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

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.

To ensure that all users within the AWS Organization have read-level access to a specific Amazon S3 bucket, while preventing access outside the organization, you can specify a wildcard principal ("Principal": "*") and use the PrincipalOrgId condition key in the bucket policy.

Specify the Principal:

Use "Principal": "*". This means that any principal can access the bucket, but the actual access will be controlled by the condition.

Add Condition with PrincipalOrgId:

Add a condition to restrict access based on the PrincipalOrgId. This condition ensures that only the principals from the specified AWS Organization can access the bucket.

Example bucket policy:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*",

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"aws:PrincipalOrgID": "o-exampleorgid"

}

}

}

]

}

To allow CloudFormation templates in all accounts within the organization to reference the latest AMI ID:

Parameter Store in Standard Tier: Storing the AMI ID in Systems Manager Parameter Store provides a central and easy-to-update source.

Enable Resource Sharing with Organizations: This allows the parameter to be shared across accounts in the organization.

Resource Share in AWS RAM: AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) can be used to share the parameter with the entire organization, allowing other accounts to access the AMI ID.

Using the standard tier in Parameter Store is sufficient, and an EventBridge rule with Lambda for updating AMIs would add unnecessary complexity.

To provide the ability to recover deleted EBS snapshots for a specified period, creating a Recycle Bin retention rule for EBS snapshots is the appropriate solution.

Recycle Bin:

The Recycle Bin for Amazon EBS snapshots allows you to recover snapshots that were deleted within a specified retention period.

Creating a Retention Rule:

Open the Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager console.

Create a new Recycle Bin retention rule for EBS snapshots and specify the desired retention period.

References:

Amazon EBS Recycle Bin

For routing based on the user's geographic location to comply with data residency requirements, the best solution is to use Amazon Route 53 geolocation routing policy. This policy allows you to configure DNS responses based on the geographic location of the user, ensuring that requests are directed to specific AWS Regions that align with the company’s data residency requirements. Option C is correct. The AWS Route 53 documentation provides details on implementing geolocation routing policies Amazon Route 53 Geolocation Routing.

To fix the "403 Forbidden - Access Denied" error when accessing a static website hosted on Amazon S3, you need to ensure that the objects in the bucket have the appropriate permissions for public access. Here’s how to do it:

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to the Bucket:

In the S3 console, select the bucket hosting the static website.

Add a Bucket Policy:

Go to the Permissions tab.

Choose Bucket Policy and add the following policy to grant public read access to all objects in the bucket:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*"

}

]

}

Save the Policy:

After adding the policy, save the changes.

This policy ensures that all objects in the bucket are publicly accessible, resolving the 403 Forbidden error.

References:

Hosting a Static Website on Amazon S3

Bucket Policy Examples

The most operationally efficient solution to provide email notifications and insert a record into a database when a file is put into an S3 bucket is to use S3 event notifications that target an SNS topic with two subscriptions.

Set Up S3 Event Notification:

Open the S3 console and select the bucket.

Navigate to "Properties" -> "Event notifications" -> "Create event notification."

Configure the event to trigger on s3:ObjectCreated:*.

Create an SNS Topic:

Open the SNS console and create a new topic.

Set up two subscriptions for the SNS topic:

One subscription to send the email notification.

Another subscription to invoke an AWS Lambda function that inserts the record into the database.

Lambda Function for Database Insertion:

Create an AWS Lambda function to handle the database insertion.

Configure the function to trigger from the SNS topic.

References:

Configuring S3 Event Notifications

Amazon SNS Subscriptions

Invoking Lambda with SNS

Objective:

Provision Spot Instances with the highest availability while using a wide range of instance types.

Capacity Optimized Strategy:

The capacity optimized strategy ensures that Spot Instances are launched from the pools with the highest available capacity at the time of the request.

This approach minimizes the likelihood of interruptions and increases the chances of launching the desired capacity.

Steps to Implement:

In the Auto Scaling group configuration, set the Spot Allocation Strategy to Capacity Optimized.

Define multiple instance types in the launch template to allow flexibility.

AWS References:

Spot Allocation Strategies:Spot Instance Allocation Strategies

Capacity Optimized Details:Capacity Optimized Spot Instances

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Simply launching up to maximum capacity does not address availability concerns.

Option B: The diversified strategy spreads instances across Spot pools but does not prioritize capacity.

Option D: Spot Instance Advisor provides recommendations but is not a direct allocation strategy.

"The limit for a backtrack window is 72 hours.....Backtracking is only available for DB clusters that were created with the Backtrack feature enabled....Backtracking "rewinds" the DB cluster to the time you specify. Backtracking is not a replacement for backing up your DB cluster so that you can restore it to a point in time....You can backtrack a DB cluster quickly. Restoring a DB cluster to a point in time launches a new DB cluster and restores it from backup data or a DB cluster snapshot, which can take hours."

