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SOA-C02 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation Practice Question

A team uses AWS CodeDeploy with a deployment configuration of CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime to deploy a web application to an Auto Scaling group. Instances are behind an Application Load Balancer. The deployment fails with 'The overall deployment failed because too many individual instances failed deployment.' What is the most likely cause?

⚠ Common exam trap

Candidates often confuse the health check grace period with the deregistration delay or assume the issue is with the CodeDeploy agent, but the specific error 'too many individual instances failed' points to Auto Scaling terminating instances due to health check failures, not a deployment script or agent problem.

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

✓

The health check grace period on the Auto Scaling group is too short.

The deployment fails because the health check grace period on the Auto Scaling group is too short. When CodeDeploy deploys one instance at a time (CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime), the instance is taken out of service, updated, and then returned to the load balancer. If the grace period expires before the instance passes its health checks, the Auto Scaling group marks it as unhealthy and terminates it, causing the deployment to fail with 'too many individual instances failed.'

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

  • ✓

    The health check grace period on the Auto Scaling group is too short.

    Why this is correct

    The health check grace period on the Auto Scaling group is too short. When a deployment launches new instances, the ASG considers an instance healthy only after the grace period expires; if the period is shorter than the time CodeDeploy needs to install the application and pass its own validation, the ASG will prematurely flag the instance as failing ELB health checks. Auto Scaling then terminates and replaces the instance mid-deployment, which CodeDeploy sees as a failed deployment ("too many individual instances"), and the cycle repeats for each new replacement. The correct fix is to increase the grace period to exceed the typical deployment duration.

  • ✗

    The target group deregistration delay is too long.

    Why it's wrong here

    The target group deregistration delay is too long. Deregistration delay controls how long an instance that is being removed from service can continue to handle in-flight requests before it is forcibly closed; it does not affect the health check status of instances during a CodeDeploy deployment. A longer delay would only cause a slight lag before the old instance is detached, but it would not cause new instances to fail their health checks or be considered unhealthy. Therefore, this setting does not contribute to the reported "too many individual instances" failure.

  • ✗

    The CodeDeploy agent is not installed on the instances.

    Why it's wrong here

    The CodeDeploy agent is not installed on the instances. If the agent were missing, the very first instance in the deployment would fail immediately because CodeDeploy could not connect to it, usually with an error like "The overall deployment failed because too many individual instances failed deployment" right away. The scenario describes repeated failures over time, which suggests instances are being replaced and each new one briefly fails—this is more consistent with a health check timing issue rather than a missing agent. Additionally, the problem statement implies the deployments are progressing through the initial steps, which would not happen without a working agent.

  • ✗

    The deployment group is configured to skip the ELB health check.

    Why it's wrong here

    The deployment group is configured to skip the ELB health check. If the ELB health check is skipped, CodeDeploy would not register instances with the target group or would not monitor their ELB health during deployment, so it would not fail deployments based on health check status. That would eliminate the very problem described (instances being marked unhealthy and replaced), meaning the deployment would likely succeed rather than repeatedly fail. Thus, skipping the ELB health check is not a plausible cause for this error; it would actually prevent the symptom from occurring.

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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.