and if any instance fails, the deployment should roll back. Which deployment strategy should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'rolling deployment with rollback' with 'blue/green deployment' because both involve health checks, but blue/green does not automatically roll back on instance failure during the update—it only switches traffic after full validation, making it unsuitable for the stated requirement of automatic rollback on any instance failure.
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
✓
Rolling deployment with rollback
A rolling deployment with rollback is the correct choice because it updates instances incrementally, replacing the old version with the new one across the Auto Scaling group while monitoring for failures. If any instance fails to become healthy (e.g., failing an ELB health check), the deployment automatically rolls back to the previous version, ensuring no partial or failed deployment persists. This strategy balances safety and speed, directly meeting the requirement to deploy to all instances with automatic rollback on failure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Blue/green deployment
Why it's wrong here
Blue/green deployment runs two full environments side by side and switches production traffic to the new environment only after validation. It does not update instances incrementally inside an existing Auto Scaling group; instead it provisions a separate, parallel fleet and uses DNS or a load balancer to cut over. That makes it unsuitable for gradually rolling a new version through the current ASG's instances.
- ✓
Rolling deployment with rollback
Why this is correct
Rolling deployment with rollback updates an Auto Scaling group in controlled batches, replacing or re-launching a subset of instances at a time while the remaining instances continue serving traffic. Elastic Load Balancing health checks verify each batch before the next begins, and if errors exceed a threshold, CodeDeploy or a similar tool automatically redeploys the previous version to restore service. This provides both gradual exposure and a safety net, which matches the requirement of deploying a new version with rollback capability.
- ✗
All-at-once deployment
Why it's wrong here
All-at-once deployment recycles every instance in the Auto Scaling group simultaneously, so there is no reduction of capacity or incremental validation of the new version. A failure in the application code or configuration affects the entire fleet at once, potentially causing a full outage with no gradual signal before impact. Because the company wants a gradual update with rollback, this option is too risky and lacks the incremental control required.
- ✗
Canary deployment
Why it's wrong here
Canary deployment is a traffic-shifting strategy most commonly associated with AWS Lambda and CodeDeploy, where a small percentage of live traffic is routed to the new version before the rest follows. It does not describe the process of updating instances within an Auto Scaling group; rather than replacing or recycling EC2 instances, it manipulates routing weight at the load balancer or Lambda alias level. Therefore, it is not the right pattern for gradually deploying a new application version across an existing ASG with rollback on failure.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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