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/l atest/AuroraUserGuide/AuroraMySQL.Managing.Backtrack.html

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.

References:

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.

Objective:

Resolve the HTTP 403 (Access Denied) error for the public S3 static website.

Root Cause:

By default, S3 buckets are private, and public access is blocked due to the Block Public Access settings.

Additionally, a bucket policy is needed to allow public access to the objects.

Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Turn off Block Public Access:

Navigate to the Permissions tab of the S3 bucket in the AWS Management Console.

Turn off the Block Public Access settings by disabling the following:

Block public access to buckets and objects via ACLs.

Block public access to buckets and objects via bucket policies.

Step 2: Add a Bucket Policy for Public Access:

Add a policy allowing GetObject for public access:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::/*"

}

]

}

Step 3: Test Access:

Confirm that the website is accessible via the public URL.

AWS References:

Block Public Access Settings:S3 Block Public Access

Bucket Policies for Static Websites:Bucket Policy Examples

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Route 53 is not required to resolve the 403 error; the issue is with S3 bucket permissions.

Option C: Editing file permissions alone will not work; bucket permissions must also allow public access.

Option D: PutObject permissions are unnecessary for serving a static website.

When attempting to deploy a CloudFormation template from one region (us-west-2) to another (eu-west-1), the deployment might fail due to region-specific resources and services.

Amazon Machine Image (AMI) Availability:

AMIs are region-specific. If the template references an AMI that is only available in us-west-2 and not in eu-west-1, the stack will fail to deploy in eu-west-1.

To resolve this, identify the AMI used in us-west-2 and find or create a similar AMI in eu-west-1.

Service Availability:

Some AWS services are not available in all regions. If the template includes resources or services that are not available in eu-west-1, the stack will fail.

Check the AWS Regional Services List to ensure all services and resource types in the template are available in eu-west-1.

References:

Copy an AMI

AWS Regional Services List

A stack policy is used to protect specific resources within a CloudFormation stack from being unintentionally updated or deleted. By using a stack policy, you can explicitly deny updates to critical resources while allowing updates to other parts of the stack.

Create a Stack Policy:

Define a JSON stack policy that includes an explicit allow for all resources and an explicit deny for the protected resources. For example:

json

Copy code

{

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": "Update:*",

"Principal": "*",

"Resource": "*"

},

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "Update:*",

"Principal": "*",

"Resource": "arn:aws:cloudformation:region:account-id:stack/stack-name/protected-resource"

}

]

}

Replace region, account-id, stack-name, and protected-resource with the appropriate values.

Apply the Stack Policy:

Navigate to the CloudFormation console.

Select the stack you want to protect.

Choose "Stack actions" and then "Edit stack policy".

Paste the stack policy JSON and save the policy.

Perform Stack Updates:

When performing stack updates, the stack policy will enforce the rules specified, preventing accidental updates to the protected resources.

Review and Adjust:

Periodically review the stack policy to ensure it still meets the needs of the organization and update it as necessary.

References:

AWS CloudFormation Stack Policies

Creating and Applying a Stack Policy

To meet the requirement of consistent performance of 10,000 IOPS with the least cost, the SysOps administrator should use a General Purpose SSD (gp3) Amazon EBS volume:

General Purpose SSD (gp3) EBS Volume:

The gp3 volume type can be provisioned with the required IOPS without the need for additional capacity, making it a cost-effective solution compared to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes.

When receiving an InstanceLimitExceeded error in a participant account of a shared VPC, you need to request an instance quota increase from the participant account.

Requesting a Quota Increase:

Open the AWS Service Quotas console in the participant account.

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

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

Click "Request quota increase" and specify the desired limit.

Quota Management in AWS Organizations:

While shared VPCs allow resources to be used across accounts, quota limits are still managed per account.

Each participant account must manage its own quotas independently.

References:

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

For high-performance computing (HPC) applications requiring minimal latency between nodes, using a placement group strategy is crucial.

Cluster Placement Group:

Provides low-latency network performance within a single Availability Zone by placing instances close together on the network.

Suitable for applications that require high throughput or low latency.

Partition Placement Group:

Helps reduce the impact of hardware failures by dividing instances into partitions, where each partition can be placed on distinct racks in the data center.

Suitable for applications that need high availability and fault tolerance.

Setting Up Placement Groups:

Create a Placement Group:

Open the Amazon EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

In the navigation pane, choose Placement Groups.

Choose Create placement group, specify the name, and choose either Cluster or Partition as the strategy.

Launch Instances:

When launching new instances, specify the placement group name to ensure they are placed accordingly.

