SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Questions and Answers

Using AWS Systems Manager Distributor and State Manager is an automated and scalable solution for managing software installation across EC2 instances.

Systems Manager Distributor: Allows packaging and distributing the auditing software across multiple Regions.

State Manager Association: Automates software installation on both existing and new instances, ensuring consistent deployment across all managed instances.

Manually connecting to instances or using Lambda is not scalable or efficient for this type of ongoing software management.

Enable Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration can provide fast and secure transfers over long distances between your client and Amazon S3. Transfer Acceleration uses Amazon CloudFront's globally distributed edge locations. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/s3-upload-large-files/

To centrally manage application logs and retain them for no more than 90 days, you can use the Amazon CloudWatch Logs agent to send logs to a CloudWatch log group and configure the log group's retention period.

Update the Launch Template User Data:

Navigate to the EC2 console.

Select the launch template used by the Auto Scaling group.

Edit the launch template to include the following user data script:

#!/bin/bash

yum update -y

yum install -y awslogs

cat < /etc/awslogs/awslogs.conf

[general]

state_file = /var/lib/awslogs/agent-state

[/var/log/messages]

file = /var/log/messages

log_group_name = /my-log-group

log_stream_name = {instance_id}/messages

datetime_format = %b %d %H:%M:%S

[/var/log/secure]

file = /var/log/secure

log_group_name = /my-log-group

log_stream_name = {instance_id}/secure

datetime_format = %b %d %H:%M:%S

EOF

systemctl start awslogsd

systemctl enable awslogsd

Replace /my-log-group with the name of your CloudWatch log group.

Configure the Log Group Retention Period:

Navigate to the CloudWatch console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Logs".

Select the log group created by the CloudWatch Logs agent.

Click on "Actions" and then "Edit retention settings".

Set the retention period to 90 days.

Verify the Configuration:

Ensure that logs from the EC2 instances are being sent to the CloudWatch log group.

Verify that the log group's retention period is correctly set to 90 days.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Agent

Setting Log Retention in CloudWatch

When setting up an AWS managed VPN connection and creating a customer gateway resource, if the customer gateway device resides behind a NAT device, you should use the public IP address of the NAT device. This is because the VPN connection from AWS will be established to the public IP address that AWS can reach.

Identify the Public IP Address of the NAT Device:

Determine the public IP address assigned to the NAT device in front of the customer gateway.

Create Customer Gateway Resource:

Navigate to the VPC console in the AWS Management Console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Customer Gateways" and then click "Create Customer Gateway".

Enter a name for the customer gateway.

For the "IP Address", enter the public IP address of the NAT device.

Configure VPN Connection:

Create a VPN connection by navigating to the "VPN Connections" section and clicking "Create VPN Connection".

Select the created customer gateway and complete the VPN setup wizard.

Update Routing and Configuration:

Ensure that the routing configurations on both the AWS side and the on-premises side are updated to route traffic through the VPN connection.

Configure the customer gateway device (behind the NAT) to accept traffic from the NAT device and route it appropriately.

AWS Managed VPN Connections

Customer Gateway Resource

To manage incomplete multipart uploads in an Amazon S3 bucket, creating an S3 Lifecycle rule to specifically address these uploads is the most effective method. The rule can be configured to automatically delete expired multipart upload parts, which helps in cleaning up unused data and reducing storage costs. Option A is correct as it directly addresses the requirement to manage incomplete uploads effectively. Reference on setting up S3 Lifecycle policies can be found here Amazon S3 Lifecycle.

To deploy and manage an identical Amazon VPC configuration across multiple AWS accounts efficiently:

AWS CloudFormation Template: Create a CloudFormation template that defines the VPC configuration. This template should include all necessary resources like subnets, route tables, internet gateways, etc.

Use CloudFormation StackSets: Utilize AWS CloudFormation StackSets to manage the deployment of the VPC template across the 50 AWS accounts. StackSets allow you to specify management and target accounts, automate deployments, and ensure consistency across all accounts.

Updating VPCs: When updates are required, modify the CloudFormation template and update the stack set. This will automatically apply the changes to all VPCs in the target accounts, ensuring uniformity and reducing operational overhead.

This method provides a centralized, consistent, and scalable way to manage resources across multiple AWS accounts, greatly simplifying the administration and ensuring compliance with organizational standards.

CloudWatch Metrics Explorer is a powerful tool for creating dynamic dashboards based on tags. This method is efficient for monitoring Auto Scaling groups:

Use Metrics Explorer: Navigate to the Metrics Explorer in the CloudWatch console and select the CPUUtilization metric. Use the aws:autoscaling:groupName tag to filter the metric, ensuring that it only shows data for EC2 instances within the specified Auto Scaling group.

Create Visualization: Configure the visualization settings as needed and add it to a CloudWatch dashboard.

Monitor Automatically: This setup will automatically update to include metrics from new EC2 instances that join the Auto Scaling group, without any need for manual intervention or scripting.

AWS Documentation Reference:

You can learn more about using Metrics Explorer here: Using CloudWatch Metrics Explorer.

When you have EC2 instances requiring low-latency, high-throughput communication, the best placement strategy is to use a cluster placement group.

From the AWS EC2 Placement Group Guide:

A cluster placement group is a logical grouping of instances within a single AZ.

This strategy enables workloads to achieve low-latency network performance needed for tightly coupled node-to-node communication.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

B: Elastic IPs are used for static public IP addressing — they do not affect intra-cluster latency.

C: Jumbo frames require support from all hardware/network layers and are not guaranteed to lower latency.

D: Spread placement groups distribute instances across different hardware, which increases latency.

The VolumeQueueLength metric being high indicates the volume can’t process I/O operations fast enough, leading to performance degradation.

From Amazon EBS Performance Guide:

For gp3 volumes, performance can be adjusted by increasing IOPS or throughput independently of storage size.

The gp3 volume type allows provisioning up to:

16,000 IOPS

1,000 MB/s throughput

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A: ElastiCache is a caching layer and doesn't attach to EBS volumes.

B: Auto-Enabled IO is only relevant when IO is disabled due to volume-level issues, not performance.

D: Enhanced networking helps network performance, not disk I/O latency.

To minimize costs while moving from EC2 instances to AWS Fargate, Compute Savings Plans are the most flexible and cost-effective option. Compute Savings Plans apply to a variety of compute services including AWS Fargate, Amazon EC2, and AWS Lambda, allowing for greater flexibility in managing costs as the company transitions to using only Fargate.

Compute Savings Plans:

Savings Plans provide significant savings over On-Demand pricing, up to 66% savings.

Compute Savings Plans offer the flexibility to move across instance types, AWS Regions, and operating systems.

Payment Options:

The No Upfront payment option provides the most flexibility and avoids large upfront capital expenditures.

The Partial Upfront payment option offers more savings but requires an initial payment.

