SAP-C02 Question 324
Single answerA large e-commerce company is running a monolithic application on a fleet of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application experiences predictable spikes during sales events, which leads to over-provisioning of resources to handle peak traffic. The company wants to reduce costs while maintaining the ability to handle peak traffic during these events. Which strategy should you implement to optimize costs while meeting their performance requirements?
- A
Use Auto Scaling groups with a combination of On-Demand and Spot Instances, and configure scheduled scaling for predictable traffic spikes.
- B
Migrate the application to a single large EC2 instance to reduce the number of instances needed.
- C
Replace the EC2 instances with AWS Lambda functions to eliminate the need for infrastructure management.
- D
Use Reserved Instances for all EC2 instances to lock in lower pricing for the next 3 years.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The correct strategy is to use Auto Scaling groups with a mix of On-Demand and Spot Instances to optimize costs and ensure availability. Scheduled scaling for predictable spikes ensures the application can handle peak traffic efficiently without over-provisioning resources. This approach balances cost savings with performance and scalability while avoiding long-term commitments or extensive architectural changes.
- A. Correct.
This is the correct answer. Using Auto Scaling groups with a combination of On-Demand and Spot Instances allows for cost optimization by leveraging Spot Instances for non-critical workloads while maintaining On-Demand Instances for baseline capacity. Scheduled scaling further optimizes resource allocation for predictable traffic spikes.
- B. Incorrect.
This is not the correct answer. Migrating to a single large EC2 instance would not provide the scalability or fault tolerance required to handle peak traffic, and it risks application downtime if the instance fails.
- C. Incorrect.
This is not the correct answer. While AWS Lambda can reduce infrastructure management, refactoring a monolithic application to work on serverless architecture would require significant time and effort. It may not be a cost-effective solution in the short term.
- D. Incorrect.
This is not the correct answer. While Reserved Instances provide cost savings, committing to Reserved Instances for all instances would limit flexibility and may not align with the company's need for dynamic scaling during predictable traffic spikes.