References:

Placement Groups

Creating and Managing Placement Groups

To secure the S3 bucket and allow access only from CloudFront, the following steps should be taken:

Create an OAI in CloudFront:

In the CloudFront console, create an origin access identity (OAI) and associate it with your CloudFront distribution.

AWS Systems Manager Run Command provides an efficient method to execute administrative tasks on EC2 instances. This solution will minimize the time and complexity involved:

Select Document: Choose AWS-RunShellScript for Linux-based instances or AWS-RunPowerShellScript for Windows-based instances.

Configure Command: Enter the mitigation script provided by the security team into the command document.

Target Instances: Use the tagging system to target only the instances that match the specific OS as identified by their tags.

Execute Command: Run the command across the targeted instances.

Verification and Reporting: The command history in Systems Manager will serve as evidence of execution and success, which can be reported back to the security team.

AWS Documentation Reference:More about Run Command can be found here: AWS Systems Manager Run Command.

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.

References:

Amazon CloudWatch Alarms

Monitoring Lambda Functions

Amazon SNS Notifications

To restrict access to content in specific countries using CloudFront, enabling the geo restriction feature in the CloudFront distribution is the most operationally efficient solution.

Geo Restriction in CloudFront:

CloudFront allows you to use geographic restrictions, also known as geo-blocking, to prevent users in specific geographic locations from accessing content that you're distributing through a CloudFront distribution.

Enabling Geo Restriction:

Go to the CloudFront console.

Select your distribution and click on "Restrictions."

Choose "Edit" and then enable "Geo restriction."

Specify the countries you want to restrict by selecting "Whitelist" or "Blacklist" and entering the appropriate country codes.

Operational Efficiency:

This method leverages CloudFront's built-in capabilities to restrict access at the edge locations, ensuring that unauthorized requests are blocked before reaching your origin.

It is a straightforward and scalable solution without requiring changes to your S3 bucket policy or application logic.

References:

Using Geo Restriction to Restrict Access to Your Content

 Enable Access Logging for the ALB:

Access logging provides detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2 and select "Load Balancers."

Select your Application Load Balancer.

Under the "Attributes" tab, enable "Access logs."

Specify an S3 bucket where the logs will be saved.

To design a high-traffic static website that is highly available and provides low latency globally, you can use Amazon S3, CloudFront, and Route 53. This solution leverages the global edge locations of CloudFront to deliver content with low latency.

Create an Amazon S3 Bucket:

Open the S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Create a new bucket and upload your website content.

Configure S3 for Static Website Hosting:

Go to the Properties tab of your bucket.

Enable Static website hosting and set the index document (e.g., index.html).

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Create a new distribution and set the S3 bucket as the origin.

Configure distribution settings, including caching behaviors and SSL/TLS settings.

Create Route 53 Alias Record:

Open the Route 53 console at Amazon Route 53 Console.

Select the hosted zone for your domain.

Create a new record set, choose ALIAS as the record type, and point it to the CloudFront distribution.

References:

Amazon S3 Static Website Hosting

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

Routing Traffic to a CloudFront Distribution

To ensure high availability and failover for RDS, converting the instance to a Multi-AZ deployment is the best practice. Multi-AZ configurations provide automated standby in a different Availability Zone, automatically failing over to the standby in case of instance or Availability Zone issues.

Modify DB instance: AWS allows for seamless conversion of an existing Single-AZ RDS instance to a Multi-AZ deployment, making it more resilient to outages without requiring significant application changes.

Failover mechanism: In Multi-AZ, failover is managed automatically by AWS, minimizing application downtime.

To restrict EC2 resource deployment in a specific region and restrict root credentials usage:

Create Service Control Policies (SCPs):

Use AWS Organizations to create SCPs that restrict actions for all member accounts.

Create an SCP to deny the creation of EC2 instances in the ap-southeast-2 region.

Create an SCP to deny the use of root credentials in member accounts.

To stop EC2 instances in a development environment when they are not in use, you can create a CloudWatch alarm based on CPU utilization.

Create CloudWatch Alarm:

Navigate to the CloudWatch console.

Select "Alarms" and click on "Create Alarm".

Choose the EC2 instance metric for CPU utilization.

Set the condition to trigger the alarm when the average CPU utilization is less than 5% for a continuous 30-minute period.

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.

To block traffic to a specific external IP address that has been identified as suspicious by GuardDuty, you should use a network ACL to add an outbound deny rule.

Create or Update Network ACL:

Open the Amazon VPC console at Amazon VPC Console.

Select Network ACLs in the navigation pane.

Create a new network ACL or select an existing one that is associated with the subnet containing the EC2 instance.

Add Outbound Deny Rule:

Choose Inbound Rules or Outbound Rules and then choose Edit rules.

