SOA-C02 Question #290: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

A company runs an application on an Amazon EC2 instance A SysOps administrator creates an Auto Scaling group and an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to handle an increase in demand. However, the EC2 instances are failing tie health check. What should the SysOps administrator do to troubleshoot this issue?

Options

• AVerity that the Auto Scaling group is configured to use all AWS Regions.
• BVerily that the application is running on the protocol and the port that the listens is expecting.
• CVerify the listener priority in the ALB. Change the priority if necessary.
• DVerify the maximum number of instances in the Auto Scaling group. Change the number if

Explanation

Why B is correct: When an ALB performs health checks, it sends HTTP/HTTPS requests to a specific port and path on each EC2 instance. If the application is listening on a different port or protocol than what the target group's health check is configured to use, the instances will appear unhealthy even though the application itself is running fine - the check simply can't reach it.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A is wrong because Auto Scaling groups operate within a single region (spanning Availability Zones, not regions), so multi-region configuration is irrelevant here.
• C is wrong because listener priority controls which rule processes a request first; it has no bearing on whether health checks pass or fail.
• D is wrong because the maximum instance count affects scaling capacity, not whether instances pass health checks - an instance can fail a health check regardless of how many are allowed.

Memory tip: Think of health checks as a "knock on the door" - if you knock on the wrong door (wrong port/protocol), nobody answers, and the instance looks dead even if the app is alive inside. Always match the health check port/path to what the app actually serves.

No community discussion yet for this question.