AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 Practice Question

The correct answer is to use AWS Compute Optimizer to generate recommendations and migrate the instances to a memory-optimized instance family. The workload is clearly memory-bound, not CPU-bound, as indicated by the high memory utilization and low CPU utilization. The m5 instance family is general-purpose. A memory-optimized family, such as the R-series, is better suited for this workload. AWS Compute Optimizer is the ideal tool for this scenario because it analyzes historical utilization data (including memory, if the CloudWatch agent is configured) and recommends optimal instance types, often suggesting changes across instance families (e.g., M to R) and to Graviton-based instances for further cost savings. It also supports cross-account recommendations, which fulfills the requirement for a systematic approach across the organization.

• Using Cost Explorer Rightsizing recommendations to downsize to m5.2xlarge is incorrect because it keeps the instance within the same general-purpose family, failing to address the core issue of the workload being memory-bound. While Cost Explorer provides rightsizing recommendations, Compute Optimizer offers more detailed performance-oriented analysis and is the superior tool for this specific optimization task.
• Implementing an Auto Scaling group is not suitable for a stateful, monolithic application without significant re-architecture. Furthermore, a scaling policy based on CPU utilization would be ineffective since the application's bottleneck is memory, not CPU.
• Refactoring the application to a containerized microservices architecture on Amazon EKS is a major modernization project, not a rightsizing strategy. While it could be a valid long-term goal, it does not address the immediate requirement to optimize the existing fleet for cost and performance.