Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets across multiple Availability Zones. The instances need to download software patches from the internet. The SysOps administrator requires a highly available, fully managed solution for outbound internet connectivity. Which solution should be implemented?
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
Deploy a NAT gateway in each Availability Zone and update the route tables for each private subnet to point to the NAT gateway in the same Availability Zone.
This configuration provides highly available outbound connectivity: if one AZ fails, instances in other AZs continue to have internet access through their local NAT gateway.
B
Distractor review
Attach an Internet Gateway to the VPC and add a default route (0.0.0.0/0) to the Internet Gateway in the private subnet route tables.
Instances in private subnets do not have a public IP; adding a default route to an Internet Gateway will not work because the Internet Gateway requires instances to have public IPs or Elastic IPs for outbound traffic.
C
Distractor review
Create a VPC endpoint for Amazon S3 and route traffic through it.
A VPC endpoint provides private connectivity to Amazon S3 (and other AWS services), but does not provide general internet access needed to download patches from external sources.
D
Distractor review
Set up an AWS Direct Connect connection and route all internet-bound traffic through it.
AWS Direct Connect provides a private connection to AWS, but does not inherently provide internet access; additional routing and an internet gateway would still be required.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: usable hosts are not the same as total addresses
Subnetting questions often tempt you into counting all addresses. In normal IPv4 subnets, the network and broadcast addresses are not usable host addresses.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
Subnetting questions test whether you can identify the network, broadcast address, usable range, mask and correct subnet. Slow down enough to calculate the block size correctly.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
- Block size helps identify subnet boundaries.
- Network and broadcast addresses are not usable hosts in normal IPv4 subnets.
- The required host count determines the smallest suitable subnet.
TExam Day Tips
- Write the block size before choosing the subnet.
- Check whether the question asks for hosts, subnets or a specific address range.
- Do not confuse /24, /25, /26 and /27 host counts.
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?
CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Deploy a NAT gateway in each Availability Zone and update the route tables for each private subnet to point to the NAT gateway in the same Availability Zone. — A NAT Gateway is a managed AWS service that enables instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but prevents the internet from initiating connections with the instances. For high availability, NAT Gateways must be deployed in each Availability Zone. An Internet Gateway alone does not provide outbound connectivity for private subnets. VPC endpoints are for private connectivity to AWS services, not general internet access. AWS Direct Connect is a dedicated network connection and does not provide internet access by itself.
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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