SAA-C03 Question 122
Single answerA company is running an e-commerce website on an Amazon EC2 instance with increasing traffic during holiday seasons. They want to improve the scalability of their application to handle unpredictable spikes in traffic while minimizing downtime. Which approach should they use?
- A
Scale the application vertically by upgrading the EC2 instance to a larger instance type.
- B
Implement an Auto Scaling group with multiple EC2 instances to scale horizontally based on demand.
- C
Use Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ deployment to improve database performance.
- D
Deploy the application in multiple AWS Regions to improve scalability.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Horizontal scaling (adding more EC2 instances using an Auto Scaling group) is the best solution for handling unpredictable traffic spikes. It allows the infrastructure to grow or shrink dynamically as needed, ensuring cost-efficiency and high availability during peak traffic periods. Vertical scaling, while useful in certain scenarios, has physical limits and could lead to downtime during upgrades.
- A. Incorrect.
Scaling vertically (upgrading the EC2 instance) improves performance but does not address unpredictable spikes efficiently, and it has physical limits.
- B. Correct.
Scaling horizontally using an Auto Scaling group allows the application to dynamically add or remove EC2 instances based on demand, which is highly effective for handling spikes in traffic.
- C. Incorrect.
Using Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ improves database availability and failover capabilities, but it does not directly handle application traffic spikes.
- D. Incorrect.
Deploying in multiple Regions improves fault tolerance and latency for global users but does not specifically address scalability during traffic spikes.