CLF-C02 Questions and Answers

On-Demand Instances are the most flexible and cost-effective pricing model for short-term, experimental, or unpredictable workloads on AWS. On-Demand Instances let you pay only for the resources you use, without any long-term commitments or upfront fees. You can easily start and stop instances as needed, and scale up or down depending on your demand.

Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and Dedicated Hosts are all pricing models that require a commitment for a certain amount of usage or capacity for a one- or three-year term. These pricing models offer lower prices than On-Demand Instances, but they are not suitable for workloads that only run for 3 to 6 months or have variable usage patterns. Savings Plans and Reserved Instances also offer flexibility to change instance types, sizes, or regions within the same family or pool, while Dedicated Hosts are physical servers that can only run specific instance types.

Amazon Aurora Serverless is an on-demand, auto-scaling configuration for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition. It is a fully managed service that automatically scales up and down based on the application’s actual needs. Amazon Aurora Serverless is suitable for applications that have infrequent, intermittent, or unpredictable database workloads, and that do not require the full power and range of options provided by provisioned Aurora clusters. Amazon Aurora Serverless eliminates the need to provision and manage database instances, and reduces the management overhead associated with database administration tasks such as scaling, patching, backup, and recovery. References: Amazon Aurora Serverless, Choosing between Aurora Serverless and provisioned Aurora DB clusters, [AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials: Module 4 - Databases in the Cloud]

AWS Direct Connect is a cloud service solution that makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can establish private connectivity between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which in many cases can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections12. References: 1: Dedicated Network Connection - AWS Direct Connect - AWS, 2: What is AWS Direct Connect? - AWS Direct Connect

 Establishing an AWS Direct Connect connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network is the action that the company should take to meet the requirement of having a dedicated connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network. AWS Direct Connect is a service that lets you establish a dedicated network connection between your network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can create a private connection between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections. Establishing a VPN connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network is an action that the company can take to create a secure and encrypted connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network, but it is not a dedicated connection, as it uses the public internet as the transport mechanism. Attaching an internet gateway to the VPC and using the AWS public endpoints for connectivity is an action that the company can take to enable communication between the VPC and the internet, but it is not a dedicated connection, as it also uses the public internet as the transport mechanism. Configuring Amazon Connect to provide connectivity between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network is not an action that the company can take, because Amazon Connect is a service that lets you set up and manage a contact center in the cloud, but it does not provide network connectivity between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network.

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that helps deliver your website content globally with low latency by caching copies of your website content at edge locations around the world. This helps ensure that users receive content from the edge location closest to them, thereby reducing latency and improving user experience.

A. Amazon Route 53: Incorrect, as it is a DNS web service that routes users to the appropriate endpoint, but it does not cache content or reduce latency.

C. Elastic Load Balancing: Incorrect, as it distributes incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, but does not cache content globally.

D. AWS Lambda: Incorrect, as it is a serverless compute service, not intended for content delivery.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon CloudFront

The AWS Architecture Center provides examples, best practices, and architectural blueprints for various AWS Cloud solutions. It includes whitepapers, reference architectures, and detailed diagrams to help users design secure, scalable, and reliable applications on AWS. Other services like AWS Marketplace, Service Catalog, and Trusted Advisor do not offer solution design examples.

AWS Snowball Edge offers configurations that are either storage-optimized or compute-optimized, providing flexibility for different data migration and processing needs. It supports local processing and data transfer to AWS, catering to scenarios that require heavy storage or compute resources. AWS Snowcone and DataSync do not offer these optimizations, and Storage Gateway focuses on hybrid cloud storage.

Amazon Cognito is an AWS service that provides user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to web and mobile applications. It supports authentication for different identity providers, including social identity providers (such as Google, Facebook, and Apple), enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0, and its own user pools.

Amazon Cognito offers:

User Pools for managing user registration, authentication, and account recovery.

Federated Identities for managing user access from external identity providers.

Why other options are not suitable:

B. AWS Config: A service for tracking resource configuration changes, not related to user authentication.

C. Amazon GuardDuty: A threat detection service, not related to user sign-up or authentication.

D. AWS Systems Manager: A service to manage AWS resources, but it does not provide user authentication.

References:

Amazon Cognito Documentation

When you run a NoSQL database on Amazon EC2 instances, you are responsible for managing the database layer and the guest operating system of the instances. This means that you need to perform tasks such as updating the operating system, maintaining high availability, and configuring the security group firewall. AWS is responsible for managing the physical infrastructure that hosts the EC2 instances. This means that AWS ensures that the hardware and firmware of the servers, routers, switches, and other devices are updated and secure. AWS also handles the power, cooling, networking, and security of the data centers12. References: CLF-C02: Which task is responsibility of AWS to run NoSQL database on …, Best Practices for Hosting NoSQL Databases on Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is an AWS service that can help users reduce the number of Amazon EC2 instances that run when application usage is low. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling allows users to create scaling policies that automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on the demand or a schedule. EC2 Instance Savings Plans, Spot Instances, and Reserved Instances are instance purchasing options that can help users save money on EC2 usage, but they do not automatically scale the number of instances according to the application usage .

Amazon Elastic Transcoder is a media transcoding service that enables companies to convert video and audio files into formats optimized for playback on various devices, including smartphones. It automates the transcoding process and supports a wide array of video and audio formats, making it ideal for converting files into mobile-friendly formats. Services like Amazon Comprehend, Rekognition, and Polly do not perform media transcoding functions.

AWS Migration Hub assists users in planning and tracking the progress of their server and application migrations. It centralizes migration tracking across various AWS services, providing visibility into application inventory and migration status. While AWS Application Migration Service also assists with migrations, Migration Hub is specifically designed for tracking migration data comprehensively.

AWS Direct Connect is a service that establishes a dedicated network connection between your on-premises network and one or more AWS Regions. AWS Direct Connect can be used to create a private connection between an on-premises workload and an AWS Cloud workload, bypassing the public internet and reducing network costs, latency, and bandwidth issues. AWS Direct Connect can also provide increased security and reliability for your hybrid cloud applications and data transfers. References:

AWS Direct Connect

What is AWS Direct Connect?

AWS Direct Connect User Guide

AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, and operational and risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail logs provide a history of AWS API calls for your account, including those made by the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command-line tools, and other AWS services. In this case, AWS CloudTrail will help the administrator identify which user deleted the resources by reviewing the event history that records details such as which user performed the action, the time of the action, and which resources were affected.

B. Amazon Inspector: Incorrect, as it is a security assessment service that helps identify vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices, not for tracking user activity.

C. Amazon GuardDuty: Incorrect, as it is a threat detection service that monitors malicious activity and unauthorized behavior, not specifically for tracking changes made by users.

D. AWS Trusted Advisor: Incorrect, as it provides best practices and guidance for cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, and performance, not for logging user actions.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS CloudTrail

AWS Network Firewall is a managed service that makes it easy to deploy essential network protections for all of your Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). The service can be set up with just a few clicks from the AWS console or using APIs. AWS Network Firewall automatically scales with your network traffic, so you don’t have to worry about deploying and managing any infrastructure. AWS Network Firewall provides protection from common network threats such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and DDoS attacks1.

A security group is a virtual firewall that can be associated with an Amazon EC2 instance to control the inbound and outbound traffic for the instance. You can specify which protocols, ports, and source or destination IP ranges are allowed or denied by the security group. A network ACL is a stateless filter that can be associated with a subnet to control the traffic to and from the subnet, but it is not associated with an EC2 instance4. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications or APIs against common web exploits that may affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. VPC route tables are used to determine where network traffic is directed within a VPC or to an internet gateway, virtual private gateway, NAT device, VPC peering connection, or VPC endpoint.

AWS Direct Connect is a service that provides a dedicated network connection from on premises to the AWS Cloud. It can reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections. It can also provide low latency for applications that require real-time data transfer4. Amazon VPC is a service that provides a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where users can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that they define. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a service that provides a scalable and durable stream of data records for real-time data processing. Amazon OpenSearch Service is a service that provides a fully managed, scalable, and secure search and analytics solution that is compatible with Elasticsearch.

Amazon Kendra is a highly accurate and easy to use intelligent search service powered by machine learning. It enables users to easily find the content they are looking for, even when it is scattered across multiple locations and content repositories within their organization. Amazon Kendra supports natural language queries, and can search for text in documents stored in Amazon S3, as well as other sources such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more1.

Amazon Rekognition is a computer vision service that makes it easy to add image and video analysis to applications. It can detect objects, faces, text, scenes, activities, and emotions in images and videos. However, it is not designed for searching for text in documents stored in Amazon S32.

Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech service that turns text into lifelike speech. It can create audio versions of books, articles, podcasts, and more. However, it is not designed for searching for text in documents stored in Amazon S33.

Amazon Lex is a service for building conversational interfaces using voice and text. It can create chatbots that can interact with users using natural language. However, it is not designed for searching for text in documents stored in Amazon S34.

References:

Amazon Kendra – Intelligent Search Service Powered by Machine Learning

Amazon Rekognition – Video and Image - AWS

Amazon Polly – Text-to-Speech Service - AWS

Amazon Lex – Build Conversation Bots - AWS

AWS Artifact provides on-demand access to AWS compliance reports and security documentation. It is a self-service portal where customers can download documents like SOC reports, ISO certifications, and other compliance-related materials necessary for meeting regulatory requirements. AWS Config and Trusted Advisor offer security assessments and compliance monitoring, but they do not provide direct access to compliance reports.

AWS Artifact is a self-service portal that provides on-demand access to AWS security and compliance reports and select online agreements. Users can download reports such as AWS ISO certifications, PCI reports, SOC reports, and GDPR DPA, and review and accept agreements such as BAA and NDA. AWS Artifact helps users to understand and meet compliance requirements for various standards and regulations that apply to AWS services and infrastructure. AWS Artifact is the best resource for a user to find compliance-related information and reports about AWS, whereas the other options are not

Amazon Lex is a service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. It provides the tools necessary to create, test, and publish intelligent chatbots that can be integrated with web applications to provide a conversational experience.

A. Amazon Textract: Incorrect, as it is a service for extracting text and data from documents, not for creating chatbots.

C. AWS Glue: Incorrect, as it is a data integration service used for preparing and transforming data.

D. Amazon Rekognition: Incorrect, as it is an image and video analysis service.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon Lex

AWS Global Accelerator is a service that improves network performance by sending traffic through the AWS worldwide network infrastructure. It uses the AWS global network to direct TCP or UDP traffic to a healthy application endpoint in the closest AWS Region to the client. This provides improvements in terms of latency, throughput, and jitter. Global Accelerator also introduces features such as TCP termination at the edge, jumbo frame support, and large receive side window and TCP buffers to optimize data transfer12. Route table, AWS Transit Gateway, and Amazon VPC are not services or features that improve network performance by sending traffic through the AWS worldwide network infrastructure. Route table is a resource that defines how traffic is routed within a VPC3. AWS Transit Gateway is a service that enables you to connect your VPCs and on-premises networks to a single gateway4. Amazon VPC is a service that lets you provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define5. References: Achieve up to 60% better performance for internet traffic with AWS Global Accelerator, Improving Performance on AWS and Hybrid Networks, Route tables, AWS Transit Gateway, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Security groups and network ACLs are two AWS services that can be used to block network traffic to an instance. Security groups are virtual firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic for your instances at the instance level. You can specify which protocols, ports, and source or destination IP addresses are allowed or denied for each instance. Security groups are stateful, which means that they automatically allow return traffic for any allowed inbound or outbound traffic123. Network ACLs are virtual firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic for your subnets at the subnet level. You can create rules to allow or deny traffic based on protocols, ports, and source or destination IP addresses. Network ACLs are stateless, which means that you have to explicitly allow return traffic for any allowed inbound or outbound traffic456. References: 1: Security groups for your VPC - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, 2: Security Groups for Your VPC - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, 3: AWS Security Groups: Everything You Need to Know, 4: Network ACLs - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, 5: Control traffic to subnets using network ACLs - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, 6: AWS Network ACLs: Everything You Need to Know

Scaling horizontally, or adding more instances of resources rather than increasing the size of a single instance, is a core principle of the Performance Efficiency pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It enables applications to handle increasing loads by distributing traffic across multiple resources. Other options, such as serverless architectures, managed services, and cost measurement, align with other pillars of the framework.

Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances are instances that let you pay for compute capacity by the hour or second (minimum of 60 seconds) with no long-term commitments. This frees you from the costs and complexities of planning, purchasing, and maintaining hardware and transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs. On-Demand Instances are suitable for applications with short-term, irregular, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted, such as periodic applications that run for a few hours most days, but run for 8 hours a day for a week at the end of each month2. Amazon EC2 Standard Reserved Instances are instances that provide you with a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand Instance pricing. In exchange, you select a term and make an upfront payment to reserve a certain amount of compute capacity for that term. Reserved Instances are suitable for applications with steady state or predictable usage that require reserved capacity3. AWS Wavelength is a service that enables developers to build applications that deliver ultra-low latency to mobile devices and users by deploying AWS compute and storage at the edge of the 5G network. Wavelength is suitable for applications that require single-digit millisecond latencies, such as game and live video streaming, machine learning inference at the edge, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). Application Load Balancer is a service that operates at the request level (layer 7) and distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, Lambda functions, and IP addresses. Application Load Balancer is suitable for applications that need advanced routing capabilities, such as microservices or container-based architectures.

