AWS (Amazon Web Services) Certification Practice Exam

What is the responsibility of an EC2 launch in an ECS Cluster?

1. Automating deployment and scaling

2. Specifying IAM roles for containers

3. Patching and scaling the instances

4. Creating alarms based on CloudWatch metrics

The correct answer is: Patching and scaling the instances

The responsibility of an EC2 launch within an ECS (Elastic Container Service) Cluster is primarily centered on the management of the underlying EC2 instances that run the containerized applications. When instances are launched in an ECS Cluster, they serve as the infrastructure upon which tasks (containers) are scheduled and run. Patching and scaling of these instances is crucial because it ensures that the computing resources are consistently maintained and can adapt to changing workloads. The EC2 instances must be kept up to date with security patches and other updates to ensure optimal performance and security. Moreover, scaling these instances, whether manually or automatically, is essential to meet the demand of the containerized applications as they scale up and down based on traffic or workload. This option directly corresponds to the core role of EC2 within ECS, as it establishes a solid foundation for running containers effectively. In contrast, automating deployment and scaling relates more to higher-level orchestration handled by ECS itself, while specifying IAM roles pertains to defining permissions for containers, and creating alarms based on CloudWatch metrics focuses on monitoring rather than on the direct management of EC2 instances.