An ops team needs an automated notification whenever any production EC2 instance's CPU stays above 90% for 10 minutes. What should they configure?
A.A CloudWatch alarm on CPUUtilization with an SNS notification action
Correct. Metric threshold + notification action is exactly what CloudWatch alarms do.
B.A CloudTrail event rule
CloudTrail logs API calls, not performance metrics.
C.A VPC flow log filter
Flow logs capture network traffic, not CPU metrics.
D.A Config rule checking instance type
Config rules evaluate configuration compliance, not metric thresholds.
Why this answer
CloudWatch alarms watch metrics over periods (e.g., CPUUtilization > 90% for two 5-min periods) and trigger actions like SNS notifications — the canonical monitoring-and-alerting pattern.
Correct answer: A · Last reviewed 2026-10-26
Official AWS references
Practice this interactively
Answer without seeing the solution first in the Monitoring & Remediation practice session.
Practice Monitoring & Remediation