1-Year Term:

A 1-year term is suitable for the company's 6-month transition period, allowing for cost savings without a long-term commitment.

AWS Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

When you create a hosted zone, Route 53 automatically creates a name server (NS) record and a start of authority (SOA) record for the zone. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/migrate-dns-domain-in-use.html#migrate-dns-create-hosted-zone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOA_record

For an RDS instance that needs high availability and automatic failover capabilities, setting it up as a Multi-AZ deployment is the most effective solution:

Multi-AZ Deployment: This feature allows Amazon RDS to automatically provision and manage a synchronous standby replica of your database in a different Availability Zone (AZ). The primary DB instance and the standby replica contain the same data, providing data redundancy and fail-safe mechanism.

Automatic Failover: In the event of a planned or unplanned outage of your primary DB instance (including DB instance failure, AZ failure, or network failure), RDS automatically fails over to the standby so that database operations can resume quickly without administrative intervention.

Data Integrity: This setup ensures no data loss for committed transactions, as the standby replica is always in sync with the primary.

By enabling Multi-AZ deployment, you ensure that your database environment has high availability and robustness, addressing both disaster recovery and operational continuity without losing any committed transactions.

To handle the increased message load with minimal operational effort, implementing an Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) queue between the frontend and backend is an ideal solution. SQS decouples the frontend and backend by queuing messages, enabling the backend to process messages at its own pace without losing any.

SQS Queue: Acts as a buffer, ensuring messages are not lost if the backend application cannot immediately process them.

Decoupling: With SQS, the frontend can continue sending messages without concern for the backend's processing speed, providing a scalable solution with minimal management requirements.

Low Operational Overhead: SQS is fully managed, reducing the need for infrastructure management.

The most likely reason for the unexpected placement of EC2 instances is that one Availability Zone did not have sufficient capacity for the requested EC2 instance type.

Capacity Constraints:

AWS manages EC2 instance placement based on available capacity in the Availability Zones.

If a particular Availability Zone does not have enough capacity for the instance type you requested, AWS will place instances in other Availability Zones with sufficient capacity.

Auto Scaling Group Configuration:

Even if the Auto Scaling group is configured to use all three Availability Zones, instances might not be evenly distributed if one zone lacks the required capacity.

This can result in instances being placed in the remaining zones with available capacity.

Monitoring and Mitigation:

Monitor the capacity limits and instance distribution using CloudWatch and the Auto Scaling group's activity history.

Consider using smaller instance types or different instance families to avoid capacity issues in specific zones.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Troubleshooting Amazon EC2 Capacity Issues

Amazon Route 53's failover routing policy allows you to route traffic to a primary resource unless it is unavailable, in which case Route 53 can fail over to a secondary resource.

Steps:

Open Route 53 Console:

Open the Amazon Route 53 console.

Create Alias Records:

In your hosted zone, create two alias records.

One alias record should point to the ALB in the primary region and the other to the ALB in the secondary region.

Set Failover Routing Policy:

For the alias record pointing to the primary ALB, set the routing policy to "Failover" and designate it as the primary.

For the alias record pointing to the secondary ALB, set the routing policy to "Failover" and designate it as the secondary.

Enable Health Checks:

Ensure that "Evaluate Target Health" is set to "Yes" for both alias records. This ensures that Route 53 will check the health of the ALBs before routing traffic.

Configure Health Checks for ALBs:

Ensure that each ALB has appropriate health checks configured to accurately report the health of the instances.

 AWS Config Managed Rule for S3 Logging:

The s3-bucket-logging-enabled AWS Config rule checks whether S3 buckets have logging enabled.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Config.

Create a rule using s3-bucket-logging-enabled.

Add a remediation action using an AWS Lambda function or Systems Manager Automation runbook.

AWS Config Managed Rules

 Using AWS Lambda for Remediation:

Create a Lambda function that enables logging on S3 buckets.

Steps:

Write a Lambda function in Python or Node.js to enable logging.

Configure the function to trigger on non-compliant buckets.

To receive email notifications when IAM CreateUser API calls are made, you need to create an EventBridge rule that captures these events from CloudTrail and then routes them to an SNS topic that has an email subscription.

Enable CloudTrail:

Ensure AWS CloudTrail is enabled in your account to log API activity. Go to AWS CloudTrail Console and enable it if not already enabled.

Create SNS Topic:

Open the Amazon SNS console at Amazon SNS Console.

Create a new topic and name it (e.g., IAMCreateUserNotifications).

Create an email subscription for the topic by entering your email address and confirming the subscription via the email received.

Create EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console at Amazon EventBridge Console.

Create a new rule and provide a name and description.

For the Event source, select AWS events or EventBridge Schema.

In Event pattern, select AWS services and choose CloudTrail as the service.

Specify the event type as AWS API Call via CloudTrail.

In the Event source dropdown, select IAM and in the API operation, enter CreateUser.

Add Target:

Add a target and select SNS topic.

Choose the SNS topic you created earlier (IAMCreateUserNotifications).

Configure Permissions:

Ensure that the EventBridge rule has permission to publish to the SNS topic.

This configuration will trigger an email notification whenever an IAM CreateUser API call is made, keeping you informed of new user creations.

Creating an EventBridge Rule That Triggers on an Event

Setting Up a CloudWatch Event to Trigger SNS

Creating CloudTrail Event Rules

Using AWS CloudFormation stack sets allows you to manage CloudWatch alarms across multiple accounts efficiently:

Create Stack Set: Use a CloudFormation template that defines the required CloudWatch alarms and configures them to publish alerts to an SNS topic.

Specify SNS Topic: Ensure the SNS topic is located in the logging account and has the necessary permissions set to receive publications from all accounts in the organization.

Deploy Across Organization: Implement the stack set across all accounts, ensuring centralized management and standardized deployment.

AWS Documentation Reference:

Learn more about deploying resources with CloudFormation StackSets: Working with AWS CloudFormation StackSets.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

A user cannot upload an object to an S3 bucket using a presigned URL, even though the URL is valid and the bucket has no policy applied.

Analyze the Requirements:

Determine the cause of the issue preventing the upload via the presigned URL.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: The user has not properly configured the AWS CLI.

CLI configuration is not relevant to using a presigned URL.

Option B: The SysOps administrator does not have the necessary permissions.

The administrator's permissions are required to generate a valid presigned URL with sufficient permissions.

Option C: A bucket policy is required.

A bucket policy is not necessary if the presigned URL has the correct permissions.

Option D: The object has already been uploaded.

A presigned URL remains valid until it expires or the specified permissions are revoked.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Ensuring that the SysOps administrator has the necessary permissions to upload objects to the S3 bucket is crucial for generating valid presigned URLs.

Amazon S3 Presigned URLs

IAM Policies for Amazon S3

The SysOps administrator must have the necessary permissions to upload objects to the S3 bucket, ensuring that the presigned URL generated allows the user to upload successfully.