Amazon S3 is a service that provides durable storage for static content and infinitely scalable data storage infrastructure at the lowest cost. Amazon S3 is an object storage service that allows you to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the internet. Amazon S3 offers industry-leading scalability, availability, and performance, as well as 99.999999999% (11 9s) of durability and multi-AZ resilience. Amazon S3 also provides various storage classes that offer different levels of performance and cost optimization, such as S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA), S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA), and S3 Glacier456. Amazon S3 is ideal for storing static content, such as images, videos, documents, and web pages, as well as building data lakes, backup and archive solutions, big data analytics, and machine learning applications456. References: 4: Cloud Storage on AWS, 5: Object Storage - Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) - AWS, 6: Amazon S3 Documentation

Rehosting ("lift and shift") is a migration strategy where applications are moved to the cloud with minimal changes, making it the least effort-intensive method for applications incompatible with the cloud. Repurchasing involves moving to a different product, often a SaaS solution, which can also minimize migration effort by avoiding the need for application-level changes. Retiring, replatforming, and refactoring require significant effort either in terms of analyzing and shutting down the application, making changes to the underlying platform, or redesigning the application architecture, respectively.References:

AWS Migration Strategies

AWS Budgets and Amazon CloudWatch are two AWS services or tools that the company can use to receive a notification when a specific AWS cost threshold is reached. AWS Budgets allows users to set custom budgets to track their costs and usage, and respond quickly to alerts received from email or Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) notifications if they exceed their threshold. Users can create cost budgets with fixed or variable target amounts, and configure their notifications for actual or forecasted spend. Users can also set up custom actions to run automatically or through an approval process when a budget target is exceeded. For example, users could automatically apply a custom IAM policy that denies them the ability to provision additional resources within an account. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that monitors applications, responds to performance changes, optimizes resource use, and provides insights into operational health. Users can use CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, which are variables they can measure for their resources and applications. Users can create alarms that watch metrics and send notifications or automatically make changes to the resources they are monitoring when a threshold is breached. Users can use CloudWatch to monitor their AWS costs and usage by creating billing alarms that send notifications when their estimated charges exceed a specified threshold amount. Users can also use CloudWatch to monitor their Reserved Instance (RI) or Savings Plans utilization and coverage, and receive notifications when they fall below a certain level.

References: Cloud Cost And Usage Budgets - AWS Budgets, What is Amazon CloudWatch?, Creating a billing alarm - Amazon CloudWatch

The AWS Developer Forums are always free to use, regardless of the user's AWS Support plan. They provide a platform for users to ask questions, share knowledge, and collaborate with the AWS community.

A. AWS Developer Support: Incorrect, as it is a paid support plan option.

C. Programmatic case management: Incorrect, as this feature is available only with certain AWS Support plans (Business and Enterprise).

D. AWS Technical Account Manager (TAM): Incorrect, as a TAM is provided only under the AWS Enterprise Support plan, which is a paid support option.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Support Plans

Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances are ideal for unpredictable workloads that do not require a long-term commitment. This option allows users to pay for compute capacity by the hour or second, with no long-term commitments. It is suitable for short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted and require flexibility. Option A is better suited for Reserved Instances, Option B is ideal for Spot Instances, and Option D is more suited for Reserved Instances due to cost optimization for long-term use.

"There is no long-term commitment required when you purchase On-Demand Instances. You pay only for the seconds that your On-Demand Instances are in the running state, with a 60-second minimum. The price per second for a running On-Demand Instance is fixed, and is listed on the Amazon EC2 Pricing, On-Demand Pricing page. We recommend that you use On-Demand Instances for applications with short-term, irregular workloads that cannot be interrupted." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-on-demand-instances.html

The security best practices that should be followed are A and E.

A. Grant the developer access to only the AWS resources needed to perform the job. This is an example of the principle of least privilege, which means giving the minimum permissions necessary to achieve a task. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access, data leakage, or accidental damage to AWS resources. You can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create users, groups, roles, and policies that grant fine-grained access to AWS resources12.

E. Ensure the account password policy requires a minimum length. This is a basic security measure that helps prevent brute-force attacks or guessing of passwords. A longer password is harder to crack than a shorter one. You can use IAM to configure a password policy that enforces a minimum password length, as well as other requirements such as complexity, expiration, and history34.

B. Share the AWS account root user credentials with the developer. This is a bad practice that should be avoided. The root user has full access to all AWS resources and services, and can perform sensitive actions such as changing billing information, closing the account, or deleting all resources. Sharing the root user credentials exposes your account to potential compromise or misuse. You should never share your root user credentials with anyone, and use them only for account administration tasks5 .

C. Add the developer to the administrator’s group in IAM. This is also a bad practice that should be avoided. The administrator’s group has full access to all AWS resources and services, which is more than what a developer needs to perform their job. Adding the developer to the administrator’s group violates the principle of least privilege and increases the risk of unauthorized access, data leakage, or accidental damage to AWS resources. You should create a custom group for the developer that grants only the necessary permissions for their role12.

D. Configure a password policy that ensures the developer’s password cannot be changed. This is another bad practice that should be avoided. Preventing the developer from changing their password reduces their ability to protect their credentials and comply with security policies. For example, if the developer’s password is compromised, they cannot change it to prevent further unauthorized access. Or if the company requires periodic password rotation, they cannot update their password to meet this requirement. You should allow the developer to change their password as needed, and enforce a password policy that sets reasonable rules for password management34.

 Amazon CloudWatch is a service that provides monitoring and observability for AWS resources and applications. Users can create custom dashboards to collect and visualize metrics, logs, alarms, and events from different sources5. AWS X-Ray is a service that provides distributed tracing and analysis for applications. AWS Systems Manager is a service that provides operational management for AWS resources and applications. AWS CloudTrail is a service that provides governance, compliance, and auditing for AWS account activity.

AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog that offers third-party software, including security solutions like intrusion detection systems, which can be deployed directly within an AWS environment. By using AWS Marketplace, companies can find, purchase, and deploy ISP intrusion detection systems or other security tools that meet their specific requirements. Other services, such as AWS Security Hub and Quick Starts, do not directly provide third-party application deployment.

IAM roles are a way to delegate access to resources in different AWS accounts. IAM roles allow users to assume a set of permissions for a limited time without having to create or share long-term credentials. IAM roles can be used to grant cross-account access by creating a trust relationship between the accounts and specifying the permissions that the role can perform. Users can then switch to the role and access the resources in the other account using temporary security credentials provided by the role. References: Cross account resource access in IAM, IAM tutorial: Delegate access across AWS accounts using IAM roles, How to Enable Cross-Account Access to the AWS Management Console

AWS Direct Connect is an AWS service that allows users to establish a dedicated network connection between their on-premises data center and the AWS Cloud. This connection bypasses the public internet and provides more predictable network performance, reduced bandwidth costs, and increased security. Users can choose from different port speeds and connection types, and use AWS Direct Connect to access AWS services in any AWS Region globally. Users can also use AWS Direct Connect in conjunction with AWS VPN to create a hybrid network architecture that combines the benefits of both private and public connectivity. References: AWS Direct Connect, [AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials: Module 3 - Compute in the Cloud]

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps you ensure that you have the correct number of Amazon EC2 instances available to handle the load for your application. You create collections of EC2 instances, called Auto Scaling groups. You can specify the minimum number of instances in each Auto Scaling group, and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling ensures that your group never goes below this size. You can specify the maximum number of instances in each Auto Scaling group, and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling ensures that your group never goes above this size4. AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume. With Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service - all with zero administration. Just upload your code and Lambda takes care of everything required to run and scale your code with high availability. You can set up your code to automatically trigger from other AWS services or call it directly from any web or mobile app.

The Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace allows customers to sell unused Standard Reserved Instances to other AWS users. This enables companies to recoup some of the costs if they no longer need certain RIs. Standard RIs cannot be converted to Savings Plans, and AWS Support does not facilitate the resale of RIs directly.

The correct answer is B. Amazon Inspector.

Amazon Inspector is an automated vulnerability management service that continually scans AWS workloads for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. Amazon Inspector automatically discovers workloads, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and Lambda functions, and scans them for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure12.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors your AWS accounts and workloads for malicious or unauthorized activity. Amazon GuardDuty does not scan for software vulnerabilities, but rather analyzes AWS CloudTrail, Amazon VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs to detect threats such as compromised credentials, backdoors, or crypto mining3.

AWS Security Hub is a security and compliance service that aggregates and prioritizes security findings from multiple AWS services and partner solutions. AWS Security Hub does not scan for software vulnerabilities, but rather provides a comprehensive view of your security posture across your AWS accounts4.

AWS Shield is a managed service that protects your web applications and network resources from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. AWS Shield does not scan for software vulnerabilities, but rather provides detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks at the network and application layers5.

References:

1: Automated Software Vulnerability Management - Amazon Inspector - AWS 3: [Amazon GuardDuty – Intelligent Threat Detection Made Easy] 2: AWS Re-Launches Amazon Inspector with New Architecture and Features - InfoQ 4: [AWS Security Hub – Unified Security and Compliance Center] 5: [AWS Shield – Managed DDoS Protection]

The AWS account root user is the identity that has complete access to all AWS services and resources in the account. It is accessed by signing in with the email address and password that were used to create the account1. The root user should be protected and used only for a few account and service management tasks that require it1. Therefore, the following actions are best practices for an AWS account root user:

Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on the root user. MFA is a security feature that requires users to provide two or more pieces of information to authenticate themselves, such as a password and a code from a device. MFA adds an extra layer of protection for the root user credentials, which can access sensitive information and perform critical operations in the account2.

Create an IAM user with administrator privileges for daily administrative tasks, instead of using the root user. IAM is a service that helps customers manage access to AWS resources for users and groups. Customers can create IAM users and assign them permissions to perform specific tasks on specific resources. Customers can also create IAM roles and policies to delegate access to other AWS services or external entities3. By creating an IAM user with administrator privileges, customers can avoid using the root user for everyday tasks and reduce the risk of accidental or malicious changes to the account1.

 Spot Instances are spare Amazon EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. They are suitable for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch processing, data analysis, and testing. Spot Instances are allocated based on the current supply and demand, and can be reclaimed by AWS with a two-minute notice when the demand exceeds the supply5. Convertible Reserved Instances are a type of Reserved Instances that provide a significant discount (up to 54%) compared to On-Demand prices and a capacity reservation for Amazon EC2 instances. They are available in 1-year or 3-year terms and allow users to change the instance family, size, operating system, or tenancy during the term. Standard Reserved Instances are another type of Reserved Instances that provide a larger discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand prices and a capacity reservation for Amazon EC2 instances. They are available in 1-year or 3-year terms and do not allow users to change the instance attributes during the term. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with Amazon EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to the user’s use. They are suitable for users who have specific server-bound software licenses or compliance requirements.

Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, AWS manages security of the cloud (such as physical infrastructure and virtualization), while customers are responsible for security in the cloud. This means that customers are responsible for:

B. Encrypt data and maintain data integrity: Correct, as customers are responsible for securing their data, including encryption and maintaining its integrity.

D. Maintain identity and access management controls: Correct, as customers are responsible for managing access to their AWS resources, including creating and managing IAM users, roles, and permissions.

A. Secure the virtualization layer: Incorrect, as AWS is responsible for securing the underlying virtualization layer.

C. Patch the Amazon RDS operating system: Incorrect, as AWS handles patching and maintenance of the managed service’s underlying infrastructure.

E. Secure Availability Zones: Incorrect, as AWS is responsible for securing the physical infrastructure, including Availability Zones.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Savings Plans offer cost savings for predictable, steady workloads over a one or three-year term, with flexibility in instance family and size, making them suitable for critical workloads on EC2 instances that will run for a long term like three years. Spot Instances are more cost-effective but not suitable for critical, predictable workloads due to potential interruptions. Dedicated Hosts and On-Demand Instances would be more costly.

The AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) currently supports multiple programming languages, including Python and TypeScript. These languages allow developers to define cloud infrastructure using familiar programming constructs. Python and TypeScript are among the first languages supported by AWS CDK, which also supports Java, C#, and JavaScript. This enables developers to use their existing programming skills and tools to define cloud infrastructure in code.

B. Swift: Incorrect, as Swift is not currently supported by AWS CDK.

D. Ruby: Incorrect, as Ruby is not currently supported by AWS CDK.

E. PHP: Incorrect, as PHP is not currently supported by AWS CDK.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)

Amazon RDS for MySQL is a fully managed, open-source cloud database service that allows you to easily operate and scale your relational database of choice, including MySQL. With Amazon RDS for MySQL, you don’t have to worry about the hardware, resiliency, and replication of your database, as Amazon RDS handles these tasks for you. Amazon RDS for MySQL also provides features such as automated backups, multi-AZ deployments, read replicas, encryption, monitoring, and more. Amazon RDS for MySQL is compatible with the MySQL Community Edition versions 5.7 and 8.0, which means that you can use the same code, applications, and tools that you already use with MySQL4567. References: 4: Hosted MySQL - Amazon RDS for MySQL - AWS, 5: Amazon RDS for MySQL - Amazon Relational Database Service, 6: Amazon RDS for MySQL — 亚马逊云科技, 7: Managed SQL Database - Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) - AWS

Amazon EC2 is a service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch and manage virtual servers, known as instances, that run on the AWS infrastructure. Users are responsible for maintaining the underlying operating system of the instances, as well as any applications or software that run on them. Amazon DynamoDB is a service that provides a fully managed NoSQL database that delivers fast and consistent performance at any scale. Users do not need to manage the underlying operating system or the database software. Amazon S3 is a service that provides scalable and durable object storage in the cloud. Users do not need to manage the underlying operating system or the storage infrastructure. AWS Lambda is a service that allows users to run code without provisioning or managing servers. Users only need to upload their code and configure the triggers and parameters. AWS Lambda takes care of the underlying operating system and the execution environment.

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) and AWS Schema Conversion Tool are the primary services for migrating a commercial relational database to an Amazon-managed open-source database. AWS DMS helps migrate the data, while the AWS Schema Conversion Tool converts the database schema from the source database format to the target format, including SQL code. AWS SDKs are for software development, AWS Systems Manager is for operational management, and Amazon EMR is for big data processing, which are not relevant to this use case.

 The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) helps organizations understand how cloud adoption transforms the way they work, and it provides structure to identify and address gaps in skills and processes. The AWS CAF organizes guidance into six areas of focus, called perspectives. Each perspective reflects a different stakeholder viewpoint with its own distinct responsibilities, skills, and attributes. The Security Perspective helps you structure the selection and implementation of security controls that meet your organization’s needs2.

Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It’s a fully managed, multi-region, multi-active, durable database with built-in security, backup and restore, and in-memory caching for internet-scale applications. DynamoDB can handle more than 10 trillion requests per day and can support peaks of more than 20 million requests per second. DynamoDB provides the least operational overhead for storing data from a recommendation engine, as it does not require any server provisioning, patching, or maintenance3

AWS recommends using tags to organize resources effectively and to activate cost allocation tags to enable detailed tracking of costs by categories such as department, environment, and application. This approach provides the granularity needed for tracking and managing AWS costs accurately. AWS Cost Management and Billing tools provide insights but do not inherently categorize costs without tags.

Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, all within a developer-friendly environment. CloudFront enables companies to deploy an application close to end users by caching the application’s content at edge locations that are geographically closer to the users. This reduces the network latency and improves the user experience. CloudFront also integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF, to provide a secure and scalable solution for delivering applications12. References:

What Is Amazon CloudFront? - Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront Features - Amazon CloudFront

The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices and guidelines for designing and operating workloads on AWS. It helps customers achieve operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability. The framework is based on six pillars, each with its own design principles, best practices, and questions. Customers can use the framework to assess their current state, identify gaps, and implement improvements12.

AWS Support is a service that provides technical assistance, guidance, and resources for AWS customers. It offers different plans with varying levels of access to AWS experts, response times, and features3. AWS Support does not provide a comprehensive framework for operational support.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is a guidance tool that helps customers plan and execute their cloud migration journey. It provides a set of perspectives, capabilities, and best practices to align the business and technical aspects of cloud adoption4. AWS CAF does not focus on operational support for existing workloads on AWS.

AWS Managed Services (AMS) is a service that operates AWS infrastructure on behalf of customers. It provides a secure and compliant environment, automates common activities, and applies best practices for provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, and monitoring5. AMS does not provide a framework for customers to operate their own workloads on AWS.

One of the benefits of operating in the AWS Cloud is the ability to expand compute, storage, and memory when needed, which enables users to scale their applications and resources up or down based on demand. This also helps users optimize their costs and performance. The ability to migrate on-premises network devices to the AWS Cloud, the ability to host custom hardware in the AWS Cloud, and the ability to customize the underlying hypervisor layer for Amazon EC2 are not benefits of operating in the AWS Cloud, as they are either not possible or not recommended by AWS .

 Amazon Neptune is a fully managed graph database service on AWS. A graph database is a type of database that stores and queries data as a network of nodes and edges, representing entities and relationships. Graph databases are useful for applications that deal with highly connected data, such as social networks, recommendation engines, fraud detection, and knowledge graphs45. Amazon Neptune is a fast, reliable, and scalable graph database service that supports two popular graph models: property graphs and RDF. Amazon Neptune also supports two open standards for querying graphs: Apache TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL. Amazon Neptune handles the heavy lifting of managing the database, such as provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, encryption, and replication456. References: 4: Managed Graph Database - Amazon Neptune - AWS, 5: Amazon Neptune – A Fully Managed Graph Database Service, 6: Working with AWS Neptune. Neptune is a fully-managed graph … - Medium

AWS Transit Gateway is a network transit hub that you can use to interconnect your VPCs and on-premises networks through a central gateway. AWS Transit Gateway simplifies and scales the connectivity between your on-premises networks and AWS, as you only need to create and manage a single connection from the central gateway to each on-premises network, rather than individual connections to each VPC. You can also use AWS Transit Gateway to connect to other AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, and AWS PrivateLink12. AWS Transit Gateway supports thousands of VPCs per gateway, and enables you to peer Transit Gateways across AWS Regions3.

The other options are not AWS services or features that can simplify and scale the connectivity between on-premises networks and hundreds of VPCs using AWS Direct Connect. VPC endpoints enable private connectivity between your VPCs and supported AWS services, but do not support on-premises networks4. Amazon Route 53 is a DNS service that helps you route internet traffic to your resources, but does not provide network connectivity5. AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you securely store and manage secrets, such as database credentials and API keys, but does not relate to network connectivity

 AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. You can use IAM to perform the following actions:

Control access to AWS service APIs and to other specific resources: You can create users, groups, roles, and policies that define who can access which AWS resources and how. You can also use IAM to grant temporary access to users or applications that need to perform certain tasks on your behalf3

Protect the AWS environment using multi-factor authentication (MFA): You can enable MFA for your IAM users and root user to add an extra layer of security to your AWS account. MFA requires users to provide a unique authentication code from an approved device or SMS text message, in addition to their user name and password, when they sign in to AWS4

AWS Trusted Advisor is the service that can meet these requirements. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that helps you optimize your AWS environment by providing recommendations based on AWS best practices. Trusted Advisor continuously evaluates your AWS resources and services across five categories: cost optimization, performance, service limits, fault tolerance, and security. You can view the recommendations on the Trusted Advisor console or access them programmatically using the Trusted Advisor API. You can also set up notifications and alerts for any changes in the status of your checks. Trusted Advisor can help you improve your AWS environment by reducing costs, enhancing performance, increasing security, and ensuring reliability12. The other services are not designed to provide best practice recommendations in five categories. AWS Shield is a service that protects your AWS resources from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. AWS WAF is a service that helps you protect your web applications from common web exploits. AWS Service Catalog is a service that enables you to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS34 . References: AWS Trusted Advisor, Achieve operational excellence with AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, [AWS Service Catalog]

The AWS Management Console provides a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to manage AWS services. It is user-friendly and accessible, enabling users to control and configure resources without needing to interact with AWS through code or command-line interfaces. AWS CLI and SDKs are command-line and programming tools, respectively, and do not offer a graphical interface.

AWS Secrets Manager is the AWS service where database credentials should be stored for maximum security. AWS Secrets Manager helps to protect the secrets, such as database credentials, passwords, API keys, and tokens, that are used to access applications, services, and resources. AWS Secrets Manager enables secure storage, encryption, rotation, and retrieval of the secrets. AWS Secrets Manager also integrates with other AWS services, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), and AWS Lambda. For more information, see [What is AWS Secrets Manager?] and [Getting Started with AWS Secrets Manager].

Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) supports SQL Server and other relational databases while handling administrative tasks such as backups, patching, monitoring, and scaling. This allows the company to migrate its SQL Server database without managing the infrastructure manually. Amazon EC2 for SQL Server would require more administrative overhead, as the company would be responsible for the maintenance. Amazon DynamoDB and Aurora do not support SQL Server directly.

AWS Transit Gateway acts as a cloud router for connecting multiple VPCs and on-premises networks, simplifying network management by creating a hub-and-spoke model for routing traffic. Direct Connect provides a private connection to AWS but does not function as a central router. Amazon Connect is unrelated, and Route 53 is for DNS services, not VPC connectivity.

Amazon S3 is an AWS service that provides scalable, durable, and cost-effective object storage in the cloud. Amazon S3 can store any amount and type of data, such as server logs, and offers various storage classes with different performance and pricing characteristics. Amazon S3 is the most cost-effective option for storing server logs, as it offers low-cost storage classes, such as S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and S3 Intelligent-Tiering, that are suitable for infrequently accessed or changing access patterns data. Amazon S3 also integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon Athena and Amazon OpenSearch Service, that can query the server logs directly from S3 without requiring any additional data loading or transformation. References: Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Storage Classes, Querying Data in Amazon S3

AWS Workspaces is a service that provides fully managed, secure, and reliable virtual desktops for your employees. You can access your personal Windows environment on various devices, such as Android, iOS, Fire, Mac, PC, Chromebook, and Linux. You can choose from different bundles of CPU, memory, storage, and software options to suit your needs. You can also integrate AWS Workspaces with your existing Active Directory, VPN, and security policies. AWS Workspaces helps you reduce the cost and complexity of managing your desktop infrastructure, while enhancing the productivity and security of your remote workers456. References: 4: Amazon WorkSpaces Client Download, 5: VDI Desktops - Amazon WorkSpaces Family - AWS, 6: Amazon WorkSpaces

AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. It offers checks in five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits. By continuously monitoring the AWS environment, AWS Trusted Advisor helps ensure that additional developments, integrations, changes, and growth do not jeopardize the optimized infrastructure by providing ongoing optimization and security recommendations.

B. AWS Health Dashboard: Incorrect, as it provides personalized view of service health and status updates but does not offer continuous optimization and security advice.

C. Amazon Connect: Incorrect, as it is a contact center service, not related to infrastructure optimization or security.

D. AWS Systems Manager: Incorrect, as it provides operational insights and management for AWS resources but is not specifically focused on ongoing optimization and security checks.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Trusted Advisor

AWS KMS is the service that is used to provide encryption for Amazon EBS. AWS KMS is a managed service that enables you to easily create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data. Amazon EBS uses AWS KMS to encrypt and decrypt your EBS volumes and snapshots. You can choose to use either the default AWS managed CMK or your own customer managed CMK for encryption. AWS KMS also provides features such as key rotation, audit logging, and access control policies to help you manage your encryption keys and protect your data12. The other services are not used to provide encryption for Amazon EBS. AWS Certificate Manager is a service that lets you provision, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources3. AWS Systems Manager is a service that provides a unified user interface to view and manage your AWS resources, automate common operational tasks, and apply compliance policies4. AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. References: Amazon EBS encryption, AWS Key Management Service, AWS Certificate Manager, AWS Systems Manager, [AWS Config]

The AWS service that provides the ability to manage infrastructure as code is AWS CloudFormation. Infrastructure as code is a process of defining and provisioning AWS resources using code or templates, rather than manual actions or scripts. AWS CloudFormation allows you to create and update stacks of AWS resources based on predefined templates that describe the desired state and configuration of the resources. AWS CloudFormation automates and simplifies the deployment and management of AWS resources, and ensures consistency and repeatability across different environments and regions. AWS CloudFormation also supports rollback, change sets, drift detection, and nested stacks features that help you to monitor and control the changes to your infrastructure1.

IAM roles are a way of granting temporary permissions to entities that need to access AWS resources, such as users, applications, or services. IAM roles allow customers to assign permissions to entities without having to create or manage IAM users or credentials for them. IAM roles can be assumed by different entities depending on the trust policy attached to the role. For example, IAM roles can be assumed by IAM users in the same or different AWS accounts, AWS services such as EC2 or Lambda, or external identities such as federated users or web identities. IAM roles can also be switched by IAM users to temporarily change their permissions. IAM roles are recommended for managing permissions for employees who often change teams, because they allow customers to define permissions based on job roles and responsibilities, and easily assign or revoke them as needed. IAM roles also reduce the operational overhead of creating, updating, or deleting IAM users or credentials for each employee or team change.

AWS WAF is the AWS service or feature that offers HTTP attack protection to users running public-facing web applications. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps users protect their web applications from common web exploits, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and bot attacks. Users can create custom rules to define the web traffic that they want to allow, block, or count. Users can also use AWS Managed Rules, which are pre-configured rules that are curated and maintained by AWS or AWS Marketplace Sellers. AWS WAF can be integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon API Gateway, and Application Load Balancer, to provide comprehensive security for web applications. [AWS WAF Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

The statements that represent the cost-effectiveness of the AWS Cloud are:

Users can trade fixed expenses for variable expenses. By using the AWS Cloud, users can pay only for the resources they use, instead of investing in fixed and upfront costs for hardware and software. This can lower the total cost of ownership and increase the return on investment.

Users benefit from economies of scale. By using the AWS Cloud, users can leverage the massive scale and efficiency of AWS to access lower prices and higher performance. AWS passes the cost savings to the users through price reductions and innovations. AWS Cloud Value Framework

The AWS services and features that are provided to all customers at no charge are VPC and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). VPC is a service that allows you to launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you define. You can create and use a VPC at no additional charge, and you only pay for the resources that you launch in the VPC, such as EC2 instances or EBS volumes. IAM is a service that allows you to manage access and permissions to AWS resources. You can create and use IAM users, groups, roles, and policies at no additional charge, and you only pay for the AWS resources that the IAM entities access. Amazon Aurora, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Polly are not free services, and they charge based on the usage and features that you choose5

 The operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework includes a design principle about measuring the overall efficiency of workloads in terms of business value. This principle states that you should monitor and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and set targets and thresholds that align with your business goals. You should also use feedback loops to continuously improve your processes and procedures1.

 AWS Organizations is an account management service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage. AWS Organizations includes consolidated billing and account management capabilities that enable you to better meet the budgetary, security, and compliance needs of your business1.

AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can use Lambda to process event notifications from Amazon S3 when objects are uploaded or deleted. Lambda integrates directly with the event notification and invokes your code automatically. Therefore, the correct answer is A. 

The correct answer is B because Application Load Balancer is an AWS load balancer that will meet the requirements and take the least amount of effort to deploy. Application Load Balancer is a type of Elastic Load Balancing that operates at the application layer (layer 7) of the OSI model and routes requests to targets based on the content of the request. Application Load Balancer supports advanced features, such as path-based routing, host-based routing, and HTTP header-based routing. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS load balancers that will meet the requirements and take the least amount of effort to deploy. Network Load Balancer is a type of Elastic Load Balancing that operates at the transport layer (layer 4) of the OSI model and routes requests to targets based on the destination IP address and port. Network Load Balancer does not support path-based routing. AWS OpsWorks Load Balancer is not an AWS load balancer, but rather a feature of AWS OpsWorks that enables users to attach an Elastic Load Balancing load balancer to a layer of their stack. Custom Load Balancer on Amazon EC2 is not an AWS load balancer, but rather a user-defined load balancer that runs on an Amazon EC2 instance. Custom Load Balancer on Amazon EC2 requires more effort to deploy and maintain than an AWS load balancer. Reference: Elastic Load Balancing

 AWS Artifact is the AWS service that can provide security and compliance documents for an upcoming audit. AWS Artifact is a self-service portal that allows users to access and download AWS compliance reports and agreements. These documents provide evidence of AWS’s compliance with global, regional, and industry-specific security standards and regulations

 The correct answer is B because AWS CloudTrail is an AWS service that a cloud engineer can use to view API calls to AWS services. AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables customers to track user activity and API usage across their AWS account. AWS CloudTrail records the details of every API call made to AWS services, such as the identity of the caller, the time of the call, the source IP address of the caller, the parameters and responses of the call, and more. Customers can use AWS CloudTrail to audit, monitor, and troubleshoot their AWS resources and actions. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that a cloud engineer can use to view API calls to AWS services. Amazon CloudWatch is an AWS service that enables customers to collect, analyze, and visualize metrics, logs, and events from their AWS resources and applications. AWS Config is an AWS service that enables customers to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of their AWS resources. AWS Artifact is an AWS service that provides customers with on-demand access to AWS compliance reports and select online agreements. Reference: AWS CloudTrail FAQs

 Security groups are the service or feature that meets the requirement of establishing a security layer in a VPC that will act as a firewall to control subnet traffic. Security groups are stateful firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. You can assign one or more security groups to each instance in a VPC, and specify the rules that allow or deny traffic based on the protocol, port, and source or destination. Security groups are associated with network interfaces, and therefore apply to all the instances in the subnets that use those network interfaces. Routing tables are used to direct traffic between subnets and gateways, not to filter traffic. Network ACLs are stateless firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level, but they are less granular and more cumbersome to manage than security groups. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors your AWS account and workloads for malicious or unauthorized activity, not a firewall service.

