SOA-C02 AMIs capture instance configuration Practice Question
A company runs a stateful web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance with an Elastic IP address. The SysOps administrator needs to increase availability so that if the instance fails, a new instance can be launched quickly with the same configuration and the same IP address. The administrator also needs to ensure data is not lost. Which solution meets these requirements with the least operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume an Auto Scaling group alone can handle Elastic IP association, but without a lifecycle hook or custom script, the new instance will not automatically receive the Elastic IP, leading to IP address changes and potential downtime.
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
✓
Create an AMI from the instance, store data on an Amazon EFS file system, and use an Auto Scaling group with a lifecycle hook to associate the Elastic IP
It separates the stateful data (stored on Amazon EFS) from the compute instance, ensuring data persistence even if the instance fails. Creating an AMI from the instance captures the configuration, and an Auto Scaling group with a lifecycle hook can associate the Elastic IP to the new instance automatically, providing a quick failover with minimal operational overhead.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use an Application Load Balancer with an Auto Scaling group and a launch configuration that includes the Elastic IP
Why it's wrong here
An Elastic IP cannot be embedded in an Auto Scaling launch configuration; launch configurations define the AMI, instance type, key pair, security groups, and block device mappings, but not Elastic IP associations. An Application Load Balancer also does not support Elastic IP addresses directly—clients connect via its DNS name—so this design would not provide a stable endpoint for your stateful web application. Furthermore, even if you placed an EIP on the ALB (which is not possible for ALB), you would still need a separate mechanism to reassociate the address if the ALB or its targets change, defeating the purpose.
- ✓
Create an AMI from the instance, store data on an Amazon EFS file system, and use an Auto Scaling group with a lifecycle hook to associate the Elastic IP
Why this is correct
The AMI provides a pre-configured launch template. EFS provides durable, shared storage for application data. The Auto Scaling group automatically launches a new instance if the current one fails, and the lifecycle hook script associates the Elastic IP to the new instance, ensuring continuity with the same IP.
- ✗
Create a CloudFormation template that launches a new instance and associates the Elastic IP
Why it's wrong here
A CloudFormation template is an infrastructure-as-code orchestration tool, not a health-monitoring or automatic-recovery mechanism. While it can certainly create a new EC2 instance and associate the Elastic IP when executed, there is no native event that automatically triggers the template when the existing instance fails. You would need to build additional components such as Amazon CloudWatch alarms, an AWS Lambda function, or a custom health-check script to detect the failure and invoke the CloudFormation stack, making recovery manual or complex and not truly self-healing.
- ✗
Place the instance in an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 1, and set the health check to replace unhealthy instances
Why it's wrong here
This would replace the instance if it fails, but it does not address data persistence. The new instance would be launched from the original AMI, losing any data that was not on persistent storage. It also does not automatically reassociate the Elastic IP.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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