Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →easymultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A SysOps administrator has deployed an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that distributes traffic to a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances. The administrator notices that the ALB is sending all traffic to instances in a single Availability Zone (AZ), ignoring instances in other AZs. The ALB was created with default settings. Which action should the administrator take to ensure traffic is distributed evenly across all AZs?
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
Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.
Cross-zone load balancing distributes incoming traffic across all instances in all AZs where the ALB is enabled. By default, it is enabled for Application Load Balancers, but if the administrator created the ALB with an older API or modified it, it may have been disabled. Enabling it will spread traffic evenly.
B
Distractor review
Enable connection draining on the target group.
Connection draining allows in-flight requests to complete when an instance is deregistered or unhealthy. It does not affect how traffic is distributed across AZs.
C
Distractor review
Enable sticky sessions (session stickiness) on the target group.
Sticky sessions make the load balancer send requests from a particular client to the same instance. It can cause uneven distribution if not carefully balanced, and it does not solve the problem of traffic only going to one AZ.
D
Distractor review
Configure health checks on the target group to ensure unhealthy instances are not used.
Health checks ensure traffic is only sent to healthy instances, but they do not control the AZ-level distribution. If all instances are healthy, the ALB will still only send traffic to instances in the same AZ as the node that received the request if cross-zone is disabled.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
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?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB. — Application Load Balancers have a 'cross-zone load balancing' setting that, when enabled, allows the ALB to distribute traffic evenly across all registered instances in all enabled AZs, regardless of the AZ in which the traffic originated. By default, cross-zone load balancing is enabled for ALB, but if it was disabled or not explicitly enabled for a new ALB, traffic is only distributed to instances in the same AZ as the load balancer node that received the request. Enabling this setting ensures even distribution. Connection draining is for gracefully removing unhealthy instances. Sticky sessions (session stickiness) maintain user sessions but do not affect distribution across AZs. Health checks verify instance health but do not control distribution across AZs.
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.
Discussion
Loading comments…
Sign in to join the discussion.