 AWS Pricing Calculator can be used to estimate costs before deployment. AWS Pricing Calculator is a tool that helps the user to compare the cost of AWS services for different use cases and configurations. The user can create estimates for various AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and more. The user can also adjust the parameters, such as region, instance type, storage size, and duration, to see how they affect the cost. AWS Pricing Calculator provides a detailed breakdown of the estimated cost, as well as a summary of the key drivers of the cost.

Amazon RDS is the AWS service that will meet the requirements of migrating a relational database server to the AWS Cloud and minimizing administrative overhead of database maintenance tasks. Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service that handles routine database tasks, such as provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failure detection, and repair. Amazon RDS supports several database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora5.

Server-side encryption is an encryption option that Amazon S3 provides to encrypt data at rest in Amazon S3. With server-side encryption, Amazon S3 encrypts an object before saving it to disk in its data centers and decrypts it when you download the objects. You have three server-side encryption options to choose from: SSE-S3, SSE-C, and SSE-KMS. SSE-S3 uses keys that are managed by Amazon S3. SSE-C allows you to manage your own encryption keys. SSE-KMS uses keys that are managed by AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)5.

Management of the guest operating systems is a customer’s responsibility, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. The AWS shared responsibility model defines the different security and compliance responsibilities of AWS and the customer. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the physical infrastructure, hardware, software, and facilities that run the AWS Cloud. The customer is responsible for security in the cloud, which includes the configuration and management of the guest operating systems, applications, data, and network traffic protection

 Pay-as-you-go pricing is the feature of the AWS Cloud that gives users the ability to pay based on current needs rather than forecasted needs. Pay-as-you-go pricing means that users only pay for the AWS services and resources they use, without any upfront or long-term commitments. This allows users to scale up or down their usage depending on their changing business requirements, and avoid paying for idle or unused capacity. Pay-as-you-go pricing also enables users to benefit from the economies of scale and lower costs of AWS as they grow their business5

The correct answer is D because AWS Enterprise Support is the support plan that provides customers with access to an AWS technical account manager (TAM). AWS Enterprise Support is the highest level of support plan offered by AWS, and it provides customers with the most comprehensive and personalized support experience. An AWS TAM is a dedicated technical resource who works closely with customers to understand their business and technical needs, provide proactive guidance, and coordinate support across AWS teams. The other options are incorrect because they are not support plans that provide customers with access to an AWS TAM. AWS Basic Support is the default and free support plan that provides customers with access to online documentation, forums, and account information. AWS Developer Support is the lowest level of paid support plan that provides customers with access to technical support during business hours, general guidance, and best practice recommendations. AWS Business Support is the intermediate level of paid support plan that provides customers with access to technical support 24/7, system health checks, architectural guidance, and case management. Reference: AWS Support Plans

 AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second. You pay only for the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running. With AWS Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service - all with zero administration. AWS Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, code monitoring and logging

 Applying security requirements at all layers of a process is a policy that complies with guidance in the security pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The security pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework provides best practices for securing the user’s data and systems in the AWS Cloud. One of the design principles of the security pillar is to apply security at all layers, which means that the user should implement defense-in-depth strategies and avoid relying on a single security mechanism. For example, the user should use multiple security controls, such as encryption, firewalls, identity and access management, and logging and monitoring, to protect their data and resources at different layers.

The correct answer is B because Amazon ElastiCache is a service that provides in-memory data storage. Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed, scalable, and high-performance service that supports two popular open-source in-memory engines: Redis and Memcached. Amazon ElastiCache allows users to store and retrieve data from fast, low-latency, and high-throughput in-memory systems. Users can use Amazon ElastiCache to improve the performance of their applications by caching frequently accessed data, reducing database load, and enabling real-time data processing. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that provide in-memory data storage. Amazon DynamoDB is a service that provides key-value and document data storage. Amazon RDS is a service that provides relational data storage. Amazon Timestream is a service that provides time series data storage. Reference: Amazon ElastiCache FAQs

 AWS Organizations is a service that helps you centrally manage and govern your environment as you grow and scale your AWS resources. You can use AWS Organizations to create groups of accounts and apply policies to them. You can also use AWS Organizations to consolidate billing for multiple accounts. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about AWS Organizations and its features .

 The correct answer is A because an Availability Zone consists of one or more data centers in a single location. An Availability Zone is an isolated location within an AWS Region that has independent power, cooling, and networking. Each Availability Zone has one or more data centers that host the physical servers and storage devices that run the AWS services. The other options are incorrect because they are not accurate descriptions of an Availability Zone. Two or more data centers in multiple locations are not an Availability Zone, but rather multiple Availability Zones within an AWS Region. One or more physical hosts in a single data center are not an Availability Zone, but rather the components of a data center within an Availability Zone. Two or more physical hosts in multiple data centers are not an Availability Zone, but rather the components of multiple data centers within one or more Availability Zones. Reference: [Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones]

The Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class offers automatic cost savings by moving objects between tiers based on access pattern changes. This storage class is designed for data with unknown or changing access patterns. It has two access tiers: frequent access and infrequent access. Objects are stored in the frequent access tier by default, and are moved to the infrequent access tier after 30 consecutive days of no access. If an object in the infrequent access tier is accessed, it is moved back to the frequent access tier. There are no retrieval fees in S3 Intelligent-Tiering, and no additional tiering fees when objects are moved between access tiers within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class1.

 The correct answer is C because VPC Flow Logs is an AWS service or feature that captures information about the network traffic to and from an Amazon EC2 instance. VPC Flow Logs is a feature that enables customers to capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in their VPC. VPC Flow Logs can help customers to monitor and troubleshoot connectivity issues, such as traffic not reaching an instance or traffic being rejected by a security group. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services or features that capture information about the network traffic to and from an Amazon EC2 instance. VPC Reachability Analyzer is an AWS service or feature that enables customers to perform connectivity testing between resources in their VPC and identify configuration issues that prevent connectivity. Amazon Athena is an AWS service that enables customers to query data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. AWS X-Ray is an AWS service that enables customers to analyze and debug distributed applications, such as those built using a microservices architecture. Reference: VPC Flow Logs

 AWS Config is a service that enables users to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources. It continuously monitors and records the configuration changes of the resources and evaluates them against desired configurations and best practices. It also provides a detailed view of the resource configuration history and relationships, as well as compliance reports and notifications. AWS Config can help users maintain consistent and secure configurations, troubleshoot issues, and simplify compliance auditing. AWS Config OverviewAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

The correct answers are D and E because AWS offers high availability and AWS provides economies of scale are benefits that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. High availability means that AWS has a global infrastructure that allows customers to deploy their applications and data across multiple regions and availability zones. This increases the fault tolerance and resilience of their applications and reduces the impact of failures. Economies of scale means that AWS can achieve lower variable costs than customers can get on their own. This allows customers to pay only for the resources they use and scale up or down as needed. The other options are incorrect because they are not benefits that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS trains the company’s staff on the use of all the AWS services is not a benefit that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS does provide various learning resources and training courses for customers, but it does not train the company’s staff on the use of all the AWS services. AWS manages all security in the cloud is not a benefit that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, but the customer is responsible for the security in the cloud. AWS offers free support from technical account managers (TAMs) is not a benefit that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS does offer support from TAMs, but only for customers who have the AWS Enterprise Support plan, which is not free. Reference: What is Cloud Computing?, [AWS Shared Responsibility Model], [AWS Support Plans]

 Amazon EventBridge is the service that the company should use to meet the requirement of invoking the Lambda function once a day at a specific time. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that allows you to easily connect your applications with data from AWS services, SaaS applications, and your own applications. You can use Amazon EventBridge to create rules that match events and route them to targets such as AWS Lambda functions, Amazon SNS topics, Amazon SQS queues, or other AWS services. You can also use Amazon EventBridge to create scheduled rules that trigger your targets at a specific time or interval, such as once a day. AWS Managed Services (AMS), AWS CodeStar, and AWS Step Functions are not services that the company should use to meet this requirement. AMS is a service that provides operational management for your AWS infrastructure and applications. AWS CodeStar is a service that provides a unified user interface for managing software development projects on AWS. AWS Step Functions is a service that coordinates multiple AWS services into serverless workflows.

 Access to all AWS resources will be denied if a newly created IAM user has no IAM policy attached and logs in and attempts to view the AWS resources in the account. IAM policies are the way to grant permissions to IAM users, groups, and roles to access and manage AWS resources. By default, IAM users have no permissions, unless they are explicitly granted by an IAM policy. Therefore, a newly created IAM user without any IAM policy attached will not be able to view or perform any actions on the AWS resources in the account. Access to the AWS billing services and AWS CLI will also be denied, unless the user has the necessary permissions.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is the AWS service or feature that is used to send both text and email messages from distributed applications. Amazon SNS is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables the user to send messages to multiple subscribers or endpoints, such as email addresses, phone numbers, HTTP endpoints, AWS Lambda functions, and more. Amazon SNS can be used to send notifications, alerts, confirmations, and reminders from applications to users or other applications4.

The correct answers are A and C because patching AWS network devices and providing physical security for compute resources are tasks that are the responsibility of AWS, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. The AWS shared responsibility model is a framework that defines the division of responsibilities between AWS and the customer for security and compliance. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the global infrastructure, such as the regions, availability zones, and edge locations; the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run the AWS services; and the virtualization layer that separates the customer instances and storage. The customer is responsible for the security in the cloud, which includes the customer data, the guest operating systems, the applications, the identity and access management, the firewall configuration, and the encryption. The other options are incorrect because they are tasks that are the responsibility of the customer, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Setting user password rules, configuring security groups, and patching the operating system of an Amazon EC2 instance are all tasks that the customer has to perform to secure their AWS environment. Reference: AWS Shared Responsibility Model

 AWS Organizations helps to centrally manage billing and allow controlled access to resources across AWS accounts. AWS Organizations is a service that enables the user to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that can be managed as a single unit. AWS Organizations allows the user to create groups of accounts and apply policies to them, such as service control policies (SCPs) that specify the services and actions that users and roles can access in the accounts. AWS Organizations also enables the user to use consolidated billing, which combines the usage and charges from all the accounts in the organization into a single bill.

The correct answers are A and B because Service Quotas console and AWS Trusted Advisor are AWS services or tools that can report on the quotas so that the company can improve the reliability of the application. Service Quotas console is an AWS tool that enables users to view and manage their quotas for AWS services from a central location. Users can use Service Quotas console to request quota increases, track quota usage, and set up alarms for approaching quota limits. AWS Trusted Advisor is an AWS service that provides real-time guidance to help users follow AWS best practices for security, performance, cost optimization, and fault tolerance. One of the categories of checks that AWS Trusted Advisor performs is service limits, which monitors the usage of each AWS service and alerts users when they are close to reaching the default limit. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services or tools that can report on the quotas so that the company can improve the reliability of the application. AWS Systems Manager is an AWS service that enables users to automate operational tasks, manage configuration and compliance, and monitor system health and performance. AWS Shield is an AWS service that protects users from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. AWS Cost Explorer is an AWS tool that enables users to visualize, understand, and manage their AWS costs and usage. Reference: Service Quotas, AWS Trusted Advisor FAQs

 The AWS account root user is the first sign-in identity that is available when an AWS account is created. It has complete access to all AWS services and resources in the account. The root user email address and password are the same credentials that are used to sign in to the AWS Management Console4. The root user should be used only to perform a few account and service management tasks. For day-to-day tasks, it is recommended to use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users or roles instead.

Amazon S3 is the most cost-effective service for storing offsite backups of on-premises infrastructure. Amazon S3 offers low-cost, durable, and scalable storage that can be accessed from anywhere over the internet. Amazon S3 also supports lifecycle policies, versioning, encryption, and cross-region replication to optimize the backup and recovery process. Amazon EFS, Amazon FSx, and Amazon EBS are more suitable for storing data that requires high performance, low latency, and frequent access12

The company can use AWS Organizations to track the combined AWS usage costs of all of its linked accounts. AWS Organizations is a service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you can manage centrally. You can use AWS Organizations to create a consolidated billing report that shows the charges incurred by each account in your organization as well as the total charges across all accounts. You can also use AWS Organizations to apply policies and controls to your accounts to help you manage costs and security5.

Architecture optimization is the best practice for cost governance that this example shows. Architecture optimization is the process of designing and implementing AWS solutions that are efficient, scalable, and cost-effective. By using specific AWS services to improve efficiency and reduce cost, the company is following the architecture optimization best practice. Some of the techniques for architecture optimization include using the right size and type of resources, leveraging elasticity and scalability, choosing the most suitable storage class, and using serverless and managed services2.

 Security groups and network access control lists (network ACLs) are two AWS network services or features that allow CIDR block notation when providing an IP address range. Security groups act as a firewall for associated Amazon EC2 instances, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. Network ACLs act as a firewall for associated subnets, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level. Both security groups and network ACLs use CIDR block notation to specify the IP address ranges that are allowed or denied

The statement that is true regarding pricing for these eight instances is: four instances will be charged as RIs, and four will be charged as regular instances. Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs) are a pricing model that allows users to reserve EC2 instances for a specific term and benefit from discounted hourly rates and capacity reservation. RIs are purchased for a specific AWS Region, and can be shared across multiple accounts in an organization in AWS Organizations for consolidated billing. However, RIs are applied on a first-come, first-served basis, and there is no guarantee that all instances in the organization will be charged at the RI rate. In this case, Account A has purchased five RIs and has four instances running, so all four instances will be charged at the RI rate. Account B has not purchased any RIs and also has four instances running, so all four instances will be charged at the regular rate. The remaining RI in Account A will not be applied to any instance in Account B, and will be wasted.

 AWS Direct Connect gives users the ability to provision a dedicated and private network connection from their internal network to AWS. AWS Direct Connect links the user’s internal network to an AWS Direct Connect location over a standard Ethernet fiber-optic cable. One end of the cable is connected to the user’s router, the other to an AWS Direct Connect router. With this connection in place, the user can create virtual interfaces directly to the AWS cloud and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), bypassing internet service providers in the network path2.

