Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances. The application uses Amazon EBS volumes of type gp2 (General Purpose SSD). Each volume is 100 GB, which provides a baseline of 3000 IOPS (the minimum performance of gp2). The SysOps administrator monitors the volumes and finds that the average IOPS used is only 1,500, and the application performance is adequate. The administrator wants to reduce storage costs without affecting performance. Which action should the administrator take?
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
Migrate the volumes from gp2 to gp3 and provision the baseline IOPS to match the actual usage.
gp3 volumes are more cost-effective than gp2 because they offer a lower per-GB price and allow you to customize IOPS independently of storage size. By matching IOPS to actual need, you reduce costs while maintaining performance.
B
Distractor review
Replace the EBS volumes with instance store volumes.
Instance store volumes provide temporary block-level storage for an EC2 instance; data is lost if the instance stops or terminates. They are not suitable for persistent data and cannot be used as a replacement for EBS volumes in most applications.
C
Distractor review
Change the volume type to io2 (Provisioned IOPS SSD) and reduce the provisioned IOPS.
io2 volumes are designed for high-performance workloads requiring high IOPS and low latency. They are more expensive than gp2 and gp3 on a per-GB basis, so this would increase costs, not reduce them.
D
Distractor review
Change the volume type to Cold HDD (sc1) to reduce cost.
Cold HDD volumes are designed for infrequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads. They have low IOPS and high latency, which would degrade application performance for a web application.
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: Migrate the volumes from gp2 to gp3 and provision the baseline IOPS to match the actual usage. — gp3 volumes allow you to independently provision IOPS and throughput, separate from storage size. By switching from gp2 to gp3, you can set the IOPS to 1,500 (or even lower) and keep the same storage size, which reduces cost because gp3 is cheaper per GB than gp2, and you are not paying for unused IOPS. Instance store volumes are ephemeral and not suitable for persistent data. io2 volumes are designed for high performance and are more expensive. Cold HDD (sc1) is for infrequently accessed, throughput-oriented workloads and would not meet the performance needs of a web application.
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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