SOA-C02 Question 40
Single answerYou are managing an application hosted on an EC2 instance behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group. A CloudWatch alarm has been triggered, indicating that the CPU utilization of the instance has been consistently above 90% for the last 15 minutes. What is the most appropriate action to take to address this issue?
- A
Manually restart the EC2 instance to reduce CPU utilization.
- B
Update the Auto Scaling group to add more instances by increasing the desired capacity.
- C
Modify the CloudWatch alarm threshold to a higher value so it no longer triggers as frequently.
- D
Enable enhanced monitoring on the EC2 instance to gather more detailed performance metrics.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
When an EC2 instance in an Auto Scaling group experiences high CPU utilization, the best solution is to scale the application horizontally by increasing the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group. This ensures that additional instances are launched to handle the load, improving application performance and resolving the issue identified by the CloudWatch alarm.
- A. Incorrect.
Restarting the EC2 instance will not address the root cause of high CPU usage and will result in application downtime. This is not the best solution.
- B. Correct.
Increasing the desired capacity in the Auto Scaling group will add more instances, distributing the load and reducing the CPU utilization on individual instances. This is the correct and scalable solution.
- C. Incorrect.
Modifying the CloudWatch alarm threshold simply hides the issue instead of resolving the actual performance problem. This is not recommended.
- D. Incorrect.
While enabling enhanced monitoring can provide more detailed metrics, it does not directly solve the issue of high CPU utilization. This is more of a diagnostic step, not a corrective action.