AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 278

A user wants to make so that whenever the CPU utilization of the AWS EC2 instance is above 90%, the redlight of his bedroom turns on. Which of the below mentioned AWS services is helpful for this purpose?

Answer options

• A. AWS CloudWatch + AWS SES
• B. AWS CloudWatch + AWS SNS
• C. None. It is not possible to configure the light with the AWS infrastructure services
• D. AWS CloudWatch and a dedicated software turning on the light

Correct answer: B

Explanation

AWS CloudWatch can monitor the CPU utilization of the EC2 instance and trigger an alarm when it goes above 90%. This alarm can then publish a message to an AWS SNS topic, which can deliver the alert via HTTP/HTTPS endpoints or SMS to trigger an IoT-enabled light. AWS SES is designed for bulk email sending and is not suitable for this real-time pub/sub trigger pattern, making the CloudWatch and SNS combination the correct AWS solution.