Add a new rule to deny traffic to the specific external IP address.

Rule Number: Choose a rule number that is not used by another rule.

Type: All traffic or specific to the protocol and port.

Destination: The external IP address identified by GuardDuty.

Allow/Deny: Deny

Apply Changes:

Save the rule and ensure it is active.

Using a network ACL to block traffic at the subnet level provides an additional layer of security.

References:

Network ACLs

Working with Network ACLs

To immediately notify software developers if an AWS Lambda function experiences an error, follow these steps:

Create an SNS Topic:

Navigate to the Amazon SNS console and create a new topic.

Add email subscriptions for each developer to the SNS topic.

"In EventBridge, you can create an archive of events so that you can easily replay them at a later time. For example, you might want to replay events to recover from errors or to validate new functionality in your application." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/userguide/eb-archive.html

To address the issue of an errant process consuming an entire processor and running at 100%, the SysOps administrator can automate the restarting of the instance using Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Systems Manager.

Enable Detailed Monitoring:

Ensure that detailed monitoring is enabled on the EC2 instance. Detailed monitoring provides data in 1-minute periods, which is crucial for detecting the 2-minute threshold accurately.

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/

For a Lambda function in Account A to access an S3 bucket in Account B, the correct IAM roles setup includes:

A: In Account A, create a Lambda execution role that has permissions to assume another role in Account B. In Account B, create a role with permissions to access the S3 bucket and trust the Lambda execution role from Account A to assume it. This configuration allows the Lambda function to assume the cross-account role and access the S3 bucket as needed, maintaining security and proper access control. AWS documentation provides more details on setting up cross-account roles for Lambda access AWS Lambda Permissions.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

An I/O intensive application on an Amazon EC2 general purpose instance is experiencing performance issues.

Users report delays or failures during intensive read/write operations.

The VolumeQueueLength metric is consistently high during these periods.

Analyze the Requirements:

Address the high VolumeQueueLength, which indicates that the EBS volume is unable to handle the I/O requests efficiently.

Improve the disk I/O performance to restore full application performance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Modify the instance type to be storage optimized.

Storage optimized instances are designed for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to large data sets on local storage.

This could help, but if the issue is primarily with EBS volume performance, increasing IOPS would be a more direct solution.

Option B: Modify the volume properties by deselecting Auto-Enable Volume I/O.

Auto-Enable Volume I/O is a setting that automatically enables I/O for the EBS volume after an event such as a snapshot restore.

Deselecting this option will not address the issue of high I/O demand.

Option C: Modify the volume properties to increase the IOPS.

Increasing the IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) will directly address the high VolumeQueueLength by allowing the volume to handle more I/O operations concurrently.

This is the most effective and direct solution to improve the performance of I/O intensive tasks.

Option D: Modify the instance to enable enhanced networking.

Enhanced networking provides higher bandwidth, higher packet per second (PPS) performance, and consistently lower inter-instance latencies.

While beneficial for network performance, this does not directly impact the EBS volume’s I/O performance.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Modifying the volume properties to increase the IOPS directly addresses the high VolumeQueueLength and improves the EBS volume's ability to handle intensive read/write operations.

References:

Amazon EBS Volume Types

Amazon EBS Volume Performance

Optimizing EBS Performance

Increasing the IOPS of the EBS volume ensures that the application can handle the required intensive read/write operations more efficiently, directly addressing the high VolumeQueueLength and restoring full performance.

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.

One possible cause for the failure of the CloudFormation template to create an EC2 instance in the us-west-2 Region is that the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID referenced in the template could not be found in the us-west-2 Region. This could be due to the fact that the AMI is not available in that region, or the credentials used to access the AMI were not configured properly. The other options (resource tags defined in the CloudFormation template are specific to the us-east-I Region, the cfn-init script did not run during resource provisioning in the us-west-2 Region, and the IAM user was not created in the specified Region) are not valid causes for this failure.

Objective:

Add custom dimensions to the metrics collected by the Amazon CloudWatch agent.

Using append_dimensions:

The append_dimensions field in the Amazon CloudWatch agent configuration file allows adding custom dimensions to the metrics collected.

Dimensions help categorize and filter metrics in CloudWatch for more granular insights.

Steps to Implement:

Step 1: Edit the Amazon CloudWatch agent configuration file (commonly located at /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/config.json).

Step 2: Add the append_dimensions field under the desired metrics section, specifying the custom dimensions in key-value pairs:

{

"metrics": {

"append_dimensions": {

"InstanceId": "${aws:InstanceId}",

"CustomDimensionKey": "CustomDimensionValue"

}

}

}

Step 3: Restart the CloudWatch agent:

sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl \

-a stop

sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl \

-a start

AWS References:

Amazon CloudWatch Agent Configuration:CloudWatch Agent Configuration

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Writing a custom script is unnecessary as the CloudWatch agent natively supports appending dimensions.