Installing the CloudWatch agent enables log monitoring, and a CloudWatch metric filter allows alerting on specific errors. Using EventBridge to trigger a Systems Manager Automation runbook automates the restart of the web server, creating an efficient and automated solution.

This question is about:

Running a script every 60 minutes

Sending an SMS message

From the Amazon EventBridge Scheduler Documentation:

EventBridge Scheduler provides cron-based scheduling, and is the recommended tool for time-based invocations (replacing CloudWatch Events for most new use cases).

From the Amazon SNS Documentation:

SNS can send SMS messages by publishing to a topic that has a phone number subscribed.

Here are the steps to configure Amazon EventBridge to meet the above requirements:

Log in to the AWS Management Console by using the AWS Management Console shortcut from the VM desktop. Make sure that you are logged in to the desired AWS account.

Go to the EventBridge service in the us-east-2 Region.

In the EventBridge service, navigate to the "Event buses" page.

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

Give a name to your event bus, and select "default" as the event source type.

Navigate to "Rules" page and create a new rule named "RunFunction"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "Schedule" as the event source and set the schedule to run every 15 minutes.

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to Lambda" and choose the existing AWS Lambda function named "LogEventFunction"

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "EC2" as the event source, and filter the events on "EC2 Spot Instance interruption"

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to SNS topic" and create a new standard Amazon SNS topic named "TopicEvents"

In the "Input Transformer" section, set the Input Path to {“instance” : “$.detail.instance-id”} and Input template to “The EC2 Spot Instance has been interrupted on account.

Now all Amazon EC2 events in the default event bus will be replayable for past 90 days.

Note:

You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs to create and manage EventBridge resources.

You can use CloudTrail event history to replay events from the past 90 days.

You can refer to the AWS EventBridge documentation for more information on how to configure and use the service: https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/

Here are the steps to update an existing AWS CloudFormation stack:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the CloudFormation service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

Choose "Replace current template" and upload the updated CloudFormation template from the Amazon S3 bucket named "cloudformation-bucket"

In the "Parameter" section, update the EC2 instance type to us-east-t2.nano and add the IP address range 192.168.100.0/30 for SSH access.

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

In the "Capabilities" section, check the checkbox for "IAM Resources"

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

Once the update is complete, navigate to the stack and click on the "Stack options" button, and select "Prevent updates to prevent accidental deletion"

To get the value of the Prodlnstanceld , navigate to the "Outputs" tab in the CloudFormation stack and find the key "Prodlnstanceld". The value corresponding to it is the value that you need to enter in the text box below.

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation service role to deploy updates.

You can refer to the AWS CloudFormation documentation for more information on how to update and manage stacks: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

Here are the steps to configure an Amazon S3 bucket to serve a static error page in the event of a failure at the primary site:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the S3 service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing S3 bucket named lab-751906329398-26023898.com and click on it.

In the "Properties" tab, click on "Static website hosting" and select "Use this bucket to host a website".

In "Index Document" field, enter the name of the object that you want to use as the index document, in this case, "index.html"

In the "Permissions" tab, click on "Block Public Access", and make sure that "Block all public access" is turned OFF.

Click on "Bucket Policy" and add the following policy to allow public read access:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::lab-751906329398-26023898.com/*"

}

]

}

Now navigate to the Amazon Route 53 service, and find the existing hosted zone named lab-751906329398-26023898.com.

Click on the "A record" and update the routing policy to "Primary - Failover" and add the existing ALB as the primary record.

Click on "Create Record" button and create a new secondary failover alias record for the domain lab-751906329398-26023898.com that routes traffic to the existing S3 bucket.

Now, when the primary site (ALB) goes down, traffic will be automatically routed to the S3 bucket serving the static error page.

Note:

You can use CloudWatch to monitor the health of your ALB.

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

You can use Amazon Route 53 for routing traffic to different resources based on health checks.

You can refer to the AWS documentation for more information on how to configure and use these services:

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

https://aws.amazon.com/route53/

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/Creating_EBSbacked_WinAMI.html

"NoReboot By default, Amazon EC2 attempts to shut down and reboot the instance before creating the image. If the No Reboot option is set, Amazon EC2 doesn't shut down the instance before creating the image. When this option is used, file system integrity on the created image can't be guaranteed." Besides, we can use AWS EventBridge to invoke Lambda function https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/API_CreateImage.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Cookies.html

You can configure each cache behavior to do one of the following: Forward all cookies to your origin – CloudFront includes all cookies sent by the viewer when it forwards requests to the origin. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/sticky-sessions.html

By default, an Application Load Balancer routes each request independently to a registered target based on the chosen load-balancing algorithm.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/distributor-working-with-packages-deploy.html

To ensure that all Amazon EC2 Windows instances have a third-party agent installed and updated automatically, the SysOps administrator can use AWS Systems Manager Distributor and State Manager.

Create a Systems Manager Distributor Package:

Distributor is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that allows you to package and distribute software across your instances.

Create a Distributor package for the third-party agent.

AWS Systems Manager Distributor

Create a Systems Manager State Manager Association:

State Manager is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that automates the process of keeping your Amazon EC2 instances in a defined state.

Create a State Manager association to run the AWS-ConfigureAWSPackage document. Populate the details of the third-party agent package.

Specify instance tags based on the appropriate tag value for Windows with a schedule of 1 day to ensure the agent is updated periodically.

AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO) provides a centralized interface to manage SSO access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications. AWS SSO integrates with AWS Organizations and supports SAML 2.0 identity providers, making it an ideal solution for centrally managing user access and permissions across multiple AWS accounts.

AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO):

AWS SSO allows you to manage SSO access and user permissions to all of your AWS accounts and applications.

It integrates seamlessly with AWS Organizations.

Integration with SAML 2.0 IdP:

AWS SSO supports integration with third-party SAML 2.0 identity providers.

This allows centralized management of user identities and access.

Steps to Implement:

Enable AWS SSO in your AWS Organizations management account.

Configure AWS SSO to connect with your third-party SAML 2.0 IdP.

Assign user permissions and roles for each AWS account through AWS SSO.

AWS Single Sign-On

Integrating AWS SSO with SAML 2.0 Identity Providers

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/using-features.rolling-version-deploy.html

To maintain full capacity during new deployments in AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you can use the "Immutable" or "Rolling with additional batch" deployment policies.

Immutable Deployment:

This policy ensures that a new set of instances is launched with the new version of the application. The new instances are only promoted to serve traffic if the deployment succeeds. This ensures zero downtime and maintains full capacity during deployment.

Rolling with Additional Batch:

This policy launches a new batch of instances to handle the traffic while the old instances are being updated. This maintains the full capacity during the deployment process, ensuring that the application remains fully operational.

