Quick Answer
The answer is to increase the unhealthy threshold to 5. This change improves stability by requiring five consecutive health check failures before marking a target unhealthy, which prevents the ALB from prematurely removing healthy instances due to transient network blips or brief resource spikes. In the context of the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate SOA-C02 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of health check sensitivity and flapping—a common trap is to adjust the interval or timeout, but those changes either delay detection or increase false positives. The key concept is that a low unhealthy threshold (like the default of 2) makes the load balancer overly reactive to short-lived issues, while a higher threshold provides hysteresis, ensuring only genuinely impaired targets are deregistered. For the exam, remember the mnemonic “High Threshold, High Stability” to avoid confusing healthy and unhealthy threshold adjustments.
This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of networking and content delivery. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A SysOps administrator notices that traffic from an Application Load Balancer to targets is failing intermittently. The targets are EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The health check settings on the target group are: ping path '/health', healthy threshold 2, unhealthy threshold 2, timeout 5 seconds, interval 30 seconds. Which change would most likely improve the stability of the health checks?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "most likely"
Why it matters: Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
Increase the interval to 60 seconds.
Why wrong: Longer interval slows health check response.
Decrease the healthy threshold to 1.
Why wrong: Too sensitive, may cause flapping.
Decrease the timeout to 2 seconds.
Why wrong: Shorter timeout may cause more false positives.
Increase the unhealthy threshold to 5.
Requires more failures to mark unhealthy, reducing flapping.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Increase the unhealthy threshold to 5.
Option D is correct because increasing the unhealthy threshold reduces flapping; currently 2 consecutive failures mark an instance unhealthy, which may be too sensitive. Option A is wrong because a longer interval would delay detection. Option B is wrong because a shorter timeout may cause false positives. Option C is wrong because decreasing healthy threshold increases sensitivity.
Key principle: NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Increase the interval to 60 seconds.
Why it's wrong here
Longer interval slows health check response.
Decrease the healthy threshold to 1.
Why it's wrong here
Too sensitive, may cause flapping.
Decrease the timeout to 2 seconds.
Why it's wrong here
Shorter timeout may cause more false positives.
Increase the unhealthy threshold to 5.
Why this is correct
Requires more failures to mark unhealthy, reducing flapping.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "most likely" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
Common exam traps
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Detailed technical explanation
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
Key takeaway
NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
Real-world example
A cloud solutions architect for a retail company is evaluating services for a new workload. The correct answer here reflects best practice for the specific scenario described — not a general cloud recommendation. NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated. Cloud exam questions reward reading the constraint carefully: the same technology can be right or wrong depending on the use case.
What to study next
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related SOA-C02 NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
Networking and Content Delivery — study guide chapter
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FAQ
Networking and Content Delivery — This question tests Networking and Content Delivery — Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address..
The correct answer is: Increase the unhealthy threshold to 5. — Option D is correct because increasing the unhealthy threshold reduces flapping; currently 2 consecutive failures mark an instance unhealthy, which may be too sensitive. Option A is wrong because a longer interval would delay detection. Option B is wrong because a shorter timeout may cause false positives. Option C is wrong because decreasing healthy threshold increases sensitivity.
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related SOA-C02 NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
Yes — watch for: "most likely". Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
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Last reviewed: Jun 20, 2026
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.
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