Option B: EventBridge rules do not interact with CloudWatch metrics for adding dimensions.

Option C: AWS Lambda functions are not required for this use case.

To ensure that database credentials are never stored in plaintext and the password is rotated every 30 days, use AWS Secrets Manager:

Store Credentials in Secrets Manager:

Open the AWS Secrets Manager console.

Click on "Store a new secret."

Select "RDS database credentials" and provide the necessary details (username, password, database instance).

Configure the secret's name and details.

Enable Automatic Rotation:

During the secret creation process, enable automatic rotation.

Specify an automatic rotation schedule of 30 days.

Choose the Lambda function that Secrets Manager will use to update the database password automatically.

Update Lambda Functions:

Update each Lambda function to retrieve the database password from Secrets Manager.

Use the AWS SDK in your Lambda code to access Secrets Manager and fetch the secret value.

References:

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

Retrieve Secrets from AWS Lambda

AWS Organizations offers features that help manage multiple AWS accounts. To use AWS Compute Optimizer and AWS tag policies across all member accounts, the organization must have all features enabled.

Enable All Features in AWS Organizations:

Open the AWS Organizations console at AWS Organizations Console.

Navigate to Settings and ensure that All features are enabled.

Verify and Enable Trusted Access:

Ensure that trusted access is enabled for AWS Compute Optimizer and other relevant services.

This allows the management account to access and manage resources in member accounts.

Use AWS Compute Optimizer and Tag Policies:

Once all features are enabled, configure and manage AWS Compute Optimizer and tag policies from the management account.

References:

AWS Organizations

Enabling All Features in Your Organization

Enabling Trusted Access with Other AWS Services

To retain application logs after instances are terminated, configure the EC2 instances to send logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

Steps:

Create a New AMI:

Create a new AMI that includes the Amazon CloudWatch agent.

Install and configure the CloudWatch agent to send logs to CloudWatch Logs.

AWS Config can continuously monitor and record your AWS resource configurations. It provides AWS Config rules that automatically check the configuration of AWS resources and notify you of compliance and non-compliance.

Steps:

Enable AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console.

Follow the steps to set up AWS Config if it is not already enabled.

Add AWS Managed Rules:

In the AWS Config console, choose "Rules".

Add the s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited managed rule.

Configure the rule to check all S3 buckets.

Set Up SNS Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic.

Subscribe your email or other communication channels to the SNS topic.

In AWS Config, configure the rule to send notifications to the SNS topic whenever there is a compliance change.

This approach ensures operational efficiency as AWS Config will automatically monitor S3 buckets and notify you through SNS if any bucket becomes publicly accessible.

References:

AWS Config Managed Rules

Setting Up AWS Config

To manage Amazon EC2 instances using AWS Systems Manager, you need to ensure that the instances are associated with an IAM instance profile that grants the necessary permissions.

Attach IAM Instance Profile:

Create an IAM role with the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy.

Attach this IAM role to your EC2 instances.

Steps to Attach IAM Instance Profile:

Open the EC2 console and select the instances.

Choose "Actions" -> "Instance Settings" -> "Attach/Replace IAM Role."

Select the IAM role with AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy and attach it to the instances.

AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore Policy:

This policy grants the required permissions for Systems Manager to manage the EC2 instances.

It includes permissions for SSM Agent to communicate with the Systems Manager service.

References:

AWS Systems Manager Prerequisites

AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore Policy

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 allow on-premises servers to resolve DNS records in an Amazon Route 53 private hosted zone via AWS Direct Connect, the following step should be taken:

A: Create a Route 53 Resolver inbound endpoint and attach a security group that allows inbound traffic on TCP/UDP port 53 from the on-premises DNS servers. This setup enables the on-premises DNS servers to forward DNS queries to AWS for the domains managed by Route 53. The inbound resolver endpoint acts as a bridge between the on-premises network and AWS for DNS resolution. Additional guidance on setting up Route 53 Resolver endpoints can be found in AWS documentation Route 53 Resolver.

Ensuring that all the EC2 instances have an instance profile with Systems Manager access is the most effective way to fix this issue. Having an instance profile with Systems Manager access will allow the SysOps administrator to configure the inventory collection for all the instances in the subnet, regardless of whether or not they are managed by Systems Manager.

Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics:

CloudWatch Synthetics allows you to create canaries to monitor your endpoints and API calls, simulating user behavior to detect issues before users do.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudWatch and select "Synthetics."

Click on "Create canary."

Choose "Heartbeat monitoring" as the blueprint.

Configure the canary to point to the FQDN of the website.

