AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01)Network ImplementationMedium
A company is deploying a new containerized application that requires extremely low latency and high network throughput between its containers, which are deployed as EC2 instances. These instances must be located physically close to each other to minimize network hop and maximize performance. Which EC2 placement strategy should be used?
- ACluster Placement Group
- BDedicated Hosts
- CPartition Placement Group
- DSpread Placement Group
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Cluster Placement Group
A Cluster Placement Group places instances physically close to each other within a single Availability Zone, enabling low-latency network performance and high throughput, which is ideal for tightly coupled applications like containerized workloads requiring inter-instance communication.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Dedicated Hosts provide dedicated physical servers for instance placement but don't inherently guarantee physical proximity for low-latency networking like a Cluster Placement Group.
- C. Partition Placement Groups divide instances into logical segments (partitions) to reduce the impact of hardware failures across partitions, but not to achieve ultra-low latency within the group.
- D. Spread Placement Groups place instances on distinct underlying hardware to reduce correlated failures, which is opposite to the low-latency requirement.
Cluster Placement Group
A Cluster Placement Group is a logical grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone that are placed on the same underlying hardware to achieve high network throughput and low latency.
- Instances are physically close together
- Must be within a single Availability Zone
- Ideal for tightly coupled applications (e.g., HPC, big data)
- Can fail if an entire rack fails
Memory trick: Cluster for close, Spread for separate, Partition for segments.