SAA-C03 Q395 · Monitoring

Question

A solutions architect creates an Auto Scaling group for a memory-intensive application. The solutions architect wants to scale up and scale down based on memory usage. Which solution will meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

**Answer B** satisfies both requirements:

1. **Collecting memory metrics**: By default, Amazon EC2 does **not** send memory utilization metrics to CloudWatch. You must install and configure the **Amazon CloudWatch agent** on your EC2 instances to publish custom metrics like `mem_used_percent`. The CloudWatch agent is the purpose-built tool for collecting OS-level metrics (memory, disk, etc.) and sending them to CloudWatch.

2. **Scaling based on memory usage**: A **target tracking scaling policy** is the ideal Auto Scaling policy type here. You specify a target value (e.g., keep `mem_used_percent` at 70%), and Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the desired capacity — scaling out when memory usage exceeds the target and scaling in when it drops below. This is reactive, metric-driven, and h

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