 The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices and guidelines for designing and operating systems in the cloud. The framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. The concept of elasticity represents a system’s ability to adapt to changes in demand by scaling resources up or down automatically. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Framework and its pillars

To achieve high availability in the event of a natural disaster, the company should use EC2 instances in multiple AWS Regions. AWS Regions are geographically isolated areas that consist of multiple Availability Zones. Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be isolated from failures. By using EC2 instances in multiple AWS Regions, the company can ensure that its applications can continue to run even if one Region is affected by a disaster. AWS Global InfrastructureAWS Well-Architected Framework

AWS WAF is the AWS service that the company should use to configure rules to identify threats and protect applications from malicious network access. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps to filter, monitor, and block malicious web requests based on customizable rules. AWS WAF can be integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon API Gateway, and Application Load Balancer. For more information, see What is AWS WAF? and How AWS WAF Works.

The correct answer is C because AWS CloudTrail is a service that will help a company identify the user who deleted an Amazon EC2 instance yesterday. AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables users to track user activity and API usage across their AWS account. AWS CloudTrail records the details of every API call made to AWS services, such as the identity of the caller, the time of the call, the source IP address of the caller, the parameters and responses of the call, and more. Users can use AWS CloudTrail to audit, monitor, and troubleshoot their AWS resources and actions. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that will help a company identify the user who deleted an Amazon EC2 instance yesterday. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that enables users to collect, analyze, and visualize metrics, logs, and events from their AWS resources and applications. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real-time guidance to help users follow AWS best practices for security, performance, cost optimization, and fault tolerance. Amazon Inspector is a service that helps users find security vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices in their Amazon EC2 instances. Reference: AWS CloudTrail FAQs

The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices and guidelines for designing and operating systems in the cloud. The framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. The operational excellence pillar focuses on the ability to run workloads effectively, gain insight into operations, and continuously improve supporting processes and procedures. Therefore, the correct answer is C. You can learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Framework and its pillars.

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon Inspector automatically assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices. After performing an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity2.

The correct answer is B because AWS Storage Gateway is a service that should be used by the company to meet the requirements. AWS Storage Gateway is a service that connects on-premises software applications with cloud-based storage. AWS Storage Gateway supports three types of gateways: file gateway, volume gateway, and tape gateway. The tape gateway type enables users to back up and archive data to virtual tapes in AWS without changing their existing backup workflows. Users can use their existing backup applications and tape libraries to store data on virtual tapes in Amazon S3 or Amazon S3 Glacier. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that should be used by the company to meet the requirements. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a service that provides block-level storage volumes for Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a service that enables users to run, scale, and secure containerized applications on AWS. AWS Lambda is a service that enables users to run code without provisioning or managing servers. Reference: AWS Storage Gateway FAQs

The AWS shared responsibility model describes how AWS and the customer share responsibility for security and compliance of the AWS environment. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the physical security of AWS facilities, the infrastructure, hardware, software, and networking that run AWS services. The customer is responsible for security in the cloud, which includes the configuration of security groups, the encryption of customer data on AWS, the management of AWS Lambda infrastructure, and the management of network throughput of each AWS Region. One of the customer responsibilities is to ensure that Amazon EBS volumes are backed up.

 An AWS Region is a specific location within a geographic area that provides high availability. An AWS Region consists of two or more Availability Zones, which are isolated locations within the same Region. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security, and is connected to the other Availability Zones in the same Region by low-latency, high-throughput, and highly redundant networking. AWS services are available in multiple Regions around the world, allowing the user to choose where to run their applications and store their data1.

The correct answer is A because Amazon CloudFront is an AWS service that provides secure delivery of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) that integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and AWS Shield. Amazon CloudFront delivers content through a worldwide network of edge locations that are located close to the end users. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that provide secure delivery of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. Elastic Load Balancing is an AWS service that distributes incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses. Amazon S3 is an AWS service that provides object storage for data of any size and type. Amazon Elastic Transcoder is an AWS service that converts media files from their original source format into different formats that will play on various devices. Reference: Amazon CloudFront FAQs

The correct answer is B because Spot Instances enable the company to optimize costs and meet the requirements. Spot Instances are spare EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. Spot Instances are suitable for stateless, fault-tolerant, and flexible applications that can run for any duration. The other options are incorrect because they do not enable the company to optimize costs and meet the requirements. Reserved Instances are EC2 instances that are reserved for a specific period of time (one or three years) in exchange for a lower hourly rate. Reserved Instances are suitable for steady-state or predictable workloads that run for a long duration. On-Demand Instances are EC2 instances that are launched and billed at a fixed hourly rate. On-Demand Instances are suitable for short-term, irregular, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted. Dedicated Instances are EC2 instances that run on hardware that is dedicated to a single customer. Dedicated Instances are suitable for workloads that require regulatory compliance or data isolation. Reference: [Amazon EC2 Instance Purchasing Options]

 The correct answer is D because AWS Security Hub is a service that aggregates, organizes, and prioritizes security alerts and findings from multiple AWS services, such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, Amazon Macie, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS IAM Access Analyzer. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that aggregate security alerts and findings from multiple AWS services. Amazon Detective is a service that helps users analyze and visualize security data to investigate and remediate potential issues. Amazon Inspector is a service that helps users find security vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices in their Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Macie is a service that helps users discover, classify, and protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. Reference: AWS Security Hub FAQs

AWS Compute Optimizer is the AWS service or tool that provides recommendations to help users get rightsized Amazon EC2 instances based on historical workload usage data. AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes the configuration and performance characteristics of the EC2 instances and delivers recommendations for optimal instance types, sizes, and configurations. AWS Compute Optimizer helps users improve performance, reduce costs, and eliminate underutilized resources

 Amazon EventBridge is the service that meets the requirements of building a serverless architecture that connects application data from multiple data sources without requiring additional code. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that allows you to easily connect your applications with data from AWS services, SaaS applications, and your own applications. You can use Amazon EventBridge to create rules that match events and route them to targets such as AWS Lambda functions, Amazon SNS topics, Amazon SQS queues, or other AWS services. Amazon EventBridge handles the event ingestion, delivery, security, authorization, and error handling for you34

 The services that can be used to deploy applications on AWS are:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk. This is a service that simplifies the deployment and management of web applications on AWS. Users can upload their application code and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the provisioning, scaling, load balancing, monitoring, and health checking of the resources needed to run the application. Users can also retain full control and access to the underlying resources and customize their configuration settings. Elastic Beanstalk supports multiple platforms, such as Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker. [AWS Elastic Beanstalk Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS OpsWorks. This is a service that provides configuration management and automation for AWS resources. Users can define the application architecture and the configuration of each resource using Chef or Puppet, which are popular open-source automation platforms. OpsWorks then automatically creates and configures the resources according to the user’s specifications. OpsWorks also provides features such as auto scaling, monitoring, and integration with other AWS services. OpsWorks has two offerings: OpsWorks for Chef Automate and OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise. [AWS OpsWorks Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS Artifact is the service that will provide the information about whether a specific AWS service is compliant with specific compliance frameworks. AWS Artifact is a self-service portal that allows you to access, review, and download AWS security and compliance reports and agreements. You can use AWS Artifact to verify the compliance status of AWS services across various regions and compliance programs, such as ISO, PCI, SOC, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and more12

 The correct answers are A and C because Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling and resources that are distributed across multiple Availability Zones are AWS services and features that will improve availability and reduce the impact of failures for the web application. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is a service that enables users to automatically adjust the number of Amazon EC2 instances in response to changes in demand or performance. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps users to maintain optimal availability and performance of their applications by adding or removing instances as needed. Resources that are distributed across multiple Availability Zones are AWS features that enable users to increase the fault tolerance and resilience of their applications. Availability Zones are isolated locations within an AWS Region that have independent power, cooling, and networking. Users can launch their resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, in multiple Availability Zones to protect their applications from the failure of a single location. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services and features that will improve availability and reduce the impact of failures for the web application. VPC subnet ACLs are AWS features that enable users to control the inbound and outbound traffic to and from their subnets within a VPC. VPC subnet ACLs do not check the health of a service, but rather filter the network traffic based on rules. Configuration of AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS) is an AWS service that enables users to migrate their on-premises servers to AWS. Configuration of AWS SMS does not help to move the Amazon EC2 instances to a different AWS Region, but rather to migrate the servers from the source environment to AWS. Resources that are distributed across multiple AWS points of presence are AWS features that enable users to deliver content to their end users with low latency and high performance. AWS points of presence are edge locations that are part of the AWS Global Infrastructure. Users can use services such as Amazon CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator to distribute their content across multiple AWS points of presence. Reference: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, [Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones]

 AWS CloudTrail is the service that will provide the information about the last time that a specific user accessed the AWS Management Console. AWS CloudTrail is a service that records the API calls and events made by or on behalf of your AWS account. You can use AWS CloudTrail to view, search, and download the history of AWS console sign-in events, which include the user name, date, time, source IP address, and other details of the sign-in activity. Amazon Cognito, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon GuardDuty are not services that will provide this information. Amazon Cognito is a service that provides user authentication and authorization for web and mobile applications. Amazon Inspector is a service that assesses the security and compliance of your applications running on AWS. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that monitors your AWS account and workloads for malicious or unauthorized activity.

 The AWS services or features that can control VPC traffic are security groups and network ACLs. Security groups are stateful firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. You can assign one or more security groups to each instance in a VPC, and specify the rules that allow or deny traffic based on the protocol, port, and source or destination. Network ACLs are stateless firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level. You can associate one network ACL with each subnet in a VPC, and specify the rules that allow or deny traffic based on the protocol, port, and source or destination. AWS Direct Connect, Amazon GuardDuty, and Amazon Connect are not services or features that can control VPC traffic. AWS Direct Connect is a service that establishes a dedicated network connection between your premises and AWS. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that monitors your AWS account and workloads for malicious or unauthorized activity. Amazon Connect is a service that provides a cloud-based contact center solution.

The correct answer to the question is D because AWS Trusted Advisor is an AWS service that can be used to accomplish the goal of identifying any security group that is allowing unrestricted incoming SSH traffic. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides customers with recommendations that help them follow AWS best practices. Trusted Advisor evaluates the customer’s AWS environment and identifies ways to optimize their AWS infrastructure, improve security and performance, reduce costs, and monitor service quotas. One of the checks that Trusted Advisor performs is the Security Groups - Specific Ports Unrestricted check, which flags security groups that allow unrestricted access to specific ports, such as port 22 for SSH. Customers can use this check to review and modify their security group rules to restrict SSH access to only authorized sources. Reference: Security Groups - Specific Ports Unrestricted

The correct answer is A because Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a service that will help the company deploy the application without investing in backend infrastructure or high end client hardware. Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed, secure application streaming service that allows customers to stream desktop applications from AWS to any device running a web browser. Amazon AppStream 2.0 handles the provisioning, scaling, patching, and maintenance of the backend infrastructure, and delivers high performance and responsive user experience. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that will help the company deploy the application without investing in backend infrastructure or high end client hardware. AWS AppSync is a service that enables customers to create flexible APIs for synchronizing data across multiple data sources. Amazon WorkLink is a service that enables customers to provide secure, one-click access to internal websites and web apps from mobile devices. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a service that enables customers to deploy and manage web applications using popular platforms such as Java, .NET, PHP, and Node.js. Reference: [Amazon AppStream 2.0 FAQs]

An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a deployable Amazon EC2 instance template that is prepackaged with software and security requirements. It provides the information required to launch an instance, which is a virtual server in the cloud. You can use an AMI to launch as many instances as you need. You can also create your own custom AMIs or use AMIs shared by other AWS users1.

The correct answers are A and B because Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS are AWS services that the company could use for the relational databases. Amazon Aurora is a relational database that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Amazon Aurora is a fully managed, scalable, and high-performance service that offers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL and up to three times the throughput of standard PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS is a service that enables users to set up, operate, and scale relational databases in the cloud. Amazon RDS supports six popular database engines: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MariaDB, and Amazon Aurora. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that the company could use for the relational databases. Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a document database that is compatible with MongoDB. Amazon Neptune is a graph database that supports property graph and RDF models. Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database. Reference: Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS

Some of the advantages of using Amazon EC2 instances to host applications in the AWS Cloud instead of on premises are:

EC2 integrates with Amazon VPC, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). Amazon VPC lets you provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. AWS CloudTrail enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. AWS IAM enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about Amazon EC2 and its integration with other AWS services

EC2 has a flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing model. You only pay for the compute capacity you use, and you can scale up and down as needed. You can also choose from different pricing options, such as On-Demand, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and Spot Instances, to optimize your costs. Therefore, the correct answer is D. You can learn more about Amazon EC2 pricing

The other options are incorrect because:

EC2 does not include operating system patch management. You are responsible for managing and maintaining your own operating systems on EC2 instances. You can use AWS Systems Manager to automate common maintenance tasks, such as applying patches, or use Amazon EC2 Image Builder to create and maintain secure images. Therefore, the incorrect answer is A.

EC2 does not have a 100% service level agreement (SLA). The EC2 SLA guarantees 99.99% availability for each EC2 Region, not for each individual instance. Therefore, the incorrect answer is C.

EC2 does not have automatic storage cost optimization. You are responsible for choosing the right storage option for your EC2 instances, such as Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) or Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), and monitoring and optimizing your storage costs. You can use AWS Cost Explorer or AWS Trusted Advisor to analyze and reduce your storage spending. Therefore, the incorrect answer is E.

The user authentication services managed by AWS are: Amazon Cognito and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). These services help users securely manage and control access to their AWS resources and applications. Amazon Cognito is a service that provides user sign-up, sign-in, and access control for web and mobile applications. Amazon Cognito supports various identity providers, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, as well as custom user pools. AWS IAM is a service that enables users to create and manage users, groups, roles, and permissions for AWS services and resources. AWS IAM supports various authentication methods, such as passwords, access keys, and multi-factor authentication (MFA)

 AWS offers different support plans to meet the needs of different customers. The AWS Enterprise Support plan is the highest level of support that provides customers with concierge-like service, where the main focus is helping them achieve their outcomes and find success in the cloud. One of the benefits of the AWS Enterprise Support plan is that customers get designated support from an AWS technical account manager (TAM), who provides consultative architectural and operational guidance based on their applications and use cases. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about AWS support plans and their benefits .

