SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon EC2 instance and send an alert when it exceeds 90% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which combination of AWS services should the administrator use to meet this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse CloudWatch Logs metric filters (used for custom log-based metrics) with the built-in EC2 metrics, or think that EventBridge can directly access CPU utilization data, when in fact CPUUtilization is a CloudWatch metric and must be monitored via CloudWatch alarms.
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 CloudWatch metric (CPUUtilization), a CloudWatch alarm, and an Amazon SNS topic.
The correct approach is to use a CloudWatch metric for CPUUtilization, which is automatically published by EC2 instances. A CloudWatch alarm can be configured to evaluate this metric over a period of 5 consecutive minutes with a threshold of 90%, and when the alarm state is triggered, it publishes to an SNS topic to send notifications. This is the native, efficient, and recommended method for monitoring and alerting on EC2 CPU utilization.
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 CloudWatch metric (CPUUtilization), a CloudWatch alarm, and an Amazon SNS topic.
Why this is correct
EC2 publishes a standard hypervisor-level CPUUtilization metric to CloudWatch every 5 minutes (or 1 minute with detailed monitoring). A CloudWatch alarm can evaluate that metric against a threshold using a period, statistic (e.g., Average), and evaluation periods, then transition to ALARM state and publish a message to an SNS topic, which can fan out to email, SMS, or HTTP endpoints. This is the native, least-effort, and most reliable pattern for triggering on CPU utilization; it requires no custom code, log filtering, or polling.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Logs, a metric filter to extract CPU utilization from logs, and an alarm on that metric.
Why it's wrong here
CPU utilization is already available as a CloudWatch metric; using a log-based metric filter is unnecessary and adds complexity. The EC2 instance would need to emit CPU utilization as log entries, which is not the standard way.
- ✗
A CloudWatch dashboard and an AWS Lambda function that checks the dashboard periodically.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch dashboards are purely read-only, for human visualization; they expose no interactive API that returns metric data in a form a Lambda can meaningfully poll, and invoking the GetDashboard API only retrieves the JSON definition of the widgets, not the live metric values. A Lambda function would have to call GetMetricStatistics or GetMetricData itself to fetch CPU utilization, effectively reimplementing the alarm logic manually, then manage its own notification path and lack built-in alarm state transitions (OK/ALARM/INSUFFICIENT_DATA). Scheduled Lambda-based polling also incurs additional compute and integration complexity, and it would not be the designed or supported architecture for alerting on EC2 CPU utilization.
- ✗
Amazon EventBridge (CloudWatch Events) and a Lambda function that calls the EC2 DescribeInstances API.
Why it's wrong here
Calling the `EC2 DescribeInstances` API retrieves instance metadata, such as state or tags, not real-time performance metrics like CPU utilisation. EventBridge can trigger a Lambda function on a schedule or in response to events, but it does not natively collect metrics. This combination would be appropriate for automating actions based on instance state changes or API calls, for example, sending an alert when an instance stops or starts, or for inventory management tasks requiring instance property details.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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