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SOA-C02 Practice Question: CloudWatch composite alarms to reduce alert…
This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of cloudwatch composite alarms to reduce alert…. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. A key principle to apply: cloudWatch composite alarms. 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 environment has 12 individual CloudWatch metric alarms covering CPU, memory, disk, and network. When one instance degrades, all 12 alarms fire simultaneously and send 12 separate notifications to the on-call engineer. The team wants a single notification per incident regardless of how many individual alarms trigger. What CloudWatch feature addresses this?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Configure all 12 alarms to write to the same CloudWatch Events rule and suppress duplicate events with EventBridge deduplication
EventBridge does not have a built-in deduplication or batching feature for alarm events. Without custom logic (e.g., a Lambda with deduplication state), every alarm event still produces a notification downstream.
B
Best answer
Create a composite alarm that enters ALARM state when any of the 12 child alarms is in ALARM state, and configure a single SNS action on the composite alarm only
The composite alarm's rule expression 'ALARM(alarm1) OR ALARM(alarm2) OR ...' triggers when any child fires. By routing all notifications through the composite alarm's action and removing actions from the child alarms, exactly one notification is sent per incident. Child alarm states remain visible in the console for root cause analysis.
C
Distractor review
Increase the alarm evaluation period on all 12 alarms to 30 minutes so they fire less frequently
Increasing the evaluation period delays detection and may cause alarms to aggregate naturally by waiting, but it does not reduce simultaneous notifications for a correlated event. If all metrics degrade together (as they do when an instance fails), all 12 alarms still fire after the longer period.
D
Distractor review
Use an SNS topic with a delivery policy that batches notifications sent within a 60-second window
SNS does not have a built-in batching policy that combines multiple messages into one delivery. Each alarm state change publishes a separate SNS message. Batching would require a custom Lambda subscriber that de-duplicates messages, adding custom code.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
Treat this as a scenario question. Identify the problem, the constraint, and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- CloudWatch composite alarms
- alarm aggregation
- alert fatigue
- ALARM state logic
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
CloudWatch composite alarms
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More questions from this exam
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Question 1
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
CloudWatch composite alarms
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Create a composite alarm that enters ALARM state when any of the 12 child alarms is in ALARM state, and configure a single SNS action on the composite alarm only — CloudWatch composite alarms combine multiple alarms using Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT). A composite alarm can be configured to enter ALARM state only when a specific combination of child alarms is met, and it sends a single notification for the combined condition. Child alarms do not send notifications independently when a composite alarm manages the notification. This reduces 12 simultaneous notifications to one per incident, while preserving the individual alarm states for diagnosis.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Review cloudWatch composite alarms, then practise related SOA-C02 questions on the same topic to reinforce the concept.
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