How to Configure Deployment Policies:

Open Elastic Beanstalk Console:

Navigate to the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console at AWS Elastic Beanstalk Console.

Update Environment Configuration:

Select the environment you want to configure.

Go to Configuration and then Rolling updates and deployments.

Choose either Immutable or Rolling with additional batch as the deployment policy.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk Deployment Policies

Managing and Configuring Environments

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Engineers need to connect to EC2 instances in a private subnet for troubleshooting.

The instances are using Windows or Amazon Linux AMIs.

The team already has an IAM role for authorization.

Analyze the Requirements:

Provide secure and efficient access to the instances without exposing them directly to the internet.

Utilize existing IAM role for access control.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager.

Allows secure and auditable SSH or RDP access to EC2 instances without the need for bastion hosts or opening inbound ports.

Add a policy to allow the ssm:StartSession action.

Option B: Use Elastic IP and security group.

Exposes instances to direct access, increasing security risks.

Option C: Use a bastion host.

Requires additional infrastructure and maintenance.

Option D: Use an internet-facing Network Load Balancer.

Exposes instances to direct access via load balancer, not ideal for private subnets.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager is the most secure and efficient solution. It eliminates the need for additional infrastructure and avoids exposing instances to the internet.

AWS Systems Manager Session Manager

Controlling Access to Session Manager

AWS Systems Manager Session Manager provides secure and auditable access to EC2 instances in a private subnet using IAM roles.

To enable decryption of objects, the role only requires minimal permissions with least privilege:

kms

Necessary for reading and decrypting the data encrypted with KMS.

kms

Allows the role to check key properties, confirming it’s the correct key for decryption.

kms

Useful if multiple keys are in use and validation against an alias is needed.

These permissions are sufficient for decryption without granting additional permissions like encryption or key management.

The requirement is to monitor and notify whenever a non-production EC2 instance is started during the night. Amazon EventBridge offers a robust solution by triggering workflows in response to events.

Setting up Amazon EventBridge: Create an EventBridge rule that listens for the "EC2 Instance State-change Notification" event. Configure the rule to trigger only when instances transition to the "running" state.

Lambda Function: Attach a Lambda function as the target of the EventBridge rule. This function will execute when an EC2 instance starts. Inside the Lambda function, implement logic to check the current time and confirm it is during the night hours. Additionally, the function will check the instance's tags to verify if it's labeled as "non-production".

Notification via Amazon SNS: If the conditions are met (non-production and nighttime), the Lambda function publishes a message to an Amazon SNS topic specifically set up for this alert. The IT manager is subscribed to this topic, enabling them to receive an email notification almost instantaneously when the event occurs.

This solution is operationally efficient as it leverages serverless components that are inherently scalable and cost-effective, providing real-time monitoring and notifications without the need for continuous polling or complex infrastructure.

Problem Analysis:

The Cache-Control header (max-age=1 hour) conflicts with the CloudFront Maximum TTL setting (5 minutes).

CloudFront adheres to the lower of the two settings, leading to assets being cached for only 5 minutes.

Understanding Cache Behavior in CloudFront:

CloudFront evaluates headers such as Cache-Control and Expires along with its TTL settings.

The effective cache duration is the minimum value among these settings.

Resolution:

Align the Cache-Control max-age header and CloudFront Maximum TTL settings:

Update the CloudFront behavior to use a consistent value (e.g., set both to 1 hour).

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: The Expires header value is irrelevant as CloudFront primarily considers Cache-Control and TTL settings.

B: The issue is not about expiring cached assets but about the duration of cache retention.

C: Cache invalidation is not required as it addresses purging specific objects from cache.

Objective:

Resolve the failure of the CloudFormation Auto Scaling group resource creation due to a missing wait condition signal.

cfn-signal:

The cfn-signal command is used in user data scripts to signal CloudFormation that the resource has been successfully created or configured.

This ensures the stack creation process continues as expected.

Steps to Implement:

At the end of the user data script in the EC2 launch template:

Add the command: cfn-signal --stack --resource --region

Replace , , and with appropriate values.

AWS References:

cfn-signal:Using cfn-signal to Signal Completion

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option B: While port 443 is necessary for CloudFormation signaling, the main issue is the absence of cfn-signal.

Option C: Reducing DesiredCapacity may bypass the error but does not solve the root cause.

Option D: Associating a public IP may help connectivity but is unrelated to the wait condition.

To host a web application in an S3 bucket while adhering to the policy that prohibits public S3 buckets:

Amazon CloudFront: Set up a CloudFront distribution and designate the S3 bucket as its origin. This allows the web application to be served via CloudFront, which can handle web traffic at scale and provide additional features such as HTTPS delivery.

Origin Access Identity (OAI): Create an OAI for the CloudFront distribution and configure the S3 bucket policy to grant the s3:GetObject permission to the OAI. This allows only CloudFront to access the content in the S3 bucket, keeping the bucket private from direct public access.

Security and Performance: This configuration ensures that the web application is only accessible through CloudFront, enhancing security and performance. It also complies with the company's policy against public S3 buckets by controlling access strictly through CloudFront.

This method leverages CloudFront's capabilities to securely serve web applications from S3, maintaining privacy and compliance with organizational policies.

To configure an Amazon RDS database for high availability, you can use the Multi-AZ deployment option. Multi-AZ deployments provide enhanced availability and durability for RDS instances, making them a suitable choice for production environments. Here’s a step-by-step guide to achieve this:

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Select the RDS Instance:

In the navigation pane, choose Databases.

Select the database instance that you want to modify.

Modify the Instance:

Choose the Modify button.

In the Availability & durability section, select the option to enable Multi-AZ deployment.

Choose the appropriate instance class and storage settings if needed.

Apply Changes:

Review your settings, and then choose Continue.

Choose Apply immediately if you want the changes to take effect immediately. Otherwise, the changes will be applied during the next maintenance window.

Review and Confirm:

Confirm the changes and the instance will start modifying to a Multi-AZ deployment. This process might take some time, depending on the size of your database.

Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance

Multi-AZ Deployments

gp3 volumes provide higher performance and flexibility than gp2. With gp3, you can provision IOPS and throughput independently of storage size.

From the Amazon EBS documentation:

gp3 volumes deliver baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS, and you can provision up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s, regardless of volume size.

In AWS, there are default limits (also known as quotas) for the number of various resources that can be created in an account. One of these limits is the number of Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) that can be created in a single AWS account within a Region. The default limit for the number of VPCs per account per Region is typically 5.

If an organization is running multiple applications, each requiring a new VPC, it is possible to reach this limit, causing subsequent CloudFormation stack deployments that attempt to create additional VPCs to fail.

Check VPC Limits:

To verify the current limit and usage of VPCs in your account, you can use the AWS Service Quotas console.

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to AWS services and select Amazon VPC.

Check the VPCs per Region quota to see the limit and how many VPCs are currently in use.

