SAP-C02 Question 623
Single answerYour company is running a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application experiences variable traffic patterns and needs to scale automatically to handle unpredictable spikes in demand while ensuring cost efficiency. Which approach should you implement to meet these requirements?
- A
Use an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization.
- B
Manually launch additional EC2 instances during peak traffic periods and terminate them after traffic subsides.
- C
Configure an Auto Scaling group with scheduled scaling policies to add or remove instances based on predicted traffic patterns.
- D
Replace the EC2 instances with AWS Elastic Beanstalk and configure it for dynamic scaling.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best approach for handling unpredictable spikes in traffic while ensuring cost efficiency is to use an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy. This allows the system to automatically add or remove EC2 instances based on real-time metrics like average CPU utilization, ensuring the application scales dynamically to meet demand. This eliminates manual intervention and scheduled scaling's limitations, providing a robust, automated solution tailored to variable traffic patterns.
- A. Correct.
This is the correct option because an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy can dynamically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on real-time metrics like CPU utilization, ensuring the application can handle variable traffic patterns effectively while optimizing cost.
- B. Incorrect.
Manually managing EC2 instances is not a scalable or efficient solution for handling unpredictable traffic spikes. It may also lead to delays in response to traffic changes.
- C. Incorrect.
Scheduled scaling policies are useful for predictable traffic patterns, but they are not optimal for handling unpredictable spikes since the scaling behavior is based solely on predefined schedules.
- D. Incorrect.
While AWS Elastic Beanstalk supports dynamic scaling, replacing the current setup would require significant effort and might not align with the existing architecture. Additionally, the question does not mention a need to switch services.