SOA-C02 gp3 volume Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse cost reduction strategies for EBS volumes with snapshot management or instance-level optimizations, failing to recognize that gp3 is the direct, cost-effective replacement for gp2 when IOPS requirements are below the gp3 baseline.
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
✓
Convert the EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 volume type.
Gp3 volumes offer a baseline performance of 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput at a lower cost than gp2 volumes, making them ideal for workloads with IOPS requirements consistently below 3000. By converting from gp2 to gp3, the administrator can reduce storage costs without any performance impact, as gp3 provides the same or better baseline performance at a lower price per GB.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Modify the EBS volumes to use Provisioned IOPS (io1) volumes and set IOPS to 2000.
Why it's wrong here
Provisioned IOPS (io1) volumes are a premium SSD type designed for high, sustained IOPS workloads, and they bill separately for both provisioned capacity and each provisioned IOPS. Setting 2000 IOPS on io1 would incur a significant per-IOPS charge on top of the per-GB cost, whereas gp3 already includes 3000 baseline IOPS and 125 MB/s in its lower per-GB price. Because the application requires less than 3000 IOPS, io1 delivers no performance benefit while costing more than gp3, making it a poor cost optimization choice.
- ✓
Convert the EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 volume type.
Why this is correct
gp3 volumes provide a baseline of 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput for every volume, independent of size, and the per-GB price is roughly 20% lower than gp2. This makes gp3 both cheaper and more predictable for workloads under 3000 IOPS, as it does not rely on burst credits like gp2. Converting existing gp2 volumes to gp3 can be performed non-disruptively, and would reduce the running EBS cost while still exceeding the application's performance requirements.
- ✗
Implement an Amazon EBS snapshot lifecycle policy to delete old snapshots and reduce storage costs.
Why it's wrong here
EBS snapshots are incremental backups stored in Amazon S3, not the live block storage attached to the EC2 instance. Deleting old snapshots via a lifecycle policy reduces backup storage costs, but it does not change the provisioned capacity, IOPS, or throughput of the running EBS volumes, which is what incurs the primary storage charge. Since the problem is about the cost of the volumes themselves, this action would not reduce the ongoing EBS volume costs.
- ✗
Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instances to improve throughput and reduce costs.
Why it's wrong here
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.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SOA-C02 exam.