SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Question
A company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores data on an Amazon EBS volume. The SysOps administrator needs to implement a backup strategy that ensures data can be recovered in the event of an AZ failure. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse EBS Multi-Attach (which provides high availability within an AZ) with a cross-AZ backup strategy, or they mistakenly think increasing volume size or enabling encryption alone constitutes a backup plan.
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
✓
Configure automated snapshots using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) automates the creation, retention, and deletion of EBS snapshots, providing a scheduled backup mechanism that protects against data loss. Option C is correct because copying snapshots to another region ensures data is recoverable even if an entire AWS Availability Zone (AZ) fails, as the snapshots are stored independently in a different geographic region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the EBS volume size to maximize I/O performance.
Why it's wrong here
Resizing an EBS volume by increasing its size only expands the device's storage capacity; it does not create backups or enable snapshot-based recovery. While larger volumes can provide higher baseline performance for some volume types, I/O performance is optimized through volume type, IOPS, and EC2-optimized instances, not through size alone. This action fails to address the need for point-in-time recovery and leaves the instance vulnerable to data loss or corruption.
- ✓
Configure automated snapshots using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.
Why this is correct
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) is the native service for automating EBS snapshot creation, retention, and deletion according to a policy-defined schedule. By configuring a DLM policy, you ensure consistent point-in-time backups of the EBS volume without manual intervention, and you can set retention rules to age out old snapshots to control costs. This directly satisfies the backup requirement for a critical application and is the correct answer to the scenario.
- ✓
Create a lifecycle policy to automatically take snapshots of the EBS volume and copy them to another region.
Why this is correct
A DLM lifecycle policy can be configured not only to take snapshots on a schedule but also to copy those snapshots to another AWS Region, enabling disaster recovery across regions. This approach provides a geographically independent backup that can be restored if the primary Region experiences an outage, so it is a valid and correct strategy for backup and DR. The copied snapshots are encrypted and can be used to recreate the instance in the destination Region.
- ✗
Enable EBS encryption using AWS KMS.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling Amazon EBS encryption with AWS KMS protects snapshots and volumes at rest by encrypting the data, but it is a security control and not a backup mechanism. Encryption does not create snapshots, schedule retention, or copy data to another region; it only ensures that data is unreadable without the proper keys. To recover from failures, you still need a snapshot-based backup strategy, so encryption alone does not solve the backup requirement.
- ✗
Enable EBS Multi-Attach to allow the volume to be attached to instances in another AZ.
Why it's wrong here
EBS Multi-Attach allows a single Provisioned IOPS volume to be concurrently attached to multiple EC2 instances within the same Availability Zone, but it does not support cross-AZ attachment or provide any backup functionality. It is designed for clustered applications that need shared access to the same storage, not for disaster recovery or point-in-time copies. Therefore, using Multi-Attach will not create backups or protect against regional failures.
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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.