A company is developing a web application that runs on Amazon EC2 Linux instances. The application requires monitoring of custom performance metrics. The company must collect metrics for API…

Question

Options

• AInstall the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the instances. Configure the agent to collect the custom
• BUse Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus to scrape the custom metrics from the application.
• CCreate a custom AWS Lambda function that polls the application endpoints and database at
• DImplement custom logging in the application code to record the custom metrics. Use Amazon

• A
  83% (39)
• B
  11% (5)
• C
  2% (1)
• D
  4% (2)

Explanation

Explanation

Installing the Amazon CloudWatch Agent on EC2 instances is the optimal solution because it is a native AWS tool designed specifically to collect custom metrics (including application performance data) with minimal configuration - you simply install the agent, define a JSON configuration file specifying what to collect, and CloudWatch handles the rest at scale across multiple instances.

Option B (Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus) requires additional infrastructure setup, including a Prometheus-compatible scraping endpoint in your application and a separate Grafana workspace for visualization, introducing significant operational complexity compared to a native CloudWatch integration.

Option C (Lambda polling) requires writing, deploying, and maintaining custom code, plus managing Lambda invocation schedules and error handling - all of which create substantial ongoing operational overhead that contradicts the "least overhead" requirement.

Option D (custom logging + another service) is incomplete as presented, and routing log data through additional pipelines to extract metrics adds unnecessary complexity versus directly collecting metrics with the CloudWatch agent.

Memory Tip: When an AWS exam question asks for "least operational overhead" with EC2 and custom metrics, think CloudWatch Agent first - it's AWS-native, agentless in terms of management (SSM can deploy it automatically), and requires no additional services or custom code.

No community discussion yet for this question.