AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 308

A user has launched two EBS backed EC2 instances in the US-East-1a region. The user wants to change the zone of one of the instances. How can the user change it?

Answer options

• A. The zone can only be modified using the AWS CLI
• B. Create an AMI of the running instance and launch the instance in a separate AZ
• C. Stop one of the instances and change the availability zone
• D. From the AWS EC2 console, select the Actions - > Change zones and specify the new zone

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Once an EC2 instance is launched, its Availability Zone (AZ) cannot be directly modified. To migrate an EBS-backed instance to another AZ, you must first create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of the instance and then launch a new instance from that AMI in the target AZ. There is no direct CLI command, console action, or stopping procedure that allows changing the AZ of an existing instance.