 Amazon Personalize is a fully managed machine learning service that customers can use to generate personalized recommendations for their users. It can also generate user segments based on the users’ affinity for certain items or item metadata. Amazon Personalize uses the customers’ data to train and deploy custom recommendation models that can be integrated into their applications. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about Amazon Personalize and its use case.

AWS Pricing Calculator is a web-based planning tool that customers can use to create estimates for their AWS use cases. They can use it to model their solutions before building them, explore the AWS service price points, and review the calculations behind their estimates. Therefore, the correct answer is A. You can learn more about AWS Pricing Calculator and how it works.

The correct answer is A because Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value database that provides sub-millisecond latency on a large scale. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, and scalable NoSQL database service that supports both key-value and document data models. The other options are incorrect because they are not key-value databases. Amazon Aurora is a relational database that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a document database that is compatible with MongoDB. Amazon Neptune is a graph database that supports property graph and RDF models. Reference: Amazon DynamoDB FAQs

 Availability Zones contain multiple data centers. This is a characteristic of the AWS global infrastructure, which consists of AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations. AWS Regions are geographically isolated areas that contain multiple Availability Zones. Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be isolated from failures and connected by low-latency, high-throughput, and highly redundant networking. Each Availability Zone contains one or more data centers that house the servers and storage devices that run AWS services. Edge locations are sites that are located closer to the end users and provide caching and content delivery services. AWS Global InfrastructureAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

 EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (EFS Standard-IA) is the storage class that meets the requirements of storing data across multiple Availability Zones in an AWS Region, that will not be accessed regularly but must be immediately retrievable, most cost-effectively. EFS Standard-IA is designed for files that are accessed less frequently, but still require the same high performance, low latency, and high availability as EFS Standard. EFS Standard-IA has a lower storage cost than EFS Standard, but charges a small additional fee for each access. EFS One Zone and EFS One Zone-IA store data in a single Availability Zone, which reduces the availability and durability compared to EFS Standard and EFS Standard-IA.

The design principles for reliability in the AWS Cloud are:

Test recovery procedures. The best way to ensure that systems can recover from failures is to regularly test them using simulated scenarios. This can help identify gaps and improve the recovery process.

Automatically recover from failure. By using automation, systems can detect and correct failures without human intervention. This can reduce the impact and duration of failures and improve the availability of the system.

Scale horizontally to increase aggregate system availability. By adding more redundant resources to the system, the impact of individual resource failures can be reduced. This can also improve the performance and scalability of the system.

Stop guessing capacity. By using monitoring and automation, systems can adjust the capacity based on the demand and performance metrics. This can prevent failures due to insufficient or excessive capacity and optimize the cost and efficiency of the system.

Manage change in automation. By using automation, changes to the system can be applied in a consistent and controlled manner. This can reduce the risk of human errors and configuration drifts that can cause failures. AWS Well-Architected Framework

Amazon Lightsail is an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers you everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan. Whether you’re new to the cloud or looking to get on the cloud quickly with AWS infrastructure you trust, we’ve got you covered. Lightsail provides the simplest way for the company to establish a website on AWS.

A benefit of decoupling an AWS Cloud architecture is the ability to upgrade components independently. Decoupling is a way of designing systems to reduce interdependencies and minimize the impact of changes. Decoupling allows components to interact with each other through well-defined interfaces, rather than direct references. This reduces the risk of failures and errors propagating across the system, and enables greater scalability, availability, and maintainability. By decoupling an AWS Cloud architecture, the user can upgrade or modify one component without affecting the other components5.

 The correct answer is D because cost allocation tags are a way to track the infrastructure costs for each of the projects separately. Cost allocation tags are key-value pairs that can be attached to AWS resources, such as EC2 instances, and used to categorize and group them for billing purposes. The other options are incorrect because they do not meet the requirements of the question. Use a different EC2 instance type for each project does not help to track the costs for each project, and may impact the performance and compatibility of the applications. Publish project-specific custom Amazon CloudWatch metrics for each application does not help to track the costs for each project, and may incur additional charges for using CloudWatch. Deploy EC2 instances for each project in a separate AWS account does help to track the costs for each project, but it impacts the existing infrastructure and incurs additional charges for using multiple accounts. Reference: Using Cost Allocation Tags

AWS Well-Architected Framework promotes AWS Cloud architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems. AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of guidelines and best practices that help the user to evaluate and improve the architecture of their applications and workloads on AWS. AWS Well-Architected Framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. Each pillar provides a set of design principles, questions, and best practices that help the user to achieve the desired outcomes for their systems.

Amazon S3 is the AWS service that provides highly durable object storage. Amazon S3 is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year. This means that you can store your data with high confidence that it will not be lost. Amazon S3 also provides high availability, scalability, security, and performance for your data. You can use Amazon S3 to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web5.

 The correct answer is B because AWS IAM policies can be used to control administrative access to the Amazon RDS service. The other options are incorrect because they are the responsibilities of AWS, not the company that is using Amazon RDS. AWS manages the provisioning, cabling, installation, and patching of the underlying infrastructure for Amazon RDS. Reference: Amazon RDS FAQs

 One of the cost efficiency principles related to the AWS Cloud is to right-size services based on capacity requirements. This means choosing the most appropriate type and size of AWS resources to meet the performance and scalability needs of the applications, while avoiding over-provisioning or under-provisioning. By right-sizing services, users can optimize the costs and benefits of using the AWS Cloud1

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a service that provides fully managed pub/sub messaging. Pub/sub messaging is a pattern that uses a combination of publishers and subscribers. Publishers are entities that produce messages and send them to topics. Subscribers are entities that receive messages from topics. Topics are logical access points that act as communication channels between publishers and subscribers. Amazon SNS enables applications to decouple, scale, and coordinate the delivery of messages to multiple endpoints, such as email, SMS, mobile push notifications, Lambda functions, SQS queues, and HTTP/S endpoints. Amazon SNS OverviewAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

 The correct answers are C and D because S3 bucket policies and IAM user policies are AWS features that will meet the requirements. S3 bucket policies are access policies that can be attached to Amazon S3 buckets to grant or deny permissions to the bucket and the objects it contains. S3 bucket policies can be used to control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. IAM user policies are access policies that can be attached to IAM users to grant or deny permissions to AWS resources and actions. IAM user policies can be used to control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS features that will meet the requirements. Security groups and network ACLs are AWS features that act as firewalls to control inbound and outbound traffic to and from Amazon EC2 instances and subnets. Security groups and network ACLs do not control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. S3 bucket versioning is an AWS feature that enables users to keep multiple versions of the same object in the same bucket. S3 bucket versioning can be used to recover from accidental overwrites or deletions of objects, but it does not control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. Reference: Using Bucket Policies and User Policies, Security Groups for Your VPC, Network ACLs, [Using Versioning]

Amazon Kendra is a service that provides a highly accurate and easy-to-use enterprise search service that is powered by machine learning. Kendra delivers powerful natural language search capabilities to your websites and applications so your end users can more easily find the information they need within the vast amount of content spread across your company. Amazon SageMaker is a service that provides a fully managed platform for data scientists and developers to quickly and easily build, train, and deploy machine learning models at any scale. Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I) is a service that makes it easy to build the workflows required for human review of ML predictions. Amazon A2I brings human review to all developers, removing the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with building human review systems or managing large numbers of human reviewers. Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. None of these services provide an enterprise search service that is powered by machine learning.

 AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection3.

B is correct because AWS Enterprise Support is the AWS Support plan that provides concierge service, a designated AWS technical account manager (TAM), and technical support that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This plan is designed for customers who run mission-critical workloads on AWS and need the highest level of support. A is incorrect because AWS Basic Support is the AWS Support plan that provides customer service and support for billing and account issues, service limit increases, and technical support for a limited set of AWS services. It does not provide concierge service, a designated TAM, or 24/7 technical support. C is incorrect because AWS Business Support is the AWS Support plan that provides customer service and support for billing and account issues, service limit increases, and technical support for all AWS services, as well as access to AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Support API. It does not provide concierge service or a designated TAM. D is incorrect because AWS Developer Support is the AWS Support plan that provides customer service and support for billing and account issues, service limit increases, and technical support for all AWS services, as well as access to AWS Trusted Advisor. It does not provide concierge service, a designated TAM, or 24/7 technical support.

Amazon Route 53 is the AWS service that provides DNS resolution. DNS (Domain Name System) is a service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud DNS service that offers domain name registration, DNS routing, and health checking. Amazon Route 53 can route the traffic to various AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Amazon CloudFront. Amazon Route 53 can also integrate with other AWS services, such as AWS Certificate Manager, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF. For more information, see [What is Amazon Route 53?] and [Amazon Route 53 Features].

 D is correct because security groups are the AWS service or feature that can be used to control inbound and outbound traffic on an Amazon EC2 instance. Security groups act as a virtual firewall for the EC2 instance, allowing users to specify which protocols, ports, and source or destination IP addresses are allowed or denied. A is incorrect because internet gateways are the AWS service or feature that enable communication between instances in a VPC and the internet. They do not control the traffic on an EC2 instance. B is incorrect because AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the AWS service or feature that enables users to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. It does not control the traffic on an EC2 instance. C is incorrect because network ACLs are the AWS service or feature that provide an optional layer of security for the VPC that acts as a firewall for controlling traffic in and out of one or more subnets. They do not control the traffic on an EC2 instance.

 Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail are the AWS services that allow users to monitor and retain records of account activities that include governance, compliance, and auditing. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that collects and tracks metrics, collects and monitors log files, and sets alarms. AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF are AWS services that provide security and protection for AWS resources, but they do not monitor and retain records of account activities. These concepts are explained in the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course3.

The company follows the AWS Cloud design principle of ensuring traceability by using AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail is a service that records the API calls and events made by or on behalf of the AWS account. The company can use AWS CloudTrail to monitor, audit, and analyze the activity and changes in their AWS resources and applications. AWS CloudTrail helps the company to achieve compliance, security, governance, and operational efficiency. Recovering automatically, performing operations as code, and measuring efficiency are other AWS Cloud design principles, but they are not directly related to using AWS CloudTrail. Recovering automatically means that the company can design their cloud workloads to handle failures gracefully and resume normal operations without manual intervention. Performing operations as code means that the company can automate the creation, configuration, and management of their cloud resources using scripts or templates. Measuring efficiency means that the company can monitor and optimize the performance and utilization of their cloud resources and applications34

 Operations is an option that is a perspective that includes foundational capabilities of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). Operations is one of the six perspectives of the AWS CAF, along with business, people, governance, platform, and security. Operations focuses on the processes and procedures to support the ongoing management and maintenance of the cloud-based IT assets. It covers topics such as monitoring, backup and recovery, change management, incident management, and automation5. Sustainability is not a perspective of the AWS CAF, but a concept that refers to the ability of a system to operate in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible manner. Performance efficiency is not a perspective of the AWS CAF, but a pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It focuses on using the right resources and services for the workload, monitoring performance, and continuously improving the efficiency of the solution. Reliability is not a perspective of the AWS CAF, but a pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It focuses on the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues.

AWS Secrets Manager is an AWS service that can be used to securely store and encrypt passwords for a database. It allows users to manage secrets, such as database credentials, API keys, and tokens, in a centralized and secure way. It also provides features such as automatic rotation, fine-grained access control, and auditing. AWS Shield is an AWS service that provides protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for AWS resources and services. It does not store or encrypt passwords for a database. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that allows users to manage access to AWS resources and services. It can be used to create users, groups, roles, and policies that control who can do what in AWS. It does not store or encrypt passwords for a database. Amazon Cognito is an AWS service that provides user identity and data synchronization for web and mobile applications. It can be used to authenticate and authorize users, manage user profiles, and sync user data across devices. It does not store or encrypt passwords for a database.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that allows users to manage access to AWS resources and services. It enables users to create and manage users, groups, roles, and policies that control who can do what in AWS. IAM is always free of charge for users, as there is no additional cost for using IAM with any AWS service1. Amazon S3 is a storage service that provides scalable, durable, and secure object storage. Amazon S3 has a free tier that offers 5 GB of storage, 20,000 GET requests, and 2,000 PUT requests per month for one year. However, users are charged for any additional usage beyond the free tier limits2. Amazon Aurora is a relational database service that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Amazon Aurora has a free tier that offers 750 hours of Aurora Single-AZ db.t2.small database usage and 20 GB of storage per month for one year. However, users are charged for any additional usage beyond the free tier limits3. Amazon EC2 is a compute service that provides resizable virtual servers. Amazon EC2 has a free tier that offers 750 hours of Linux and Windows t2.micro instances per month for one year. However, users are charged for any additional usage beyond the free tier limits4.

 According to the AWS shared responsibility model, the customer is responsible for configuring logical access controls for resources, and protecting account credentials. This includes managing IAM user permissions, security group rules, network ACLs, encryption keys, and other aspects of access management1. AWS is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud, such as the hardware, software, networking, and facilities. AWS is also responsible for configuring the security used by managed services, such as Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Aurora2.

Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is the option that the company can use during the launch process to configure the root volume of the EC2 instance. An AMI is a template that contains the software configuration, such as the operating system, applications, and settings, required to launch an EC2 instance. An AMI also specifies the volume size and type of the root device for the instance. The company can choose an AMI provided by AWS, the AWS Marketplace, or the AWS community, or create a custom AMI. For more information, see [Amazon Machine Images (AMI)] and [Launching an Instance Using the Launch Instance Wizard].

 AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is a capability that allows users to automate the security updates for their operating systems and applications. It enables users to scan their instances for missing patches, define patch baselines, schedule patching windows, and monitor patch compliance. It supports Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon Lightsail instances, and on-premises servers. AWS Shield is a service that provides protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for AWS resources and services. It does not automate the security updates for operating systems and applications. Connecting to each server by using a remote desktop connection and running an update script is a manual and time-consuming solution that requires a lot of operational effort. It is not a recommended best practice for automating the security updates for operating systems and applications. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for AWS accounts and resources. It does not automate the security updates for operating systems and applications.

