AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 258

A company is launching an application on AWS. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to direct traffic to at least two Amazon EC2 instances in a single target group. The instances are in an Auto Scaling group for each environment. The company requires a development environment and a production environment. The production environment will have periods of high traffic.

Which solution will configure the development environment MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Reconfigure the target group in the development environment to have only one EC2 instance as a target.
• B. Change the ALB balancing algorithm to least outstanding requests.
• C. Reduce the size of the EC2 instances in both environments.
• D. Reduce the maximum number of EC2 instances in the development environment’s Auto Scaling group.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The correct answer is D because reducing the maximum number of EC2 instances in the development environment's Auto Scaling group directly lowers costs by limiting the number of instances that can be launched. Option A could still incur costs for an additional instance that is not needed, option B does not address cost-effectiveness, and option C may not be necessary if the number of instances is the main cost driver.