Set the frequency and retention settings as per your requirement.

Create the canary.

This setup continuously checks the operational status of your website, alerting you if it becomes unreachable or has issues.

 Lambda Function to Rotate IAM Access Keys:

A Lambda function can be used to automate the rotation of IAM access keys based on their age.

Steps:

Write a Lambda function that checks the age of IAM access keys.

The function should rotate keys that are at least 30 days old.

Deploy the Lambda function.

 Amazon EventBridge Rule:

EventBridge can trigger the Lambda function periodically and when a new key is created.

Steps:

Create an EventBridge rule that triggers the Lambda function on a schedule (e.g., daily) and on IAM key creation events.

To create a backup strategy for all Amazon EC2 instances across all the company's AWS accounts using AWS Organizations, AWS Backup is the most operationally efficient solution.

AWS Backup:

AWS Backup provides centralized backup management and automates the backup of data across AWS services.

It supports creating backup plans that can apply to resources across multiple AWS accounts within an AWS Organization.

Using AWS Backup:

Open the AWS Backup console in the management account.

Create a backup plan and define backup policies (e.g., frequency, retention).

Use the backup policies to automatically apply to all EC2 instances in all member accounts of the AWS Organization.

References:

AWS Backup

AWS Backup for Multi-Account

To centrally manage Security Hub across an organization, AWS allows you to delegate a member account as the Security Hub administrator. This enables centralized configuration and security insights without directly using the management account, which is a best practice.

Delegating a Non-Management Account: AWS recommends using a designated Security Hub administrator account (different from the management account) for central security configurations.

Security Hub Central Configuration: Configuring Security Hub in this manner ensures that security findings from all member accounts are consolidated and manageable from the designated administrator account.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully managed, highly available, and native Windows file system compatible with the SMB protocol, ideal for Windows workloads requiring shared access.

Multi-AZ File System: Ensures high availability across multiple Availability Zones.

Native Windows Capabilities: Allows instances to map file shares and access files using Windows storage features, offering strong consistency and performance for shared files.

Other options, like Amazon S3 and Amazon EFS, either lack native Windows integration or do not offer the desired consistency and high availability for shared file systems in a Windows environment.

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.

S3 Storage Lens and Lifecycle Policies:

Incomplete Multipart Upload Bytes Metric: This metric in S3 Storage Lens helps you identify the storage consumed by incomplete multipart uploads.

S3 Lifecycle Policies: Lifecycle policies allow you to automatically manage the lifecycle of objects, including deleting incomplete multipart uploads after a specified number of days.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to S3 and select the bucket.

Go to the "Metrics" tab and view the "Incomplete Multipart Upload Bytes" metric in the S3 Storage Lens dashboard.

To create a lifecycle policy:

Select the bucket.

Go to the "Management" tab.

Under "Lifecycle rules," click "Create lifecycle rule."

Define a rule name.

Choose "Multipart upload" and specify "Delete incomplete multipart uploads" after 7 days.

Save the rule.

FIFO queues don't support per-message delays, only per-queue delays. If your application sets the same value of the DelaySeconds parameter on each message, you must modify your application to remove the per-message delay and set DelaySeconds on the entire queue instead.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/FIFO-queues-moving.html

The error message indicates that the current quota for the number of EC2 instances allowed in the specified region has been reached. To resolve this issue, a quota increase must be requested.

Request Quota Increase:

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to Amazon EC2 service.

Find the specific quota for the instance type family that you need to increase.

Select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Provide the necessary details and submit the request.

This action will initiate a request to AWS to increase the limit, allowing you to launch additional instances once the request is approved.

References:

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

To optimize the cost of a computing environment consisting of control nodes that are always on and task nodes that operate for a limited number of hours each day, consider the following strategies:

Purchase EC2 Instance Savings Plans for the Control Nodes: Since the control nodes are required to be operational 24/7, purchasing EC2 Instance Savings Plans is a cost-effective choice. These plans provide a lower price compared to on-demand instances, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a one or three-year period.

Use Spot Instances for the Task Nodes: Given that task nodes are used for a shorter duration (4 hours a day) and presumably can tolerate interruptions, using Spot Instances can significantly reduce costs. Spot Instances offer unused EC2 capacity at a fraction of the regular price, which can lead to substantial cost savings. Additionally, configure the system to fall back to On-Demand Instances during periods when Spot Instances are not available to ensure availability.

This combination leverages cost savings for continuous use and flexible, lower-cost options for intermittent use, optimizing overall operational costs efficiently.

For predictable, significant traffic increases during a specific time period every day:

EC2 Auto Scaling Group: Set up an Auto Scaling group for the EC2 instances running the web application. This group automatically adjusts the number of instances based on policies defined.

