SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of monitoring, logging, and remediation. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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.
An application running on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) is experiencing increased latency. The SysOps administrator checks CloudWatch and sees that the ALB's TargetResponseTime is high, but the backend EC2 instance's CPUUtilization and MemoryUtilization are low. What is the most likely cause?
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.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The ALB is experiencing connection queuing due to a high number of concurrent requests.
When TargetResponseTime is high but backend CPU and memory are low, the bottleneck is not the compute capacity of the instances but rather the ALB's ability to forward requests. The ALB has a default connection queue limit (typically 1024 pending connections per target group), and when concurrent requests exceed that, new requests are queued, increasing response time without stressing the backend. This is a classic sign of connection queuing at the load balancer level.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 ALB is experiencing connection queuing due to a high number of concurrent requests.
Why this is correct
High concurrency can cause the ALB to queue requests, increasing response time without backend load.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "most likely" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
The application is CPU-bound on the EC2 instances.
Why it's wrong here
CPUUtilization is low, so the application is not CPU-bound.
✗
The EC2 instances are throttled due to a burst balance limit.
Why it's wrong here
Throttling would cause high CPU or I/O wait, not low CPU.
✗
The application is waiting on a database query that is slow.
Why it's wrong here
Database wait would not cause low CPU; the application would be waiting, but CPU might still be used for other tasks.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates assume high latency always means the backend is overloaded, but the question deliberately shows low CPU/memory to force you to consider load balancer-level queuing as the root cause.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The ALB's connection queue is managed by the target group's 'slow start' and 'deregistration delay' settings, but the key limit is the number of concurrent connections the ALB can maintain to each target (default 1024). When this limit is reached, the ALB buffers requests in a queue, and the TargetResponseTime metric reflects the total time from request receipt to response start, including queuing delay. In contrast, the backend's CPU and memory remain low because the requests are not being dispatched to the instances.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation — This question tests Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: The ALB is experiencing connection queuing due to a high number of concurrent requests. — When TargetResponseTime is high but backend CPU and memory are low, the bottleneck is not the compute capacity of the instances but rather the ALB's ability to forward requests. The ALB has a default connection queue limit (typically 1024 pending connections per target group), and when concurrent requests exceed that, new requests are queued, increasing response time without stressing the backend. This is a classic sign of connection queuing at the load balancer level.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "most likely". Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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