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Reliability and Business ContinuitymediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped

SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Question

This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of reliability and business continuity. 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 Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type is experiencing intermittent failures. The tasks are spread across multiple Availability Zones. The SysOps administrator notices that failures occur only when an entire AZ becomes unavailable. What should the administrator do to improve the reliability of the application?

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

Increase the desired task count to ensure sufficient capacity across AZs.

Increasing the desired task count ensures that ECS Fargate tasks are distributed across multiple Availability Zones, providing sufficient capacity to absorb the loss of an entire AZ. When one AZ becomes unavailable, the remaining tasks in other AZs continue to serve traffic, improving application reliability. This approach leverages the multi-AZ architecture already in place by ensuring enough tasks are running to handle the load even after an AZ failure.

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.

  • Use multiple subnets in the same AZ.

    Why it's wrong here

    Multiple subnets in the same AZ do not protect against AZ failure.

  • Use a cluster placement group.

    Why it's wrong here

    Placement groups are for EC2 instances, not Fargate tasks.

  • Attach an Amazon EFS filesystem to all tasks.

    Why it's wrong here

    EFS provides shared storage, not compute redundancy.

  • Increase the desired task count to ensure sufficient capacity across AZs.

    Why this is correct

    More tasks distributed across AZs provide redundancy.

    Related concept

    Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

Common exam traps

Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword

The trap here is that candidates may think adding storage (EFS) or using placement groups (which are EC2-specific) can solve AZ-level failures, but the core issue is ensuring enough task capacity across multiple AZs to survive the loss of one.

Detailed technical explanation

How to think about this question

ECS Fargate tasks are scheduled across subnets in different Availability Zones based on the task placement strategy and desired count. When an AZ fails, the ECS service scheduler automatically replaces tasks in the remaining AZs if the desired count is maintained, but only if there is sufficient capacity in those AZs. Increasing the desired task count above the minimum required for normal operation creates a buffer, so that even if an entire AZ is lost, the remaining tasks can handle the load without triggering a scaling event that might introduce latency.

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.

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FAQ

Questions learners often ask

What does this SOA-C02 question test?

Reliability and Business Continuity — This question tests Reliability and Business Continuity — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Increase the desired task count to ensure sufficient capacity across AZs. — Increasing the desired task count ensures that ECS Fargate tasks are distributed across multiple Availability Zones, providing sufficient capacity to absorb the loss of an entire AZ. When one AZ becomes unavailable, the remaining tasks in other AZs continue to serve traffic, improving application reliability. This approach leverages the multi-AZ architecture already in place by ensuring enough tasks are running to handle the load even after an AZ failure.

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.

What is the key concept behind this question?

Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 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.