SOA-C02 Question #452: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

A company decides to stop non-production Amazon EC2 instances during the EC2 instances. The company's IT manager must receive notification in near real time whenever an EC2 instance that has an environment type tag value of non-production is started during the night. Which solution will meet this requirement with the MOST operational efficiency?

Options

• AConfigure an AWS Lambda function with an SMTP client library. Subscribe the Lambda function
• BDeploy an AWS Lambda function that queries the Amazon EC2 API to determine the state of
• CCreate an Amazon EventBridge rule that includes the EC2 Instance State-change Notification
• DStore the EC2 instance metadata, including the environment type, in an Amazon DynamoDB

Explanation

Option C is correct because Amazon EventBridge natively captures EC2 Instance State-change Notifications in real time and can filter events by instance tags (e.g., environment type = non-production). A single EventBridge rule can trigger an SNS topic to immediately email the IT manager - no custom code required, making it the most operationally efficient solution.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A is wrong because using a Lambda function with a custom SMTP library adds unnecessary complexity and maintenance burden when SNS already handles notifications natively.
• B is wrong because polling the EC2 API via Lambda introduces lag and wastes compute - it is reactive rather than event-driven, conflicting with the "near real time" requirement.
• D is wrong because storing metadata in DynamoDB adds an extra data layer that doesn't inherently trigger notifications; it requires additional glue logic and is over-engineered for this use case.

Memory tip: Think "EventBridge = event-driven glue." Whenever an exam question asks for near real-time reaction to an AWS resource state change with minimal operational overhead, EventBridge + SNS is almost always the answer - it listens, filters, and notifies without any custom code.

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