Question 1hardmultiple choice
Full question →hardmultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application uses Amazon EBS volumes (gp2) for data storage. The SysOps administrator notices that the storage costs are high, and the application's IOPS requirements are consistently below 3000. 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
Distractor review
Modify the EBS volumes to use Provisioned IOPS (io1) volumes and set IOPS to 2000.
io1 volumes are premium and cost more than gp2/gp3. For IOPS below 3000, gp3 is more cost-effective.
B
Best answer
Convert the EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 volume type.
gp3 offers baseline 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s for a lower price than gp2 for many volume sizes. Since the application requires less than 3000 IOPS, gp3 provides sufficient performance at a reduced cost.
C
Distractor review
Implement an Amazon EBS snapshot lifecycle policy to delete old snapshots and reduce storage costs.
Snapshots are backups, not the root volumes themselves. Deleting old snapshots reduces backup storage costs but does not reduce the cost of the running EBS volumes used by the instances.
D
Distractor review
Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instances to improve throughput and reduce costs.
EBS optimization is a feature that provides dedicated network capacity for EBS I/O; it does not change the volume type or price. It may even incur additional costs if the instance type requires it to be enabled separately.
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: Convert the EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 volume type. — gp3 is the next generation of general-purpose SSD volumes with a baseline performance of 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s, regardless of volume size. For many workloads, gp3 is cheaper than gp2 because gp2's IOPS scales with size (3 IOPS per GB) but has a minimum baseline of 100 IOPS. Migrating to gp3 can reduce costs if the volume size is large enough such that gp2's cost (from provisioning size inflated for IOPS) is higher than gp3's fixed baseline. The question states IOPS requirements are below 3000, indicating gp3's baseline is sufficient. Changing to io1 is more expensive. Snapshot lifecycle policies do not affect running volume costs. Enabling EBS optimization is an instance feature, not volume cost reduction.
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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