Scheduled Scaling Policy: Use a scheduled scaling policy to pre-emptively increase the number of instances before the expected increase in traffic each day. Scheduled scaling allows you to specify the scaling actions to occur at specific times, based on known or expected demand patterns.

Attach to ALB: Ensure the Auto Scaling group is attached to the Application Load Balancer, which will distribute incoming traffic across the dynamically adjusted pool of EC2 instances.

This approach ensures that the application scales up resources ahead of the expected load, maintaining performance and user experience without manual intervention.

To identify both tagged and untagged EC2 instances across multiple AWS Regions efficiently:

AWS Tag Editor: Tag Editor allows you to search for resources across your AWS account by tags, including both tagged and untagged resources.

Search Setup: In the Tag Editor, select all the Regions where the company operates. Specify the resource type as AWS::EC2::Instance to focus the search on EC2 instances.

View and Export Data: Execute the search to view all EC2 instances, along with their associated tags and instance IDs. This data can be exported for further analysis or reporting.

Using the Tag Editor is an operationally efficient way to quickly get a comprehensive view of resource tagging across multiple Regions, aiding in compliance and resource management tasks.

Ref. https://aws.amazon.com/es/blogs/storage/adding-and-removing-object-tags-with-s3-batch-operations/

Amazon S3 Batch Operations is a feature that lets you perform large-scale batch operations on S3 objects. It is the most operationally efficient way to replace a tag on all objects in an S3 bucket.

Create an S3 Batch Operations Job:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to Batch Operations and create a new job.

Specify the Operation:

Choose the operation to replace all object tags.

Provide a manifest that lists the objects in the bucket. You can generate this manifest using an S3 inventory report.

Execute the Job:

Review the job configuration and submit it.

Monitor the job execution to ensure all tags are replaced as specified.

Using S3 Batch Operations automates the process and minimizes manual effort.

References:

Amazon S3 Batch Operations

Tagging Amazon S3 Objects

To ensure all objects in the S3 bucket are encrypted, including future objects, the following steps should be taken:

Enable Default Server-Side Encryption:

Edit the properties of the S3 bucket to enable default server-side encryption. This ensures that all new objects written to the bucket are encrypted by default.

Navigate to the S3 console, select the bucket, go to the "Properties" tab, and under "Default encryption", select the encryption method (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, etc.).

To ensure that EC2 instances in private subnets can access the internet for software updates while complying with the security policy that requires instances to be in private subnets, you should use a NAT gateway. A NAT gateway allows instances in private subnets to initiate outbound traffic to the internet but prevents the internet from initiating connections to those instances.

Steps:

Create a NAT Gateway:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "NAT Gateways".

Choose "Create NAT Gateway".

Select the public subnet where you want to create the NAT gateway.

Choose an Elastic IP address for the NAT gateway.

Choose "Create a NAT Gateway".

Update the Route Table for Private Subnets:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Route Tables".

Select the route table associated with your private subnets.

Choose the "Routes" tab and then "Edit routes".

Add a route with the destination 0.0.0.0/0 and the target as the NAT gateway ID.

Save the changes.

This setup ensures that instances in private subnets can access the internet via the NAT gateway in the public subnet.

References:

AWS NAT Gateway Documentation

VPC Route Tables

To view the cost details of each project in an AWS account using Cost Explorer, you need to activate cost allocation tags and tag the resources with a project identifier.

Activate Cost Allocation Tags:

Navigate to the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Cost allocation tags".

Select the tags you want to activate (e.g., "Project") and click "Activate".

Tag Resources with Project Identifier:

Go to the AWS Management Console for each service where resources are deployed (e.g., EC2, S3, RDS).

For each resource, add a tag with the key "Project" and a value that identifies the project (e.g., "ProjectA").

Ensure that all relevant resources are tagged appropriately.

View Cost Allocation in Cost Explorer:

Navigate to the Cost Explorer console.

Use the "Group by" option to group costs by the "Project" tag.

Review the cost details for each project based on the tags applied to the resources.

References:

Using Cost Allocation Tags

Analyzing Your Costs with Cost Explorer

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.

References:

Amazon GuardDuty

GuardDuty Finding Types

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Users report that file retrieval from the Amazon EFS file system is slower than normal.

Analyze the Requirements:

Improve the performance of the EFS file system to handle increased usage and file retrieval speed.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Configure the file system for Provisioned Throughput.

Provisioned Throughput mode allows you to specify the throughput of your file system independent of the amount of data stored.

This option is suitable for applications with high throughput-to-storage ratio requirements and ensures consistent performance.

Option B: Enable encryption in transit on the file system.

While this enhances security, it does not directly improve performance.

Option C: Identify any unused files in the file system, and remove the unused files.

