SAA-C03 Question 470
Single answerA company runs an e-commerce application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). During seasonal sales events, there is a significant spike in traffic, often leading to degraded application performance due to resource constraints. The company wants to ensure the application can handle traffic spikes while optimizing costs. Which scaling strategy should the company implement to meet these requirements?
- A
Set up an Auto Scaling group with scheduled scaling policies to scale up during expected traffic spikes.
- B
Enable EC2 instance hibernation to quickly resume instances during traffic spikes.
- C
Set up an Auto Scaling group with dynamic scaling policies based on ALB target group request counts.
- D
Manually launch additional EC2 instances during sales events to handle increased traffic.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
Dynamic scaling policies with Auto Scaling groups allow the application to adjust its capacity based on real-time demand. By using metrics such as request counts from the ALB target group, the system can automatically add or remove instances as traffic increases or decreases. This ensures optimal performance during high traffic while controlling costs during low traffic periods. Scheduled scaling is less flexible, hibernation is not designed for traffic scaling, and manual intervention is not practical or efficient.
- A. Incorrect.
This approach works if traffic spikes are predictable, but it is not ideal for unexpected spikes or variable traffic patterns. It may also lead to over-provisioning and higher costs when traffic is lower than expected.
- B. Incorrect.
Hibernation is designed for maintaining long-running processes or saving application state, not for handling traffic spikes. It is not suitable for scaling strategies in this scenario.
- C. Correct.
Dynamic scaling with an Auto Scaling group based on ALB target group request counts is an optimal solution. It allows instances to scale out or in based on real-time demand, ensuring the application can handle spikes while minimizing costs during lower traffic periods.
- D. Incorrect.
Manually launching instances is not an efficient or scalable solution. It introduces delays and requires constant monitoring and intervention, which is not practical for handling dynamic traffic patterns.