SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the memory utilization of an EC2 instance running Amazon Linux 2. Which of the following is required to publish memory metrics to CloudWatch?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'detailed monitoring' (which increases frequency of existing hypervisor metrics) with the ability to collect in-guest metrics, or they assume the SSM Agent or CloudWatch Logs agent can perform metric collection, when only the CloudWatch agent is designed for that purpose.
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 CloudWatch agent is specifically designed to collect custom metrics, such as memory utilization, from EC2 instances and publish them to CloudWatch. Unlike the default EC2 monitoring, which only captures hypervisor-level metrics (CPU, network, disk), memory utilization requires an in-guest agent to read from the operating system's /proc/meminfo or similar interfaces. The CloudWatch agent can be configured via a JSON file to collect memory metrics and send them to CloudWatch using the PutMetricData API.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use the CloudWatch Logs agent to parse memory usage from system logs.
Why it's wrong here
The CloudWatch Logs agent is designed exclusively for forwarding log files to the CloudWatch Logs service; it does not translate memory utilization into numeric CloudWatch metrics. Parsing memory usage from system logs would require separate metric filters and even then would not be a real-time, structured metric. Amazon CloudWatch's memory metric is only available through the unified CloudWatch agent installed inside the OS.
- ✓
Install and configure the CloudWatch agent on the instance.
Why this is correct
The unified CloudWatch agent collects in-guest operating system metrics, including memory utilization, and publishes them as custom metrics to CloudWatch using PutMetricData. Once configured with the amazon-cloudwatch-agent-config-wizard or an SSM parameter, it reports values such as mem_used_percent and mem_available_percent at a set interval. This is the standard, fully supported solution for EC2 and on-premises memory monitoring.
- ✗
Enable detailed monitoring on the instance.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling detailed monitoring on an EC2 instance only raises the frequency of the existing hypervisor-visible EC2 metrics from 5-minute to 1-minute intervals; it does not add any memory measurements. The hypervisor cannot see guest OS memory details, so there is no EC2 namespace metric for memory even with detailed monitoring. To monitor memory you must place an in-guest agent and publish custom metrics.
- ✗
Install the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) and configure it to send metrics.
Why it's wrong here
The AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) is the runtime used for Run Command, Session Manager, Patch Manager, and Inventory; it is not a telemetry daemon that sends OS metrics to CloudWatch. While it can be used to install and configure the CloudWatch agent on a target instance, simply installing the SSM Agent does not produce memory metrics. The metrics, if present, are only generated after the CloudWatch agent is separately configured.
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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.