AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 Practice Question

The correct answer is to implement a blue/green deployment strategy using AWS CodeDeploy. This strategy involves creating a new, separate 'green' environment with the new application version that runs alongside the existing 'blue' production environment. Once the green environment is fully tested and ready, traffic is shifted from the blue environment to the green environment via the Application Load Balancer. This cutover is nearly instantaneous, eliminating downtime. If any issues are detected, a rollback is just as fast, as traffic can be immediately rerouted back to the old blue environment, which remains on standby until the green environment is deemed stable.

An in-place rolling update is incorrect because, while it avoids complete downtime, it introduces risk by having a mix of old and new application versions running simultaneously. This can be problematic for monolithic applications and makes rollbacks more complex than a simple traffic switch.

Using AWS Elastic Beanstalk with a managed rolling update policy is a plausible but less optimal choice. While Elastic Beanstalk simplifies deployments, it abstracts a significant amount of control. For a critical financial application, a more granular and customizable solution using a dedicated CI/CD pipeline with AWS CodeDeploy is generally preferred to maintain fine-grained control over the deployment process.

Automating the current all-at-once deployment with AWS Systems Manager Run Command is incorrect because it only automates a fundamentally flawed process. It would make the deployment faster but would not solve the core problems of application downtime and the high risk associated with an all-at-once cutover.