Requesting a Quota Increase:

If the default limit is reached, you can request a quota increase.

In the Service Quotas console, select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Fill in the required information and submit the request. AWS typically reviews and approves these requests, but it may take some time.

CloudFormation Stack Failure:

When a CloudFormation stack fails due to reaching the VPC limit, the error message will indicate the issue related to the quota being exceeded.

You can view the specific error in the CloudFormation console under the Events tab of the stack.

Preventative Measures:

To avoid this issue, monitor resource usage and limits regularly.

Consolidate applications within fewer VPCs if possible, using subnets and security groups to isolate resources.

Amazon VPC Quotas

Service Quotas for VPC

Requesting a Quota Increase

Create an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) rule to invoke an AWS Lambda function on a daily basis. Configure the function to restore the DB cluster to a point in time and then delete the previous DB cluster. This is the most operationally efficient solution that meets the requirements, as it will allow the company to reset the database on a daily basis without having to manually take and restore snapshots. The other solutions (creating a manual snapshot of the DB cluster, enabling the Backtrack feature, or exporting a manual snapshot of the DB cluster to Amazon S3) will require additional steps and resources to reset the database on a daily basis.

A company hosts an application on an Amazon EC2 instance in a single AWS Region. The application requires support for non-HTTP TCP traffic and HTTP traffic.

The company wants to deliver content with low latency by leveraging the AWS network. The company also wants to implement an Auto Scaling group with an

Elastic Load Balancer.

How should a SysOps administrator meet these requirements?

A. Create an Auto Scaling group with an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Add an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the ALB as the origin.

B. Create an Auto Scaling group with an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Add an accelerator with AWS Global Accelerator with the ALB as an endpoint.

C. Create an Auto Scaling group with a Network Load Balancer (NLB). Add an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the NLB as the origin.

D. Create an Auto Scaling group with a Network Load Balancer (NLB). Add an accelerator with AWS Global Accelerator with the NLB as an endpoint.

Answer: D

AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront are separate services that use the AWS global network and its edge locations around the world. CloudFront improves performance for both cacheable content (such as images and videos) and dynamic content (such as API acceleration and dynamic site delivery). Global Accelerator improves performance for a wide range of applications over TCP or UDP by proxying packets at the edge to applications running in one or more AWS Regions. Global Accelerator is a good fit for non-HTTP use cases, such as gaming (UDP), IoT (MQTT), or Voice over IP, as well as for HTTP use cases that specifically require static IP addresses or deterministic, fast regional failover. Both services integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection.

https://medium.com/awesome-cloud/aws-difference-between-application-load-balancer-and-network-load-balancer-cb8b6cd296a4 https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/faqs/?nc1=h_ls

Objective:

Enforce corporate policy to prevent the creation of EC2 instances in unauthorized AWS Regions.

Using Service Control Policies (SCPs):

SCPs are an AWS Organizations feature that allow centralized control over permissions for all accounts in the organization.

By attaching an SCP to the root level of the organization, you can enforce the restriction across all accounts.

Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Open the AWS Organizations console.

Step 2: Create a new SCP with the following policy:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "ec2:RunInstances",

"Resource": "*",

"Condition": {

"StringNotEquals": {

"aws:RequestedRegion": [

"us-east-1",

"us-west-2"

]

}

}

}

]

}

Replace "us-east-1" and "us-west-2" with the allowed Regions.

Step 3: Attach the SCP to the root level of the organization.

AWS References:

Service Control Policies (SCPs):SCP Best Practices

Restricting EC2 Regions with SCP:SCP Examples

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: CloudTrail and EventBridge with Lambda are operationally less efficient and reactive rather than preventative.

Option B: IAM policies applied at the account level require manual configuration for each account, which is less efficient.

Option C: Permissions boundaries are more suited for controlling specific IAM user or role actions, not account-wide restrictions.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Enforce a policy that requires all AWS resources to be tagged according to company policy.

Continuously identify non-compliant resources.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a solution to monitor and enforce resource tagging compliance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: AWS CloudTrail.

Provides logging and monitoring of API calls but does not enforce tagging policies.

Option B: Amazon Inspector.

Primarily used for security assessments, not resource tagging compliance.

Option C: AWS Config.

Monitors and evaluates the configurations of AWS resources.

Can enforce compliance by using AWS Config rules to check resource tags.

Option D: AWS Systems Manager.

Provides operational insights and management but is not specifically designed for compliance enforcement.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: AWS Config is designed for compliance and configuration monitoring, making it the ideal service for enforcing and identifying non-compliant resource tags.

AWS Config

Managing Resource Tag Compliance with AWS Config

AWS Config provides the necessary tools to enforce and monitor resource tagging compliance, ensuring all resources adhere to the set policy.

You are correct that an A record typically points to an IP address. However, in the case of an Application Load Balancer (ALB), you cannot use an A record with an IP address because the IP addresses of an ALB can change over time. Instead, you can use an alias record to point to the DNS name of the ALB. An alias record is a Route 53 extension to DNS that allows you to route traffic to selected AWS resources, such as an ALB, by using a friendly DNS name, such as example.com, instead of the resource’s IP address or DNS name.

In this scenario, the issue is that the EC2 instances are marked healthy by status checks, but the website is still intermittently failing, returning HTTP 500 errors.

This indicates that the OS-level checks are passing, but the application is not behaving properly. To resolve this, the Auto Scaling group must use ALB (ELB) health checks which verify application-level health, not just EC2 status.

From the Auto Scaling User Guide:

By default, an Auto Scaling group uses EC2 instance status checks to determine the health state of an instance. You can optionally configure the Auto Scaling group to use Elastic Load Balancing health checks in combination with EC2 status checks.

These health checks allow Auto Scaling to detect application failures and replace unhealthy instances automatically.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Network Load Balancer is for TCP-level traffic and does not solve HTTP 500 errors.

C. Sticky sessions are used for session persistence and don’t solve server errors.

D. Installing CloudWatch agents and rebooting is reactive and not an automated health check replacement system.

The most operationally efficient solution is to use the organization ARN to share the AMI across all accounts within AWS Organizations.

AMI Sharing with Organization ARN: AWS allows you to share AMIs with an entire AWS Organization by specifying the organization’s ARN, simplifying access management for multiple accounts.

Efficient Management: This approach eliminates the need to share AMIs individually with each account or make them public, and it avoids the complexity of using snapshots.

Making the AMI public is not secure, and using AWS Marketplace or snapshots does not provide the operational efficiency required.

To enforce MFA for API calls using the AWS CLI, the users must use temporary security credentials obtained through the get-session-token command. Here’s how to do it:

Enable MFA for IAM Users:

Ensure that MFA is enabled and properly configured for each IAM user.

Configure IAM Policy for MFA Enforcement:

Attach an IAM policy that denies API calls unless MFA is used. This policy should be attached to all users.