This may free up some resources but does not address the root cause of slow performance.

Option D: Resize the Amazon EBS volume of each of the EC2 instances.

EFS performance issues are not directly related to the size of EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Configuring the file system for Provisioned Throughput ensures consistent performance by allowing you to set the required throughput regardless of the amount of data stored.

References:

Amazon EFS Performance

Provisioned Throughput Mode

Configuring Provisioned Throughput for Amazon EFS provides a consistent and higher performance level, which is suitable for high throughput requirements.

To monitor free space on Amazon EBS volumes attached to Microsoft Windows-based Amazon EC2 instances and receive email alerts before low storage space affects performance, follow these steps:

Install the Amazon CloudWatch Agent:

Download and install the CloudWatch agent on your Windows EC2 instances.

To reduce the cost of running the application without affecting availability or design, applying rightsizing recommendations from AWS Cost Explorer to reduce the instance size is the best approach.

Rightsizing Recommendations:

AWS Cost Explorer provides rightsizing recommendations that help you identify underutilized instances.

By resizing instances to a more appropriate size based on their utilization, you can reduce costs while maintaining performance.

Steps to Implement:

Open the AWS Cost Management console.

Navigate to "Cost Explorer" and select "Rightsizing Recommendations."

Review the recommendations and choose to resize the instances based on their actual usage.

Advantages:

Rightsizing ensures that you are not paying for unused resources while maintaining the necessary capacity and performance for your application.

References:

AWS Cost Explorer Rightsizing Recommendations

Aurora Auto Scaling:

Aurora Auto Scaling adjusts the number of Aurora Replicas in response to changes in connectivity or workload.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the Aurora cluster.

Under "Actions," choose "Add Aurora Replica" to initially add replicas if needed.

Go to the "Auto Scaling" section and create an auto scaling policy.

Set the target value for the DatabaseConnections metric to 195.

Define the minimum and maximum number of replicas.

Save the configuration.

This ensures that the Aurora cluster scales automatically when the number of connections approaches the threshold, improving read performance.

Applying SCPs to an Organizational Unit:

Service Control Policies (SCPs) allow you to manage permissions for multiple AWS accounts within an organization.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Organizations.

Create an Organizational Unit (OU) if not already created.

Move the target accounts into the OU.

Create an SCP that denies the use of the specific EC2 instance family.

Attach the SCP to the OU.

This approach ensures that the policy is applied consistently across all accounts in the OU.

To meet the requirement of having 50% CPU available to accommodate bursts of traffic and to handle the significant load increase between 09:00 and 17:00, you need a combination of target tracking and scheduled scaling policies.

Target Tracking Scaling Policy:

Create a target tracking scaling policy that keeps the CPU utilization at 50%. This ensures that the fleet scales in or out to maintain the target CPU utilization.

This policy will ensure that the fleet scales automatically based on actual CPU usage, maintaining availability and performance.

Scheduled Scaling Policies:

First Policy: Create a scheduled scaling policy to scale out the fleet at 09:00 when the load increases.

In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 Auto Scaling Groups.

Select your Auto Scaling group and choose Actions > Edit.

Add a new scheduled action to increase the desired capacity at 09:00.

Second Policy: Create another scheduled scaling policy to scale in the fleet at 17:00 when the load decreases.

Similarly, add another scheduled action to decrease the desired capacity at 17:00.

This approach ensures that the fleet is prepared for the increased load during peak hours while maintaining efficient resource usage during off-peak times.

References:

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

Scheduled Scaling

To meet the requirements of storing and rotating database credentials monthly and handling write-intensive traffic with variable client connections, you can use AWS Secrets Manager and Amazon RDS Proxy.

AWS Secrets Manager for Credential Rotation:

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

Store the database credentials as a new secret and configure automatic rotation for every 30 days.

AWS Secrets Manager will handle the rotation process and update the secret with new credentials.

Amazon RDS Proxy for Connection Management:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Create an RDS Proxy for the PostgreSQL DB instance.

Configure the proxy to handle the connection pooling and manage the connections efficiently.

The proxy will help manage the database connections, reduce the overhead on the database, and improve performance during peak loads.

This solution ensures that database credentials are securely stored and rotated automatically while handling increased database connections effectively.

References:

AWS Secrets Manager

Using AWS Secrets Manager to Rotate Amazon RDS Database Credentials

Amazon RDS Proxy

AWS Budgets can be used to create a Savings Plans budget and track the daily utilization of the company's Savings Plans. By creating a budget, it will trigger an action when the utilization drops below 90%, which in this case will be to send an email notification via an Amazon SNS topic. This will ensure that the company is notified when their Savings Plans utilization drops below 90%, allowing them to take action if necessary.

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 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/

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Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

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/