← SOA-C02·Amazon Web Services

Question 203 of 1,546

Reliability and Business Continuity →hardMultiple SelectObjective-mapped

Troubleshoot ALB Health Check Failures — Common Causes | AWS SysOps Associate Explained

This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of reliability and business continuity. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. 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 runs a stateless web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application is deployed in an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of 2 and maximum of 10 instances. During a traffic spike, the Auto Scaling group launches new instances, but the new instances are immediately marked as unhealthy by the ALB and terminated. What could be the cause? (Choose TWO.)

Clue words in this question

Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.

Clue: "minimum / minimize"
Why it matters: Asks for the least resource use — fewest addresses, smallest subnet, lowest overhead. Eliminate over-provisioned options even if they would technically work.
Clue: "immediately / without restart"
Why it matters: Time or reboot constraint — the correct answer must take effect right away without requiring a reboot or reload.

A
The health check path is misconfigured.
A misconfigured health check path causes the ALB to consider instances unhealthy.
B
The Auto Scaling group does not have sufficient capacity in the target AZ.
Why wrong: Insufficient capacity causes launch failure, not health check failure.
C
The instances do not have the required IAM role to register with the ALB.
Why wrong: IAM role is not required for health checks.
D
The security group for the instances does not allow inbound traffic from the ALB.
ALB health checks come from the ALB's source IPs; if blocked, health checks fail.
E
The instances are launched with a larger instance type than expected.
Why wrong: Instance type does not affect health check status.

Full breakdown with real-world context →

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

✓

The health check path is misconfigured.

Option A is correct because the ALB uses the configured health check path to determine instance health. If the path (e.g., /health) does not return a 200 OK response from the application on new instances, the ALB marks them as unhealthy and deregisters them. This is a common misconfiguration when the health check endpoint is not properly implemented or the path is incorrect.

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 health check path is misconfigured.
Why this is correct
A misconfigured health check path causes the ALB to consider instances unhealthy.
Clue confirmation
The clue words "minimum / minimize", "immediately / without restart" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
The Auto Scaling group does not have sufficient capacity in the target AZ.
Why it's wrong here
Insufficient capacity causes launch failure, not health check failure.
✗
The instances do not have the required IAM role to register with the ALB.
Why it's wrong here
IAM role is not required for health checks.
✓
The security group for the instances does not allow inbound traffic from the ALB.
Why this is correct
ALB health checks come from the ALB's source IPs; if blocked, health checks fail.
Clue confirmation
The clue words "minimum / minimize", "immediately / without restart" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
The instances are launched with a larger instance type than expected.
Why it's wrong here
Instance type does not affect health check status.

Common exam traps

Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword

The trap here is that candidates often overlook the security group requirement for inbound traffic from the ALB, assuming that the ALB can always reach instances, or they confuse IAM roles with network-level registration requirements.

Detailed technical explanation

How to think about this question

The ALB health check sends HTTP requests to the specified path (e.g., /health) on the instance's IP address and expects a 200 OK response within the configured timeout and interval. If the security group does not allow inbound traffic from the ALB's subnet (via the ALB's security group or the VPC CIDR), the health check requests are dropped, causing the instance to be marked unhealthy. This is a common issue when security group rules are not updated to allow traffic from the ALB's source security group or the load balancer's subnet range.

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 company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.

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: The health check path is misconfigured. — Option A is correct because the ALB uses the configured health check path to determine instance health. If the path (e.g., /health) does not return a 200 OK response from the application on new instances, the ALB marks them as unhealthy and deregisters them. This is a common misconfiguration when the health check endpoint is not properly implemented or the path is incorrect.

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: "minimum / minimize", "immediately / without restart". Asks for the least resource use — fewest addresses, smallest subnet, lowest overhead. Eliminate over-provisioned options even if they would technically work.

What is the key concept behind this question?

Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

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