Obtain Temporary Security Credentials Using MFA:

Users need to use the aws sts get-session-token command to obtain temporary credentials. This command requires the MFA token.

sh

Copy code

aws sts get-session-token --serial-number arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/user --token-code 123456

Use Temporary Credentials for API Calls:

After obtaining the temporary credentials, set them as environment variables or configure them in the AWS CLI profile to make API calls.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...

export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=...

Enabling MFA for IAM Users

Using Temporary Security Credentials

AWS CLI get-session-token

To automate the initialization of additional EBS volumes on Windows EC2 instances, the most effective approach is to integrate initialization scripts within the instance so that they execute upon startup:

Configure Initialization Script: Use a Windows PowerShell script (InitializeDisks.ps1) to initialize and format the additional EBS volumes. The script can assign drive letters based on configurations specified in DriveLetterMappingConfig.json.

Automate at Launch: Ensure that the PowerShell script runs automatically upon instance startup. This can be configured through Windows Task Scheduler or by setting it up in the startup folder.

Create a Custom AMI: Once the instance is configured with the script and successfully initializes the disks on startup, create a new AMI from this setup. This AMI can then be used to launch new instances that will automatically initialize their additional EBS volumes with no manual intervention required.

This method leverages native Windows tools and AWS capabilities to automate EBS volume initialization, enhancing operational efficiency without additional external dependencies.

To determine the service costs incurred by each developer, follow these steps:

Activate the createdBy Tag:

Tagging resources with a createdBy tag helps identify which user created the resource. This tag should be applied consistently across all resources created by the developers.

When encountering an InstanceLimitExceeded error, this indicates that you have reached your account limit for the number of EC2 instances.

Use Service Quotas:

Open the Service Quotas console.

In the navigation pane, choose "AWS services" and then "Amazon EC2."

Select the quota you want to increase, such as "Running On-Demand Standard (A, C, D, H, I, M, R, T, Z) instances."

Click on "Request quota increase."

Fill in the required information, specifying the new quota value.

Submit the request.

Launch Instances After Approval: Once the quota increase is approved, you will be able to launch additional instances.

EC2 Service Quotas

Service Quotas Console

To meet the requirements of logging all access attempts to the S3 bucket and receiving immediate notification about any delete events, the company can enable S3 server access logging and set up an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) notification for the S3 bucket. The S3 server access logs will record all access attempts to the bucket, including delete events, and the SNS notification can be configured to send an alert when a DeleteObject event occurs.

Using ALB health checks in the Auto Scaling group will provide more accurate health monitoring and replace instances if they are unhealthy.

ALB Health Checks: Configure health checks based on HTTP response codes, which will detect application-level issues causing the HTTP 500 errors and replace instances as needed.

EC2 vs. ALB Health Checks: EC2 status checks only verify instance hardware and OS, not the application’s responsiveness. By using ALB health checks, Auto Scaling can remove instances that are failing at the application level, thus preventing users from receiving 500 errors.

Replacing the ALB with a Network Load Balancer does not address HTTP 500 errors, and enabling session affinity does not resolve application health issues. The CloudWatch agent would not provide the required health check functionality for automated instance replacement.

The simplest and most efficient solution to ensure that EC2 instances are restarted when CPU utilization exceeds 80% is to use Amazon CloudWatch alarms:

Create a CloudWatch Alarm: Navigate to the CloudWatch dashboard in the AWS Management Console and create a new alarm. Set the alarm to monitor the CPU utilization metric of the EC2 instances.

Set the Alarm Condition: Configure the alarm to trigger when the CPU utilization exceeds 80%. You can specify this threshold in the alarm settings.

Configure Alarm Actions: In the actions settings of the alarm, select the option to reboot the instance. This action ensures that the instance is automatically restarted whenever the alarm condition is met, without the need for manual intervention or additional scripts.

This method leverages AWS's native capabilities, minimizing operational overhead and eliminating the need for external tools or custom scripts.

If an EC2 instance does not appear in the Systems Manager Session Manager list, it is likely because the instance does not have an attached IAM role that allows Session Manager to connect.

Attach IAM Role with Necessary Permissions:

Ensure the EC2 instance has an IAM role attached with the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy.

Steps to Attach IAM Role:

Open the EC2 console, select the instance, and choose "Actions" -> "Instance Settings" -> "Attach/Replace IAM Role."

Select or create an IAM role with the necessary permissions for Session Manager.

Permissions for Session Manager:

The AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy provides the required permissions for the Systems Manager agent to interact with the Systems Manager service.

Session Manager Prerequisites

Attach an IAM Role to an Instance

When you enable log file integrity validation, CloudTrail creates a hash for every log file that it delivers. Every hour, CloudTrail also creates and delivers a file that references the log files for the last hour and contains a hash of each. This file is called a digest file. CloudTrail signs each digest file using the private key of a public and private key pair. After delivery, you can use the public key to validate the digest file. CloudTrail uses different key pairs for each AWS region

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudtrail-log-file-validation-intro.html

NAT Gateway resides in public subnet, and traffic should be routed from private subnet to NAT Gateway: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-nat-gateway.html

The most operationally efficient and secure method to share an object from a private Amazon S3 bucket with users who do not have an AWS account is by generating a presigned URL. This URL grants temporary access to the object and can be limited by time, ensuring that users can only access the S3 object during a specified window. This does not require managing network configurations or sharing credentials, making it a secure and simple solution. Option D is therefore the correct answer. Reference to this method can be found in the AWS S3 documentation on presigned URLs Amazon S3 Presigned URLs.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts and workloads. It provides detailed monitoring for unauthorized access attempts, including console login attempts from unusual locations.

Amazon GuardDuty:

GuardDuty analyzes VPC flow logs, AWS CloudTrail logs, and DNS logs to detect suspicious activity.

It generates findings, such as UnauthorizedAccess

/ConsoleLoginSuccess, to alert administrators about potential security issues.

Setup:

Enable GuardDuty in your AWS account.

Configure GuardDuty to monitor unauthorized console logins.

Set up notifications for the relevant findings to alert administrators.

Amazon GuardDuty

GuardDuty Finding Types

To launch EC2 instances when there are no available private IPv4 addresses in the VPC, the SysOps administrator should associate a secondary IPv4 CIDR block with the VPC and create a new subnet for the VPC.

Associate a Secondary IPv4 CIDR Block:

Open the VPC console.

Select the VPC and choose "Actions" -> "Edit CIDRs."

Add a secondary IPv4 CIDR block to increase the number of available IP addresses.

Create a New Subnet:

After adding the secondary CIDR block, create a new subnet within this CIDR block.

This new subnet will provide additional private IP addresses for launching new EC2 instances.

Associating a CIDR Block with Your VPC

Creating a Subnet

STORAGE_FULL State:

When an RDS instance is in the STORAGE_FULL state, automated backups cannot be performed because there is insufficient storage available.

