Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →easymultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a mix of Amazon EC2 instances and AWS Fargate tasks that are used for both production and development workloads. The usage is steady and predictable. The SysOps administrator wants to maximize cost savings across both compute services without having to manage specific instances or sizes. Which purchasing option should the administrator recommend?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Best answer
Purchase Compute Savings Plans for a 1-year or 3-year term with a commitment that covers the expected compute spend.
Compute Savings Plans apply to EC2, Fargate, and Lambda usage, regardless of instance size, family, OS, or region (within the plan's scope). This provides maximum flexibility and significant discounts.
B
Distractor review
Purchase EC2 Instance Savings Plans for the most commonly used instance family and region.
EC2 Instance Savings Plans are tied to a specific instance family in a region. They do not cover Fargate tasks and are less flexible if instance types change.
C
Distractor review
Purchase Standard Reserved Instances for the EC2 instances and convert Fargate tasks to use Spot Instances.
Standard RIs apply only to EC2 and not to Fargate. Spot Instances could be used for fault-tolerant workloads, but the question asks for a single purchasing option that covers both compute services.
D
Distractor review
Use On-Demand instances for both EC2 and Fargate because the administrator does not want to make a commitment.
On-Demand is the most expensive option. Since the workloads are steady, a Savings Plan or RI would provide significant cost savings.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Related practice questions
Related SOA-C02 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Purchase Compute Savings Plans for a 1-year or 3-year term with a commitment that covers the expected compute spend. — Compute Savings Plans offer the most flexibility across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda, with a fixed hourly spend commitment for a 1- or 3-year term. They provide significant discounts (up to 66%) compared to On-Demand and automatically apply to any instance family, size, OS, or region within the committed spend. EC2 Instance Savings Plans only apply to a specific instance family within a region, so they are less flexible. Reserved Instances (RIs) are specific to an instance type and region, and do not cover Fargate. On-Demand is the most expensive and offers no discount.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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