What should a solutions architect do to meet this requirement?
Stop the instance outside the application’s availability window. Start up the instance again when required.
Hibernate the instance outside the application’s availability window. Start up the instance again when required.
Use Auto Scaling to scale down the instance outside the application’s availability window. Scale up the instance when required.
Terminate the instance outside the application’s availability window. Launch the instance by using a preconfigured Amazon Machine Image (AMI) when required.
Explanations:
Stopping the instance would release the memory, meaning the contents of the instance’s memory would not be preserved. Only the EBS volumes would retain data, but volatile memory contents would be lost.
Hibernating the instance preserves the contents of its memory to disk, allowing it to resume exactly where it left off when started again. This meets the requirement of keeping the memory contents intact while the instance is unavailable.
Using Auto Scaling to scale down the instance would not preserve the instance’s memory contents. Scaling down typically means terminating the current instance and launching a new one, which would result in loss of volatile memory.
Terminating the instance would permanently delete its memory contents. While a preconfigured AMI could be used to launch a new instance, this would not retain any memory state from the previous instance.
I reckon the answer is:
Hibernate the instance outside the application’s availability window. Start up the instance again when required.