Steps to Resolve:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the DB instance.

Check the storage metrics to confirm the STORAGE_FULL state.

Increase the allocated storage for the DB instance to provide sufficient space for automated backups.

Amazon RDS DB Instance Status

To securely connect to the S3 buckets over a private connection from EC2 instances without incurring additional costs, the SysOps administrator can create a gateway VPC endpoint.

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint:

Navigate to the VPC console.

Create a gateway VPC endpoint for Amazon S3.

The most operationally efficient solution to ensure that administrator passwords for Amazon RDS DB instances are changed at least annually is to use AWS Secrets Manager with automatic rotation.

AWS Secrets Manager:

AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect access to your applications, services, and IT resources without the upfront cost and complexity of managing your own hardware security infrastructure.

Secrets Manager enables you to rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle.

Configure Automatic Rotation:

Store the database credentials in AWS Secrets Manager.

Configure the secret to rotate automatically every 365 days.

AWS Secrets Manager provides built-in integration for rotating credentials for supported databases, including Amazon RDS.

Steps to Configure:

Open the Secrets Manager console.

Create a new secret and provide the necessary database credentials.

Enable automatic rotation and set the rotation interval to 365 days.

Secrets Manager will handle the rotation process, updating the credentials in the database and ensuring they are securely stored.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating Your AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

The requirement is to automate recovery if the service crashes on any of the EC2 instances.

Option A: Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instances. Configure the CloudWatch agent to monitor the service. Set the CloudWatch action to restart if the service health check fails . This is a valid solution because the CloudWatch agent can be configured to monitor the service and take action (restart the service) if the health check fails .

Option C: Tag the EC2 instances. Use AWS Systems Manager State Manager to create an association that uses the AWS-RunShellScript document. Configure the association command with a script that checks if the service is running and that starts the service if the service is not running. For targets, specify the EC2 instance tag. Schedule the association to run every 5 minutes678. This is a valid solution because AWS Systems Manager State Manager can be used to maintain a consistent state of the EC2 instances. It can run a script to check if the service is running and start the service if it’s not running678.

Option B: Tag the EC2 instances. Create an AWS Lambda function that uses AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to log in to the tagged EC2 instances and restart the service. Schedule the Lambda function to run every 5 minutes . This is not a valid solution because AWS Lambda functions are not designed to log in to EC2 instances and restart services. They are used for running serverless applications.

Option D: Update the EC2 user data that is specified in the Auto Scaling group’s launch template to include a script that runs on a cron schedule every 5 minutes131415. This is not a valid solution because user data scripts are run only during the launch of an EC2 instance. They are not designed to run on a schedule.

Option E: Update the EC2 user data that is specified in the Auto Scaling group’s launch template to ensure that the service runs during startup. Redeploy all the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group with the updated launch template131416. This is not a valid solution because while user data can be used to ensure that the service runs during startup, it does not provide a solution for when the service crashes after the EC2 instance has started.

To deliver digital content to authorized users through CloudFront while restricting unauthorized access, you can use an origin access identity (OAI) with signed URLs.

Store Content in S3 with Public Access Blocked:

Ensure the S3 bucket has public access blocked.

Navigate to the S3 console, select the bucket, and configure the "Block Public Access" settings.

This solution is operationally efficient and leverages AWS services to provide notifications when the Lambda function is not invoked, indicating that the file did not arrive.

Steps:

Create a CloudWatch Alarm:

Open the Amazon CloudWatch console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Alarms" and then "Create Alarm".

Select Lambda Metrics:

Choose "Select metric" and then navigate to "AWS Lambda" metrics.

Select the Lambda function that processes the S3 files.

Choose the "Invocations" metric.

Configure the Alarm:

Set the period to 1 hour.

Define the threshold condition to trigger when the Invocations metric is zero.

Under "Additional configuration", configure the alarm to treat missing data as "breaching".

Set Alarm Actions:

Configure the alarm action to send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic.

Create an SNS topic if one does not exist, and subscribe the application team to this topic.

Testing and Verification:

Ensure that the alarm triggers correctly by simulating a missing file scenario and confirming that the notification is sent to the SNS topic.

This approach uses CloudWatch to monitor the invocation frequency of the Lambda function, ensuring that the application team is notified whenever the expected file does not arrive within the specified timeframe.

To enforce the use of approved EC2 instance configurations across different business units efficiently:

AWS Service Catalog: Utilize AWS Service Catalog to manage and govern commonly deployed IT services. Create a catalog of pre-approved products (in this case, EC2 instance configurations).

Publish Products: Define and publish EC2 instance configurations as products within the Service Catalog. These products will incorporate all the necessary and approved configurations, options, and software.

Launch Constraints: Assign launch constraints to these products, ensuring that users can only launch EC2 instances as defined by the pre-approved configurations.

Control Access: Grant business units access only to the Service Catalog for provisioning EC2 instances. This ensures they use only those configurations that comply with company policies and standards.

This approach not only standardizes resource deployment but also simplifies management and enhances compliance across the organization.

When managing performance and cost for EC2 instances across different families, the following steps are recommended:

Utilize AWS Compute Optimizer: This service provides recommendations for EC2 instances based on historical usage patterns and existing configurations. It helps identify optimal EC2 instance types and sizes that could deliver better performance and cost savings for your specific workload.

Implement Compute Savings Plans: After determining the most suitable instance types and sizes through Compute Optimizer, purchasing Compute Savings Plans can offer significant cost savings. These savings plans apply to any instance family across any region, providing flexibility and cost efficiency without upfront commitment to specific instance types.

AWS Documentation Reference:

Further details can be found in the AWS documentation on Compute Optimizer and Compute Savings Plans:

AWS Compute Optimizer

AWS Compute Savings Plans.

To ensure that the CloudFormation stack fails and rolls back if the process stalls, you should add a CreationPolicy with a timeout set to 4 hours to the CloudFormation template.

CreationPolicy:

The CreationPolicy attribute enables you to specify how long CloudFormation should wait for a resource to be created or updated.

You can use this to ensure that the instance completes its software installation process within a specified period.

Adding CreationPolicy to the Template:

Add the CreationPolicy attribute to the EC2 resource in the CloudFormation template.

Set the Timeout to 4 hours (PT4H).

Example:

Resources:

MyInstance:

Type: 'AWS::EC2::Instance'

Properties:

InstanceType: t2.micro

ImageId: ami-0abcdef1234567890

CreationPolicy:

ResourceSignal:

Count: 1

Timeout: PT4H

Ensuring Rollback:

If the instance does not signal success within the specified timeout, CloudFormation will mark the stack as failed and roll back the changes.