To maximize sustainability and minimize environmental impact, a company should apply the following design principles to AWS Cloud workloads: maximize utilization of Amazon EC2 instances and reduce the need for users to reinstall applications. Maximizing utilization of Amazon EC2 instances means that the company can optimize the performance and efficiency of their compute resources, and avoid wasting energy and money on idle or underutilized instances. The company can use features such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, and AWS Compute Optimizer to automatically adjust the number and type of instances based on demand, cost, and performance. Reducing the need for users to reinstall applications means that the company can minimize the amount of data and bandwidth required to deliver their applications to users, and avoid unnecessary downloads and updates that consume energy and resources. The company can use services such as Amazon CloudFront, AWS AppStream 2.0, and AWS Amplify to deliver their applications faster, more securely, and more efficiently to users across the globe. Minimizing utilization of Amazon EC2 instances, minimizing usage of managed services, and forcing frequent application reinstallations by users are not design principles that would maximize sustainability and minimize environmental impact. Minimizing utilization of Amazon EC2 instances would reduce the performance and efficiency of the compute resources, and potentially increase the costs and complexity of the cloud workloads. Minimizing usage of managed services would increase the operational overhead and responsibility of the company, and potentially expose them to more security and reliability risks. Forcing frequent application reinstallations by users would increase the amount of data and bandwidth required to deliver the applications to users, and potentially degrade the user experience and satisfaction.

AWS Snowball Edge is a service that provides a physical device that can store up to 100 TB of data and perform local data processing on premises. It enables users to transfer data to and from the AWS Cloud in areas with limited or no internet connectivity. It also supports AWS Greengrass, which allows users to run AWS Lambda functions and other AWS services locally without a stable internet connection. Amazon S3 is a storage service that provides scalable, durable, and secure object storage. It requires a stable internet connection to transfer data to and from the AWS Cloud. AWS Storage Gateway is a service that provides a hybrid storage solution that connects on-premises applications to AWS Cloud storage services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Glacier, and Amazon EBS. It requires a stable internet connection to synchronize data between the on-premises and cloud storage. AWS Backup is a service that provides a centralized and automated solution to back up data across AWS services and on-premises resources. It requires a stable internet connection to transfer data to and from the AWS Cloud.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources for your users. You use IAM to control who can use your AWS resources (authentication) and what resources they can use and in what ways (authorization). IAM is always available free of charge to users4.

Amazon EC2 M1 Mac instances are the AWS service or resource that the company should use for its iOS application development and build activities, as they enable users to run macOS on AWS and access a broad and growing set of AWS services. AWS CodeCommit is a service that provides a fully managed source control service that hosts secure Git-based repositories. AWS Amplify is a set of tools and services that enable developers to build full-stack web and mobile applications using AWS. AWS App Runner is a service that makes it easy for developers to quickly deploy containerized web applications and APIs. These concepts are explained in the AWS Developer Tools page4.

The architecture concept of the AWS Cloud that meets the requirements of the company that wants to migrate to the AWS Cloud and needs the ability to acquire and release resources as needed is elasticity. Elasticity means that AWS customers can quickly and easily provision and scale up or down AWS resources as their demand changes, without any upfront costs or long-term commitments. AWS provides various tools and services that enable customers to achieve elasticity, such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudFormation. Elasticity helps customers optimize their performance, availability, and cost efficiency. Availability, reliability, and durability are other architecture concepts of the AWS Cloud, but they are not directly related to the ability to acquire and release resources as needed. Availability means that AWS customers can access their AWS resources and applications whenever and wherever they need them. Reliability means that AWS customers can depend on their AWS resources and applications to function correctly and consistently. Durability means that AWS customers can preserve their data and objects for long periods of time without loss or corruption12

Rightsizing all the EC2 instances that are used in the deployment is the best way to run the workload in the most cost-effective way. Rightsizing means choosing the optimal instance type and size for the workload based on the performance and capacity requirements. Rightsizing helps to avoid over-provisioning or under-provisioning of the EC2 instances, which can result in wasted resources or poor performance. Rightsizing also helps to take advantage of the different pricing models and features that AWS offers, such as On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot Instances, and Auto Scaling. For more information, see Rightsizing Your Instances and [Cost Optimization with AWS].

 Performance efficiency is the pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that represents the requirements of designing a solution for the efficient use of compute resources for an enterprise workload and making informed decisions as the technology needs evolve. It focuses on using the right resources and services for the workload, monitoring performance, and continuously improving the efficiency of the solution. Operational excellence is the pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that represents the ability to run and monitor systems to deliver business value and to continually improve supporting processes and procedures. Cost optimization is the pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that represents the ability to run systems to deliver business value at the lowest price point. Reliability is the pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that represents the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues.

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. AWS Config can help you determine when an EBS volume was removed from an EC2 instance by providing a timeline of configuration changes and compliance status. AWS Trusted Advisor, Amazon Timestream, and Amazon QuickSight do not provide the same level of configuration tracking and auditing as AWS Config. Source: AWS Config

AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommended actions in five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service quotas. Cost optimization helps you reduce your overall AWS costs by identifying idle and underutilized resources. Service quotas helps you monitor and manage your usage of AWS service quotas and request quota increases. Operating system patches, repetitive tasks, and account activity records are not categories that AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommended actions for. Source: [AWS Trusted Advisor]

The AWS service that is used to temporarily provide federated security credentials to a user is AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS). AWS STS is a service that enables customers to request temporary, limited-privilege credentials for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users or for users that they authenticate (federated users). The company can use AWS STS to grant federated users access to AWS resources without creating permanent IAM users or sharing long-term credentials. AWS STS helps customers manage and secure access to their AWS resources for federated users. Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Secrets Manager, and AWS Certificate Manager are not the best services to use for this purpose. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior across the AWS accounts and resources. AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps customers manage and rotate secrets, such as database credentials, API keys, and passwords. AWS Certificate Manager is a service that helps customers provision, manage, and deploy public and private Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates for use with AWS services and internal connected resources. These services are more useful for different types of security and compliance tasks, rather than providing temporary federated security credentials to a user.

Under the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for ensuring the security of the internal network in the AWS data centers, as well as the physical security of the hardware and facilities that run AWS services. AWS customers are responsible for configuring the security group rules that determine which ports are open on an EC2 Linux instance, patching the guest operating system with the latest security patches on EC2, and turning on server-side encryption for S3 buckets. Source: AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Cost optimization is the pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that aligns with the requirements of not relying on elaborate forecasting and paying only for the resources that are used. The cost optimization pillar focuses on the ability of a system to deliver business value at the lowest price point. Cost optimization involves using the right AWS services and resources for the workload, measuring and monitoring the cost and usage, and continuously improving the cost efficiency. Cost optimization also leverages the benefits of the AWS Cloud, such as pay-as-you-go pricing, elasticity, and scalability. For more information, see [Cost Optimization Pillar] and [Cost Optimization].

 AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS Outposts enables you to run AWS services in your on-premises data center1.

 The perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) that connects technology and business is governance. The governance perspective focuses on the alignment of the IT strategy and processes with the business strategy and goals, as well as the management of the IT budget, risk, and compliance. The governance perspective capabilities are portfolio management, business performance management, and IT governance. The governance perspective helps organizations ensure that their cloud adoption delivers the expected business value and outcomes, and that their cloud solutions are secure, reliable, and compliant. Operations, people, and security are other perspectives of the AWS CAF, but they do not directly connect technology and business. The operations perspective focuses on the management and monitoring of the cloud resources and applications, as well as the automation and optimization of the operational processes. The people perspective focuses on the development and empowerment of the human resources, as well as the transformation of the organizational culture and structure. The security perspective focuses on the protection of the information assets and systems in the cloud, as well as the implementation of the security policies and controls.

 Patch management and configuration management are controls that are the responsibility of both AWS and AWS customers, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Patch management is the process of applying updates to software and applications to fix vulnerabilities, bugs, or performance issues. Configuration management is the process of defining and maintaining the settings and parameters of systems and applications to ensure their consistency and reliability. AWS is responsible for patching and configuring the software and services that it manages, such as the AWS global infrastructure, the hypervisor, and the AWS managed services. The customer is responsible for patching and configuring the software and services that they manage, such as the guest operating system, the applications, and the AWS customer-managed services. Physical and environmental controls are the responsibility of AWS, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Physical and environmental controls are the measures that protect the physical security and availability of the AWS global infrastructure, such as power, cooling, fire suppression, and access control. AWS is responsible for maintaining these controls and ensuring the resilience and reliability of the AWS Cloud. Account structures are the responsibility of the customer, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Account structures are the ways that customers organize and manage their AWS accounts and resources, such as using AWS Organizations, IAM users and roles, resource tagging, and billing preferences. The customer is responsible for creating and configuring these structures and ensuring the security and governance of their AWS environment. Choice of the AWS Region where data is stored is the responsibility of the customer, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. AWS Regions are geographic areas that consist of multiple isolated Availability Zones. Customers can choose which AWS Region to store their data and run their applications, depending on their latency, compliance, and cost requirements. The customer is responsible for selecting the appropriate AWS Region and ensuring the data sovereignty and regulatory compliance of their data.

 Spot Instances are instances that use spare EC2 capacity that is available for up to 90% off the On-Demand price. Because Spot Instances can be interrupted by EC2 with two minutes of notification when EC2 needs the capacity back, you can use them for applications that have flexible start and end times, or that can withstand interruptions5. This option is most cost-effective for the use case described in the question. Reserved Instances are instances that you purchase for a one-year or three-year term, and pay a lower hourly rate compared to On-Demand Instances. This option is suitable for applications that have steady state or predictable usage. Dedicated Instances are instances that run on hardware that’s dedicated to a single customer within an Amazon VPC. This option is suitable for applications that have stringent regulatory or compliance requirements. On-Demand Instances are instances that you pay for by the second, with no long-term commitments or upfront payments. This option is suitable for applications that have unpredictable or intermittent workloads.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is a service or tool that helps users migrate their applications to the AWS Cloud. It provides guidance and best practices to identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness. It also helps users align their business and technical perspectives, create an actionable roadmap, and measure their progress. AWS Managed Services (AMS) is a service that provides operational services for AWS infrastructure and applications. It helps users reduce their operational overhead and risk, and focus on their core business. It does not help users identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness. AWS Well-Architected Framework is a tool that helps users design and implement secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient solutions on AWS. It provides a set of questions and best practices across five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. It does not help users identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness. AWS Migration Hub is a service that provides a single location to track and manage the migration of applications to AWS. It helps users discover their on-premises servers, group them into applications, and choose the right migration tools. It does not help users identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness.

The AWS service that is designed to help users orchestrate a workflow process for a set of AWS Lambda functions is AWS Step Functions. AWS Step Functions is a service that helps users coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows that can be triggered by events, such as messages, API calls, or schedules. AWS Step Functions allows users to create and visualize complex workflows that can include branching, parallel execution, error handling, retries, and timeouts. AWS Step Functions can integrate with AWS Lambda to orchestrate a sequence of Lambda functions that perform different tasks or logic. Amazon DynamoDB, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS Batch are not the best services to use for orchestrating a workflow process for a set of AWS Lambda functions. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and consistent performance, scalability, and flexibility. AWS CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that helps users automate the release process of their applications. AWS Batch is a fully managed service that helps users run batch computing workloads on the AWS Cloud.

Compute Savings Plans are a flexible and cost-effective way to optimize long-term compute costs of AWS Lambda functions and Amazon EC2 instances. With Compute Savings Plans, customers can commit to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1-year or 3-year term and receive a discount of up to 66% compared to On-Demand prices3. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to the customer’s use. They are suitable for customers who have specific server-bound software licenses or compliance requirements4. Reserved Instances are a pricing model that provides a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand pricing and a capacity reservation for EC2 instances. They are available in 1-year or 3-year terms and different payment options5. Spot Instances are spare EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. They are suitable for customers who have flexible start and end times, can withstand interruptions, and can handle excess capacity.

 The AWS tool that will meet the requirements of the company that is planning a migration to the AWS Cloud and wants to examine the costs that are associated with different workloads is AWS Pricing Calculator. AWS Pricing Calculator is a tool that helps customers estimate the cost of using AWS services based on their requirements and preferences. The company can use AWS Pricing Calculator to compare the costs of different AWS services and configurations, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and more. AWS Pricing Calculator also provides detailed breakdowns of the cost components, such as compute, storage, network, and data transfer. AWS Pricing Calculator helps customers plan and optimize their cloud budget and migration strategy. AWS Budgets, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Cost and Usage Report are not the best tools to use for this purpose. AWS Budgets is a tool that helps customers monitor and manage their AWS spending and usage against predefined budget limits and thresholds. AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that helps customers analyze and visualize their AWS spending and usage trends over time. AWS Cost and Usage Report is a tool that helps customers access comprehensive and granular information about their AWS costs and usage in a CSV or Parquet file. These tools are more useful for tracking and optimizing the existing AWS costs and usage, rather than estimating the costs of different workloads34

 AWS Abuse team is the AWS group or team that the company should notify if it suspects that its AWS resources are being used for illegal activities. AWS Abuse team is a dedicated team that handles reports of abuse, such as spam, phishing, malware, denial-of-service attacks, and unauthorized access, involving AWS resources. The company can contact the AWS Abuse team by filling out the [Report Abuse of AWS Resources form] or sending an email to abuse@amazonaws.com. The company should provide as much information as possible, such as the source and destination IP addresses, timestamps, log files, and screenshots, to help the AWS Abuse team investigate and take appropriate actions. For more information, see [Reporting Abuse] and [AWS Acceptable Use Policy].

 Amazon DynamoDB is the AWS service that will meet the requirement of building an application that will receive millions of database queries each second. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and consistent performance, scalability, and durability. Amazon DynamoDB can handle any level of request traffic and automatically scale up or down the capacity based on the demand. Amazon DynamoDB also supports in-memory caching with Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) to improve the response time and reduce the cost. For more information, see What is Amazon DynamoDB? and Amazon DynamoDB Features.

 Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is the AWS storage service that should be used for an application that runs on multiple Amazon EC2 instances that access a shared file system simultaneously. Amazon EFS is a fully managed service that provides a scalable, elastic, and highly available file system for Linux-based workloads. Amazon EFS supports the Network File System version 4 (NFSv4) protocol and allows multiple EC2 instances to read and write data to the same file system concurrently. Amazon EFS also integrates with other AWS services, such as AWS Backup, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CloudTrail. For more information, see What is Amazon Elastic File System? and [Amazon EFS Use Cases].

