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Placement Groups

5 minutes 5 Questions

Placement Groups are logical groupings of instances within a single Availability Zone, enabling you to influence their placement and get the desired performance characteristics. There are three types of placement groups: Cluster, which packs instances close together for low-latency and high network…

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Placement Groups Example Questions

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Question 1

A company needs to maximize fault tolerance by ensuring that no two EC2 instances are placed on the same underlying hardware (for example, different racks). Which EC2 placement group type should they use?

Correct Answer: Spread

Spread placement groups place each EC2 instance on distinct underlying hardware (separate racks), minimizing correlated failures and maximizing fault tolerance for a small number of critical instances. Cluster placement groups colocate instances on the same hardware for low latency and very high throughput, which reduces fault tolerance. Partition placement groups distribute instances across partitions (sets of racks) to reduce the blast radius for large fleets but do not guarantee per-instance isolation, as multiple instances in the same partition can share hardware. "Isolate" is not an EC2 placement group type.

Question 2

A multimedia company wants to replace their on-premises servers with AWS EC2 instances. They need to maintain low latency and ensure that the instances are close together. Which Placement Group should they use?

Correct Answer: Cluster

Cluster Placement Groups ensure that instances are placed close together within a single Availability Zone, providing low network latency and high network throughput.

Question 3

You are deploying six EC2 instances that host a critical e-commerce service. You must maximize availability by distributing the instances across three Availability Zones in the same Region and ensuring each instance runs on distinct underlying hardware to minimize correlated failures. Which EC2 placement strategy best meets these requirements?

Correct Answer: Spread

A spread placement group places each instance on distinct underlying hardware and can span multiple Availability Zones within a Region. This provides maximum fault isolation for a small number of critical instances and reduces the risk of correlated failures. With six instances distributed across three AZs, a spread placement group meets the requirement to distribute instances across AZs while ensuring each instance is on separate hardware. Cluster placement groups are confined to a single AZ and optimize for low-latency networking, not cross-AZ high availability. Partition placement groups are intended for large distributed workloads and do not guarantee each instance is on unique hardware unless carefully mapped, and they are more complex than needed here. Using no placement group does not provide hardware-level isolation and offers no guarantees against correlated failures.

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