AWS CloudFormation CreationPolicy

Using Creation Policies with CloudFormation

To manage scaling of EC2 instances in response to variable SQS message loads effectively:

Monitor SQS Queue Size: Utilize Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the number of visible messages in the SQS queue. This metric gives an indication of the workload that needs to be processed by the worker instances.

Metric Math Expression: Create a CloudWatch metric math expression that calculates the approximate number of messages visible per instance. This provides a more precise scaling metric, ensuring that each instance in the Auto Scaling group has a manageable load.

Target Tracking Scaling Policy: Implement a target tracking scaling policy based on this metric math expression. Configure the Auto Scaling group to automatically adjust its size to maintain a target value for the average number of SQS messages per instance. This approach ensures that the EC2 instances scale up during high traffic periods and scale down when the message load decreases.

This solution optimizes resource utilization and cost while maintaining performance by ensuring that the worker processes are neither overwhelmed nor idle.

To implement a highly available database solution that is ideal for multi-tenant workloads, migrating the database to an Amazon Aurora DB cluster and adding an Aurora Replica is the most suitable solution.

Amazon Aurora:

A fully managed relational database engine that's compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Provides high availability and durability through multiple replicas and automated failover.

Aurora Replicas:

Aurora Replicas share the same storage as the primary instance, providing increased read throughput and high availability.

In the event of a primary instance failure, an Aurora Replica can be promoted to primary.

Implementation Steps:

Migrate the MySQL database to an Amazon Aurora DB cluster.

Add one or more Aurora Replicas to the cluster to distribute read traffic and enhance availability.

Amazon Aurora

High Availability for Amazon Aurora

This is a classic decoupling scenario — SQS is used to buffer requests between frontend (producer) and backend (consumer) to handle sudden traffic spikes.

From SQS documentation:

SQS is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications.

This approach ensures messages are not lost and the backend can process at its own pace.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Minimize potential data loss and recovery time for a MySQL database running on an Amazon EC2 instance.

Analyze the Requirements:

Reduce the risk of data loss.

Ensure quick recovery in the event of a database failure.

Aim for operational efficiency.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Create a CloudWatch alarm to invoke a Lambda function that stops and starts the EC2 instance.

This addresses system failures but does not help with minimizing data loss or ensuring database redundancy.

Option B: Create an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance and use a MySQL native backup stored in Amazon S3.

RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability and durability by automatically replicating data to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.

Using a MySQL native backup stored in Amazon S3 ensures data can be restored efficiently.

Option C: Create an RDS for MySQL Single-AZ DB instance with a read replica.

This provides read scalability but does not ensure high availability or failover capabilities.

Option D: Use Amazon DLM to take hourly snapshots of the EBS volume.

This helps with backups but does not provide immediate failover capabilities or minimize downtime effectively.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Using Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ ensures high availability and automated backups, significantly minimizing data loss and recovery time.

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ Deployments

Backing Up and Restoring an Amazon RDS DB Instance

Using Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ provides a highly available and durable solution with automated backups, ensuring minimal data loss and quick recovery.

 AWS Config Managed Rule:

AWS Config can be used to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources. The managed rule can check if instances are launched from approved AMIs.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Config.

Create a managed rule that checks for EC2 instances running approved AMIs.

Configure the rule to use a list of approved AMIs.

 Automatic Remediation with Systems Manager Automation:

AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks can automate the process of remediating non-compliant resources.

Steps:

Create a Systems Manager Automation runbook that terminates instances not running approved AMIs.

Attach the runbook to the AWS Config rule for automatic remediation.

AWS Config Rules, AWS Systems Manager Automation

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/zh_tw/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/resolver-forwarding-outbound-queries.html

To give the application the ability to resolve internal domain names, the SysOps administrator should create an Amazon Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint and configure it to forward DNS queries to the on-premises DNS server.

Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

An outbound endpoint enables DNS queries to be forwarded from AWS resources in a VPC to an on-premises DNS server.

Steps to Implement:

In the Route 53 console, create a new outbound endpoint in the VPC.

Configure the outbound endpoint with the IP address of the on-premises DNS server.

Update the VPC DNS settings to use the Route 53 Resolver.

Route 53 Resolver Endpoints

Creating an Outbound Endpoint

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-automation.html

To ensure all EC2 instances have the required tags and terminate any noncompliant instances, AWS Config can be used to check the compliance, and AWS Systems Manager Automation can be invoked to take action on noncompliant instances.

Create AWS Config Rule:

Open the AWS Config console at AWS Config Console.

Create a new rule to check for the required tags on EC2 instances. Use the managed rule required-tags.

Create AWS Systems Manager Automation Document:

Open the AWS Systems Manager console at AWS Systems Manager Console.

Create an Automation document to terminate noncompliant instances.

Link AWS Config Rule to Automation:

In the AWS Config console, configure the rule to invoke the Systems Manager Automation document if an instance is found to be noncompliant.

AWS Config Rules

AWS Systems Manager Automation

AWS Config Managed Rules

To serve static websites using S3 and Route 53, AWS requires the bucket name to match the custom domain name (e.g., www.example.com), not just a random bucket like example-website-hosting-bucket.

From the Amazon S3 Static Website Hosting Guide:

To use Amazon Route 53 to route domain traffic to an S3 bucket that is configured as a static website, the bucket name must match the name of the domain or subdomain.

This means:

To host www.example.com, you must create an S3 bucket named www.example.com

Then configure static website hosting on that bucket

In Route 53, you can then create an alias record pointing to the S3 website endpoint

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A. ARNs are not valid alias targets in Route 53.

B. ARN changes do not affect Route 53; also, you cannot rename an S3 bucket via ARN changes.

C. Access Points do not support static website hosting. They are for programmatic access via APIs.

Enabling the organizational view in AWS Health will allow the SysOps administrator to consolidate the alerts from each account’s Personal Health Dashboard. It will also provide the administrator with a single view of all the accounts in the organization, allowing them to easily monitor the health of all the accounts in the organization.

To ensure that the AWS CloudFormation template works in every region, you should use the Mappings section to specify region-specific AMI IDs. This allows the template to dynamically reference the correct AMI ID based on the region where the stack is being deployed.

Steps:

Add Mappings to the Template:

Define the AMI IDs for each region in the Mappings section of the CloudFormation template.

json

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{

"Mappings": {

"RegionMap": {

"us-east-1": { "AMI": "ami-0123456789abcdef0" },

"us-west-2": { "AMI": "ami-abcdef0123456789" }

}

}

}

Reference the Mapping in the Template:

Use the Fn::FindInMap function to reference the correct AMI ID based on the region.

json

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{

"Resources": {

"MyEC2Instance": {

"Type": "AWS::EC2::Instance",

"Properties": {

"ImageId": { "Fn::FindInMap": [ "RegionMap", { "Ref": "AWS::Region" }, "AMI" ] },

}

}

}

}

Deploy the Template:

Deploy the CloudFormation stack in any region, and it will use the correct AMI ID.