The answer is to increase the health check timeout to 10 seconds. This resolves the intermittent 503 errors because the ALB’s default 5-second timeout is too short for the /health endpoint, which occasionally takes longer to respond under transient load. With a healthy and unhealthy threshold of 2, two consecutive timeouts cause the ALB to mark all targets unhealthy, dropping the healthy host count to zero and triggering 503 errors. On the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate SOA-C02 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of how health check timing parameters—timeout, interval, and thresholds—interact to cause false negatives. A common trap is assuming the application is failing or that the interval needs adjustment, but the real issue is the timeout being too tight for the application’s response variability. Remember the memory tip: “Timeout first, interval last”—when healthy hosts vanish but apps are fine, always check if the timeout is too short before touching the interval.
SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of monitoring, logging, and remediation. Examine the command output carefully: the correct answer depends on what the output actually shows, not on general recall alone. 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 company hosts a web application on multiple EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The SysOps administrator receives a report that the application is experiencing intermittent 503 errors. The ALB target group health checks are configured to check the /health endpoint every 30 seconds with a healthy threshold of 2 and an unhealthy threshold of 2. The administrator checks the ALB metrics and notices that the number of healthy hosts occasionally drops to zero. The EC2 instances are normal and the application logs show no errors. What is the most likely cause and solution?
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
✓
Increase the health check timeout to 10 seconds.
The intermittent 503 errors and healthy hosts dropping to zero indicate that health checks are timing out before the application can respond. With a default health check timeout of 5 seconds and a 30-second interval, if the /health endpoint occasionally takes longer than 5 seconds (e.g., due to transient load), the ALB marks instances unhealthy after two consecutive failures (unhealthy threshold of 2). Increasing the timeout to 10 seconds gives the endpoint more time to respond, preventing false negatives without changing the check frequency.
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.
✗
Increase the health check interval to 60 seconds.
Why it's wrong here
This would slow down detection of unhealthy instances, potentially increasing errors.
✓
Increase the health check timeout to 10 seconds.
Why this is correct
A longer timeout accommodates momentary slowdowns in the health check endpoint response.
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.
✗
Add more EC2 instances to the target group.
Why it's wrong here
This does not address the root cause of health check failures.
✗
Decrease the healthy threshold to 1.
Why it's wrong here
This affects marking instances healthy, not the cause of health check failures.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse increasing the health check interval (Option A) with giving more time for the application to respond, when in fact the timeout parameter directly controls how long the ALB waits for a response before marking the check as failed.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The ALB health check timeout defaults to 5 seconds (configurable up to 120 seconds) and is independent of the interval. When the timeout is exceeded, the check is considered a failure. In this scenario, the application's /health endpoint may occasionally be slow due to resource contention or database latency, causing it to exceed the 5-second timeout. Increasing the timeout aligns with the application's actual response time variability, while the interval and thresholds remain appropriate for stability.
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
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. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. 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
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: Increase the health check timeout to 10 seconds. — The intermittent 503 errors and healthy hosts dropping to zero indicate that health checks are timing out before the application can respond. With a default health check timeout of 5 seconds and a 30-second interval, if the /health endpoint occasionally takes longer than 5 seconds (e.g., due to transient load), the ALB marks instances unhealthy after two consecutive failures (unhealthy threshold of 2). Increasing the timeout to 10 seconds gives the endpoint more time to respond, preventing false negatives without changing the check frequency.
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.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is running a stateful web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Users report intermittent errors. The SysOps admin notices that the ALB's healthy host count is fluctuating. The admin wants to improve the health check configuration to reduce false positives. Which configuration change is most likely to help?
medium
A.Increase the unhealthy threshold count
B.Reduce the health check interval
✓ C.Increase the health check interval
D.Lower the healthy threshold count
Why C: Increasing the health check interval reduces the frequency of health checks, which helps prevent transient issues (e.g., brief CPU spikes or network jitter) from causing false positives. With a longer interval, the ALB waits longer between checks, giving the instance more time to recover before being marked unhealthy. This stabilizes the healthy host count and reduces unnecessary instance replacement.
Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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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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