SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
A company needs to monitor the CPU and memory utilization of its EC2 instances. Which TWO services can be used to collect and visualize these metrics?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume CloudWatch alone collects all EC2 metrics, but they miss that memory utilization requires the CloudWatch Agent because it is an in-guest metric not provided by the hypervisor.
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
✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is the native AWS monitoring service that collects and stores metrics such as CPU utilization and memory utilization from EC2 instances. However, by default, CloudWatch only captures hypervisor-level metrics (like CPU) and not in-guest metrics (like memory utilization). To collect memory utilization, you must install the Amazon CloudWatch Agent on the instance, which sends custom metrics to CloudWatch. Together, CloudWatch and the CloudWatch Agent provide both collection and visualization of CPU and memory metrics.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Why this is correct
Amazon CloudWatch is the core AWS monitoring service that automatically collects and stores EC2 CPU utilization metrics at 5-minute intervals (or 1-minute with detailed monitoring) and provides dashboards, alarms, and API access to those time-series data points. It is the appropriate service for monitoring performance because it aggregates telemetry from AWS infrastructure and can extend to in-guest metrics when a signal is pushed back to it. Without CloudWatch, there would be no central repository or visualization for the CPU and memory data that the CloudWatch agent submits.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail is a governance and auditing service that records every AWS API call made on an account, including the identity of the caller, the time of the call, and the request parameters. It is used to answer 'who did what' for security investigations and compliance requirements, not to capture performance telemetry like CPU load or memory pressure. CloudTrail never samples instance-level resource usage, so it cannot produce the continuous utilization graphs or alarms that monitoring requires.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch Agent
Why this is correct
The Amazon CloudWatch Agent is the correct companion for gathering OS-level metrics such as memory utilization and disk space from EC2 instances, since these are not exposed through the default hypervisor-level monitoring. The agent runs as a software process inside the operating system and forwards custom metrics to CloudWatch using the PutMetricData API, enabling you to monitor memory alongside CPU in the CloudWatch console. It is a vital piece of the monitoring solution, but it relies on CloudWatch as the central service to store and display the collected metrics.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config is designed to assess, audit, and evaluate the configuration state of AWS resources over time, checking changes against rules and compliance packs. For EC2, it can track instance types, AMI IDs, security-group memberships, and tags, and it triggers events on config changes, but it does not measure runtime resource consumption such as CPU percentage or RAM usage. Since Config captures snapshots of 'what the resource is' rather than 'how it is performing', it is not suitable for utilization monitoring.
- ✗
AWS Systems Manager
Why it's wrong here
AWS Systems Manager is an operational management and automation suite that offers features like Run Command, Patch Manager, Maintenance Windows, and SSM Inventory, but its main purpose is to administer fleets of instances, not to scrape time-based performance counters. While Systems Manager can execute scripts or retrieve log files, it does not continuously record CPU and memory metrics into a structured time series for graphing and alerting. For real-time utilization monitoring, you need Amazon CloudWatch and optionally the CloudWatch agent.
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JA
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.