SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the memory utilization of an EC2 instance running a custom application. The instance is not using the default CloudWatch metrics for memory. What should the administrator do to collect memory metrics?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume 'detailed monitoring' or other AWS services like Trusted Advisor or Inspector can capture OS-level metrics, but only the CloudWatch agent can collect memory and disk metrics from inside the instance.
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
✓
Install and configure the CloudWatch agent on the instance
The default CloudWatch metrics for EC2 include CPU, disk, and network utilization, but not memory utilization. To collect custom metrics like memory usage, you must install and configure the CloudWatch agent on the instance. The agent collects memory and disk metrics from the OS and sends them to CloudWatch as custom metrics.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instance
Why it's wrong here
Enabling detailed monitoring on the EC2 instance shortens the CloudWatch metric interval for the built-in hypervisor-level metrics, such as CPU, disk, and network I/O, to 1-minute periods. Memory utilization is a guest-OS-level metric that is not exposed by the Amazon EC2 hypervisor and cannot be retrieved through detailed monitoring alone. Without a guest agent to read the operating system's memory counters, CloudWatch will still have no memory data.
- ✗
Use AWS Trusted Advisor to check memory utilization
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor is a review service that checks your AWS account for best practices in categories like cost optimization, performance, security, and service limits. It does not have the ability to collect or stream operating-system-level metrics, and its reports are static snapshots rather than real-time monitors. Therefore, Trusted Advisor cannot provide memory utilization for an EC2 instance.
- ✗
Use Amazon Inspector to monitor memory
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Inspector is a vulnerability management service that performs automated security assessments of your instances for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. It runs a scan based on a rules package and produces a findings report, but it is not designed to collect performance metrics or continuously monitor memory utilization. Memory monitoring requires a metrics agent that publishes time-series data to CloudWatch.
- ✓
Install and configure the CloudWatch agent on the instance
Why this is correct
The CloudWatch agent is the correct solution because it runs directly inside the guest operating system and reads metrics from OS sources, such as /proc/meminfo on Linux or the Windows performance counters, to capture memory utilization. Once the agent is configured with a JSON config that enables the mem plugin, it publishes custom metrics like mem_used_percent to CloudWatch under the CWAgent namespace. The agent requires appropriate IAM permissions and can be installed on EC2 instances or on-premises servers via SSM or manually.
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JA
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.