AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 2

A solutions architect is designing a high performance computing (HPC) workload on Amazon EC2. The EC2 instances need to communicate to each other frequently and require network performance with low latency and high throughput.
Which EC2 configuration meets these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Launch the EC2 instances in a cluster placement group in one Availability Zone.
• B. Launch the EC2 instances in a spread placement group in one Availability Zone.
• C. Launch the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group in two Regions and peer the VPCs.
• D. Launch the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group spanning multiple Availability Zones.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

The correct answer is A, as launching EC2 instances in a cluster placement group within one Availability Zone optimizes network performance for low latency and high throughput, which is crucial for HPC workloads. The other options do not provide the same level of network performance; spread placement groups are designed for fault tolerance rather than performance, and using multiple Regions or Availability Zones introduces additional latency and complexity that is not suitable for HPC requirements.