AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 113

A monolithic application was recently migrated to AWS and is now running on a single Amazon EC2 instance. Due to application limitations, it is not possible to use automatic scaling to scale out the application. The chief technology officer (CTO) wants an automated solution to restore the EC2 instance in the unlikely event the underlying hardware fails.
What would allow for automatic recovery of the EC2 instance as quickly as possible?

Answer options

• A. Configure an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that triggers the recovery of the EC2 instance if it becomes impaired.
• B. Configure an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to trigger an SNS message that alerts the CTO when the EC2 instance is impaired.
• C. Configure AWS CloudTrail to monitor the health of the EC2 instance, and if it becomes impaired, trigger instance recovery.
• D. Configure an Amazon EventBridge event to trigger an AWS Lambda function once an hour that checks the health of the EC2 instance and triggers instance recovery if the EC2 instance is unhealthy.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Option A is correct because configuring an Amazon CloudWatch alarm directly initiates recovery of the EC2 instance when it is impaired, providing the fastest response. Option B merely alerts the CTO without taking any automatic recovery action. Option C involves AWS CloudTrail, which is not designed for health monitoring or recovery actions. Option D checks the instance health hourly, which is slower than the immediate response provided by the CloudWatch alarm in option A.