SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question
A company wants to host a static website on AWS with high availability and low latency for global users. Which combination of services should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
SOA-C02 often tests whether candidates confuse 'high availability' (S3's multi-AZ durability) with 'low latency for global users' (which specifically requires CloudFront edge caching, not just S3 or Route 53).
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
✓
Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront
Amazon S3 provides durable, highly available object storage ideal for hosting static website content, and Amazon CloudFront is a global CDN that caches content at edge locations worldwide, delivering low-latency access for global users. Together they form the canonical AWS static website architecture with no servers to manage.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon EC2 and Elastic Load Balancing
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EC2 and Elastic Load Balancing combine virtual servers and traffic distribution for dynamic, stateful workloads. For a static website, this pattern forces you to provision, patch, and scale EC2 instances even though no server-side processing is needed, and ELB only balances traffic among those instances. More importantly, it lacks CloudFront's global edge caching, so users experience higher latency and you pay for idle compute capacity, making it operationally heavy and unnecessarily expensive for static assets.
- ✓
Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront
Why this is correct
Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront is the AWS best-practice architecture for hosting a static website at global scale. S3 stores the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images durably and cost-effectively, while CloudFront caches those objects at edge locations around the world, dramatically reducing latency for all users. Using CloudFront with an Origin Access Control (OAC) keeps the S3 bucket private, adds HTTPS enforcement, and provides high availability because content is served from multiple edge locations even if the origin has transient issues.
- ✗
Amazon Route 53 and Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Route 53 and Amazon S3 only solve DNS resolution and object storage, but they omit the content delivery network layer. Route 53 can route users to the S3 website endpoint, yet every request still travels to the S3 bucket's region, so viewers far away experience high latency. S3 static website endpoints do not support HTTPS, and without CloudFront there is no edge caching, meaning repeated requests are not served from a nearby cache; thus this option fails to meet the global low-latency and security requirements for a high-availability static site.
- ✗
Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon CloudFront combine a CDN with a load balancer that is designed for distributing traffic to EC2 instances or containers. Static websites do not need a fleet of compute resources, and CloudFront can already handle both caching and origin failover using S3 as the origin. Adding ELB in front of EC2 instances to serve static files introduces unnecessary complexity, higher operational overhead, and extra cost without any benefit because S3 alone, fronted by CloudFront, provides better scalability, durability, and performance.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SOA-C02 question from scratch — 1,169 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.