SOA-C02 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation Practice Question
A SysOps administrator needs to automatically deploy a new version of an application to a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances every time changes are pushed to the main branch of a code repository hosted on AWS CodeCommit. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse AWS CloudFormation (infrastructure provisioning) with CI/CD pipeline services, or assume EventBridge and Lambda can replace the full pipeline, but they lack built-in artifact management, deployment strategies, and rollback capabilities that CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy provide together.
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
✓
AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy.
AWS CodePipeline orchestrates the continuous delivery workflow by detecting changes in the CodeCommit repository, then automatically triggering AWS CodeBuild to compile and package the application, and finally deploying the new version to EC2 instances using AWS CodeDeploy. This combination provides a fully managed, end-to-end CI/CD pipeline that meets the requirement of deploying on every push to the main branch.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy.
Why this is correct
AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy form a fully managed CI/CD service chain: CodePipeline is the orchestrator that automatically starts on a new CodeCommit push, CodeBuild compiles and packages the application into an artifact, and CodeDeploy deploys that artifact to compute services such as EC2 or Lambda. This trio natively supports stage progression, artifact handoff, rollback alarms, and permission transitions without custom code, making it the only choice that delivers end-to-end automated deployment from a repository event.
- ✗
AWS CloudFormation and AWS CodeDeploy.
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudFormation is designed for infrastructure as code—declaratively defining and provisioning AWS resources—not for orchestrating an application build and deployment workflow triggered by source control events. While CodeDeploy handles the actual application deployment, it requires an upstream mechanism like CodePipeline to be invoked on a push; pairing CloudFormation with CodeDeploy omits the build stage and the event-driven source-to-deploy pipeline, so you would still need separate automation to initiate the process.
- ✗
Amazon EventBridge and AWS Systems Manager.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EventBridge can capture CodeCommit repository events, but AWS Systems Manager (SSM) is an operational management service for tasks like patching, running commands, and managing parameters; it does not provide a built-in build or application deployment workflow. Even if EventBridge triggered an SSM Automation document, you would have to write custom logic to compile code, create artifacts, and coordinate deployment groups—functionality that CodePipeline and CodeDeploy natively offer, so this combination is neither purpose-built nor efficient for continuous delivery.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail and AWS Lambda.
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail is strictly an API auditing and governance service that logs all actions taken by users and services; it does not deliver or deploy anything, and merely detecting a repository push via CloudTrail would require writing a Lambda function that manually invokes SDK calls to build and deploy. Relying on Lambda for the entire orchestration forces you to reinvent complex CI/CD features such as build caching, deployment group health checks, and automatic rollback—omitting the integrated, maintainable components that CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy provide out of the box.
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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.