SOA-C02 Question 37
Single answerYou are managing a production environment in AWS and have set up an Amazon EC2 instance running a critical application. CloudWatch has been configured to monitor the instance's CPU utilization, and an alarm is set to notify you when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. One evening, you receive an alarm notification that the CPU utilization has been consistently above 80% for the last 5 minutes. What is the BEST action to take to troubleshoot and resolve this issue?
- A
Check the application logs on the EC2 instance to identify processes consuming high CPU and optimize them.
- B
Terminate the EC2 instance and launch a new one with a more powerful instance type.
- C
Manually reboot the EC2 instance to clear any temporary issues causing high CPU utilization.
- D
Scale out the application by adding more EC2 instances behind an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB).
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
When encountering high CPU utilization, the first step should be to investigate and identify the root cause. Checking application logs on the EC2 instance helps pinpoint whether specific processes or configurations are causing the resource bottleneck. Once identified, you can take targeted corrective actions. Terminating or rebooting the instance, or scaling out, should only be considered after understanding the root cause or if immediate mitigation is required to ensure application availability.
- A. Correct.
Checking the application logs is the best first step as it allows you to identify the root cause of high CPU utilization and address it directly without disrupting the application unnecessarily.
- B. Incorrect.
Terminating the EC2 instance is not recommended as the first step because it can lead to unnecessary downtime and potential data loss. Proper troubleshooting should be done before considering this action.
- C. Incorrect.
Rebooting the EC2 instance may temporarily resolve the issue, but it does not address the root cause of high CPU utilization, making it an unreliable solution.
- D. Incorrect.
Scaling out the application is not the best initial option as it increases costs and complexity without understanding whether the high CPU utilization is due to a scalable issue or a specific application problem.