SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a VPC with public and private subnets. The stack creation fails with the error 'The maximum number of VPCs has been reached.' The SysOps administrator needs to deploy the stack as soon as possible. What should the administrator do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers choose to delete unused VPCs (Option A) thinking it's faster, but AWS Support limit increases are often quicker and safer than auditing and deleting resources, especially in production environments.
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
✓
Request a VPC limit increase from AWS Support.
The error 'The maximum number of VPCs has been reached' indicates the AWS account has hit the default VPC limit (5 per region). Requesting a service limit increase from AWS Support is the fastest way to raise this soft limit without modifying existing infrastructure or templates, allowing the stack to deploy in the same region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Delete unused VPCs to free up capacity.
Why it's wrong here
Deleting unused VPCs could technically free up quota, but it is a high-risk manual operation: you must first audit every VPC for dependencies like subnets, route tables, NAT gateways, VPC endpoints, and peering connections, and any misidentification can cause irreparable loss. The process is time-consuming and may disrupt other workloads or CloudFormation stacks that rely on those VPCs, so it is not a reliable solution to the immediate quota issue.
- ✗
Modify the CloudFormation template to use an existing VPC.
Why it's wrong here
Modifying the template to reuse an existing VPC changes the stack's intent and often fails to meet requirements such as specific CIDR ranges, isolation boundaries, or security controls. It also requires nontrivial refactoring: you would need to remove VPC-level resources, update references to use imported resource IDs, and handle cross-stack dependencies, and if all existing VPCs are already at capacity, the stack still cannot be deployed. This avoids the quota issue only by abandoning the goal of creating a new VPC.
- ✓
Request a VPC limit increase from AWS Support.
Why this is correct
The default VPC quota is 5 VPCs per region per account, and this is a soft limit that can be increased by requesting a quota raise through the AWS Service Quotas console or by opening an AWS Support case. Once AWS approves the increase, you can deploy the CloudFormation stack normally, making this the correct and scalable fix. Remember that the increase applies to the specific Region you request it for, so you should confirm the target Region.
- ✗
Deploy the stack in a different AWS region.
Why it's wrong here
Choosing a different Region sidesteps the quota only because limits are Region-specific, but it introduces compliance, latency, and architecture concerns—data residency policies might prohibit storing data in that new Region, and the VPC quota there may also be exhausted. Additionally, you would have to adjust the CloudFormation template, IAM roles, and any dependent services to use the new Region, making this a workaround rather than a resolution.
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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.