mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group that spans two Availability Zones. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that is deployed across the same Availability Zones. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure the application remains available if an entire Availability Zone fails. Which configuration is essential for this high availability?

Question 1mediummultiple choice
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A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group that spans two Availability Zones. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that is deployed across the same Availability Zones. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure the application remains available if an entire Availability Zone fails. Which configuration is essential for this high availability?

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

Configure the Auto Scaling group with at least one instance in each Availability Zone.

Correct. The Auto Scaling group must have instances in multiple AZs to survive an AZ failure. AZ rebalancing will maintain capacity.

B

Distractor review

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Application Load Balancer.

Incorrect. Cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic across all instances in all AZs, but it does not guarantee instance distribution. It is enabled by default for ALB.

C

Distractor review

Use an Amazon Route 53 health check to route traffic away from a failed AZ.

Incorrect. Route 53 health checks with failover routing can redirect to another region, but within a region the ALB handles AZ failures by routing to healthy instances.

D

Distractor review

Attach an Elastic IP address to each instance in the Auto Scaling group to ensure IP persistence.

Incorrect. Elastic IPs do not provide high availability; they provide static IPs. The ALB already provides a single endpoint.

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: Configure the Auto Scaling group with at least one instance in each Availability Zone. — For an Auto Scaling group to survive an AZ failure, it must be configured to launch instances in multiple AZs. The ALB automatically distributes traffic across healthy instances in all AZs. Cross-zone load balancing is enabled by default in ALB, but the key is the Auto Scaling group's distribution.

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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