 AWS Organizations is a service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage. With AWS Organizations, you can apply service control policies (SCPs) across multiple AWS accounts to restrict what services and actions users and roles can access. You can also use AWS Organizations to enable features such as consolidated billing, AWS Config rules and conformance packs, and AWS CloudFormation StackSets across multiple accounts3. One of the benefits of using AWS Organizations is that you can share your Reserved Instances (RIs) with all of the accounts in your organization. This enables you to take advantage of the billing benefits of RIs without having to specify which account will use them4. AWS Systems Manager is a service that gives you visibility and control of your infrastructure on AWS. Cost Explorer is a tool that enables you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. None of these services or tools can help you manage the AWS accounts for all the departments so that the departments can share the Reserved Instances.

 Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, all within a developer-friendly environment. CloudFront can cache web server content in edge locations, which are located closer to the end users, to improve the web service’s performance globally2.

AWS Outposts is a service that offers fully managed and configurable compute and storage racks built with AWS-designed hardware that allow you to run your workloads on premises and seamlessly connect to AWS services in the cloud. AWS Outposts is ideal for workloads that require low latency, local data processing, or local data storage. With AWS Outposts, you can use the same AWS APIs, tools, and infrastructure across on premises and the cloud to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience5. Availability Zones are isolated locations within each AWS Region that are engineered to be fault-tolerant and provide high availability. AWS Local Zones are extensions of AWS Regions that are placed closer to large population, industry, and IT centers where no AWS Region exists today. AWS Wavelength is a service that enables developers to build applications that deliver ultra-low latency to mobile devices and users by deploying AWS compute and storage at the edge of the 5G network. None of these services or features can help you host a critical application with minimum latency at a remote site that has a slow internet connection.

AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you protect access to your applications, services, and IT resources. This service enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle1. Amazon S3 is a storage service that does not offer automatic rotation of credentials. AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store is a service that provides secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets management2, but it does not offer automatic rotation of credentials. AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account3, but it does not store or rotate credentials.

 The AWS service or tool that provides recommendations to help users get rightsized Amazon EC2 instances based on historical workload usage data is AWS Compute Optimizer. AWS Compute Optimizer is a service that analyzes the configuration and performance of the AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, and provides recommendations for optimal resource types and sizes based on the workload patterns and metrics. AWS Compute Optimizer helps users improve the performance, availability, and cost efficiency of their AWS resources. AWS Pricing Calculator, AWS App Runner, and AWS Systems Manager are not the best services or tools to use for this purpose. AWS Pricing Calculator is a tool that helps users estimate the cost of using AWS services based on their requirements and preferences. AWS App Runner is a service that helps users easily and quickly deploy web applications and APIs without managing any infrastructure. AWS Systems Manager is a service that helps users automate and manage the configuration and operation of their AWS resources and applications34

Amazon RDS and Amazon EC2 are two AWS services that you can use to host and run a MySQL database. Amazon RDS is a service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. You can use Amazon RDS to launch a MySQL database instance and let Amazon RDS manage common database tasks such as backups, patching, scaling, and replication6. Amazon EC2 is a service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch a virtual server and install MySQL software on it. You have complete control over your database configuration, but you are responsible for managing and maintaining the database software and the underlying infrastructure7. Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ. None of these services can help you host and run a MySQL database.

A is correct because Amazon Lex is the AWS service that helps users build conversational interfaces into applications using voice and text. B is incorrect because Amazon Transcribe is the AWS service that helps users convert speech to text. C is incorrect because Amazon Comprehend is the AWS service that helps users analyze text using natural language processing. D is incorrect because Amazon Timestream is the AWS service that helps users collect, store, and process time series data.

 Global reach is the benefit of AWS Cloud computing that provides lower latency between users and applications. Global reach means that AWS customers can deploy their applications and data in multiple regions around the world, and deliver them to users with high performance and availability. AWS has the largest global infrastructure of any cloud provider, with 25 geographic regions and 81 Availability Zones, as well as 216 Points of Presence in 84 cities across 42 countries. Customers can choose the optimal locations for their applications and data based on their business requirements, such as compliance, data sovereignty, and customer proximity. Agility, economies of scale, and pay-as-you-go pricing are other benefits of AWS Cloud computing, but they do not directly provide lower latency between users and applications. Agility means that AWS customers can quickly and easily provision and scale up or down AWS resources as needed, without upfront costs or long-term commitments. Economies of scale means that AWS customers can benefit from the lower costs and higher efficiency that AWS achieves by operating at a massive scale and passing the savings to the customers. Pay-as-you-go pricing means that AWS customers only pay for the AWS resources they use, without any upfront costs or long-term contracts.

 The combination of AWS services that the application can use to migrate to a microservices-based application are Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and AWS Lambda. Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queuing service that enables customers to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. The application can use Amazon SQS to send, store, and receive messages between the microservices, ensuring that each message is processed only once and in the right order. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows customers to run code without provisioning or managing servers. The application can use AWS Lambda to create and deploy microservices as functions that are triggered by events, such as messages from Amazon SQS. AWS Migration Hub, AWS AppSync, and AWS Application Migration Service are not the best services to use for migrating to a microservices-based application. AWS Migration Hub is a service that provides a single location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions. AWS AppSync is a service that simplifies the development of GraphQL APIs for real-time and offline data synchronization. AWS Application Migration Service is a service that enables customers to migrate their on-premises applications to AWS without making any changes to the applications, servers, or databases.

 AWS Config and service control policies (SCPs) are AWS services or features that the company can use to create and define controls (guardrails) in a newly created AWS Control Tower landing zone. AWS Config is a service that enables users to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of their AWS resources. It can be used to create rules that check for compliance with the desired configurations and report any deviations. AWS Control Tower provides a set of predefined AWS Config rules that can be enabled as guardrails to enforce compliance across the landing zone1. Service control policies (SCPs) are a type of policy that can be used to manage permissions in AWS Organizations. They can be used to restrict the actions that the users and roles in the member accounts can perform on the AWS resources. AWS Control Tower provides a set of predefined SCPs that can be enabled as guardrails to prevent access to certain services or regions across the landing zone2. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for AWS accounts and resources. It is not a feature that can be used to create and define controls (guardrails) in a landing zone. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that allows users to manage access to AWS resources and services. It can be used to create users, groups, roles, and policies that control who can do what in AWS. It is not a feature that can be used to create and define controls (guardrails) in a landing zone. Security groups are virtual firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic for Amazon EC2 instances. They can be used to allow or deny access to an EC2 instance based on the port, protocol, and source or destination. They are not a feature that can be used to create and define controls (guardrails) in a landing zone.

The company should deploy the EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones to design a highly available application. Availability Zones are isolated locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be fault-tolerant and operate independently of each other. By deploying the EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones, the company can ensure that their application can withstand the failure of an entire Availability Zone and continue to operate with minimal disruption. Deploying the EC2 instances across multiple edge locations, VPCs, or AWS accounts will not provide the same level of availability and fault tolerance as Availability Zones. Edge locations are part of the Amazon CloudFront service, which is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches and serves web content to users. VPCs are virtual networks that isolate the AWS resources within an AWS Region. AWS accounts are the primary units of ownership and access control for AWS resources12

 AWS Shield Standard is a service that provides protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for all AWS customers at no additional charge. It automatically detects and mitigates the most common and frequently occurring network and transport layer DDoS attacks that target AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancers, Amazon CloudFront distributions, and Amazon Route 53 hosted zones. AWS Firewall Manager is a service that allows users to centrally configure and manage firewall rules across their AWS accounts and resources, such as AWS WAF web ACLs, AWS Shield Advanced protections, and Amazon VPC security groups. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and bot attacks. Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. It analyzes the behavior of the applications and checks for vulnerabilities, exposures, and deviations from best practices.

 A is correct because Amazon RDS is the AWS service that provides a managed relational database service that supports various database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server. B is incorrect because Amazon Redshift is the AWS service that provides a managed data warehouse service that is optimized for analytical queries. C is incorrect because Amazon ElastiCache is the AWS service that provides a managed in-memory data store service that supports Redis and Memcached. D is incorrect because Amazon Neptune is the AWS service that provides a managed graph database service that supports property graph and RDF models.

The company should use the AWS Billing console to access a report about the estimated environmental impact of the company’s AWS usage. The AWS Billing console provides customers with various tools and reports to manage and monitor their AWS costs and usage. One of the reports available in the AWS Billing console is the AWS Sustainability Dashboard, which shows the estimated carbon footprint and energy mix of the customer’s AWS usage. The company can use this dashboard to measure and improve the sustainability of their cloud workloads. AWS Organizations, IAM policy, and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) are not services or features that can provide a report about the estimated environmental impact of the company’s AWS usage. AWS Organizations is a service that enables customers to centrally manage and govern their AWS accounts. IAM policy is a document that defines the permissions for an IAM identity (user, group, or role) or an AWS resource. Amazon SNS is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables customers to send messages to subscribers or other AWS services.

 C is correct because moving a workload from a local data center to an architecture that is distributed between the local data center and the AWS Cloud is an example of an on-premises to hybrid migration. A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud services with orchestration between the platforms. A is incorrect because on-premises to cloud native migration is the process of moving a workload from a local data center to an architecture that is fully hosted and managed on the AWS Cloud. B is incorrect because hybrid to cloud native migration is the process of moving a workload from an architecture that is distributed between the local data center and the AWS Cloud to an architecture that is fully hosted and managed on the AWS Cloud. D is incorrect because cloud native to hybrid migration is the process of moving a workload from an architecture that is fully hosted and managed on the AWS Cloud to an architecture that is distributed between the local data center and the AWS Cloud.

Reliability is the benefit of AWS Cloud computing that ensures the workload performs consistently and correctly. According to the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course, reliability means "the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues."1 Elasticity, security, and pay-as-you-go pricing are also benefits of AWS Cloud computing, but they do not directly relate to the goal of consistent and correct performance.

AWS Artifact is the AWS service or tool that provides on-demand access to AWS security and compliance reports and AWS online agreements. AWS Trusted Advisor is a tool that provides real-time guidance to help users provision their resources following AWS best practices. Amazon Inspector is a service that helps users improve the security and compliance of their applications. AWS Billing console is a tool that helps users manage their AWS costs and usage. These concepts are explained in the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course3.

AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows you to model and provision your AWS and third-party application resources in a repeatable and predictable way. You can use AWS CloudFormation to create, update, and delete a collection of resources as a single unit, called a stack. You can also use AWS CloudFormation to manage your development and production environments in a consistent and efficient manner4.

 The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of decisions you make while building systems on AWS. By using the Framework, you will learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. The Framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization2.

AWS Pricing Calculator is the AWS service or tool that the company should use to estimate its future AWS service costs before the migration. AWS Pricing Calculator is a web-based tool that allows the company to create cost estimates for various AWS services and scenarios. AWS Pricing Calculator helps the company to compare the costs of running the workload on premises versus on AWS, and to optimize the costs by choosing the best options for the workload. AWS Pricing Calculator also provides a detailed breakdown of the cost components and a downloadable report. For more information, see [AWS Pricing Calculator] and [Getting Started with AWS Pricing Calculator].

The AWS service that will meet the requirements of the company that wants to create a chatbot and integrate the chatbot with its current web application is Amazon Lex. Amazon Lex is a service that helps customers build conversational interfaces using voice and text. The company can use Amazon Lex to create a chatbot that can understand natural language and respond to user requests, using the same deep learning technologies that power Amazon Alexa. Amazon Lex also provides easy integration with other AWS services, such as Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Polly, and AWS Lambda, as well as popular platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Twilio. Amazon Lex helps customers create engaging and interactive chatbots for their web applications. Amazon Kendra, Amazon Textract, and Amazon Polly are not the best services to use for this purpose. Amazon Kendra is a service that helps customers provide accurate and natural answers to natural language queries using machine learning. Amazon Textract is a service that helps customers extract text and data from scanned documents using optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning. Amazon Polly is a service that helps customers convert text into lifelike speech using deep learning. These services are more useful for different types of natural language processing and generation tasks, rather than creating and integrating chatbots.

 Basing the selection of Amazon EC2 instance types on past utilization patterns is a way to right size the AWS resources and optimize the performance and cost. Using Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies to move objects that users access infrequently to lower-cost storage tiers is another way to reduce the storage costs and align them with the business value of the data. These two actions are recommended by the AWS Cost Optimization Pillar1. Switching from Amazon RDS to Amazon DynamoDB is not necessarily a cost-saving action, as it depends on the use case and the data model. Using Multi-AZ deployments for Amazon RDS is a way to improve the availability and durability of the database, but it also increases the cost. Replacing existing Amazon EC2 instances with AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a way to simplify the deployment and management of the application, but it does not affect the cost of the underlying EC2 instances.

Provisioning additional EC2 instances in other Availability Zones is a way to make the application highly available, as it reduces the impact of failures and increases fault tolerance. Configuring an Application Load Balancer and assigning the EC2 instance as the ALB’s target is a way to distribute traffic among multiple instances, but it does not make the application highly available if there is only one instance. Using an Amazon Machine Image to create the EC2 instance is a way to launch a virtual server with a preconfigured operating system and software, but it does not make the application highly available by itself. Provisioning the application by using an EC2 Spot Instance is a way to use spare EC2 capacity at up to 90% off the On-Demand price, but it does not make the application highly available, as Spot Instances can be interrupted by EC2 with a two-minute notification.

To meet the goals for sustainability impact, the company should follow the best practices of scaling infrastructure with user load and eliminating creation and maintenance of unused assets. Scaling infrastructure with user load means adjusting the capacity of the infrastructure to match the demand of the users, which can reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the system. Eliminating creation and maintenance of unused assets means avoiding the waste of resources and money on assets that are not needed or used, which can also improve the environmental and economic efficiency of the system3.

Amazon ElastiCache is a service that offers fully managed in-memory data store and cache services that deliver sub-millisecond response times to applications. You can use Amazon ElastiCache to improve the performance of your applications by retrieving data from fast, managed, in-memory data stores, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. Amazon Aurora is a relational database service that combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Amazon RDS is a service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. None of these services are in-memory data store services.

AWS customer carbon footprint tool is an AWS service or tool that helps companies measure the environmental impact of their AWS usage. It allows users to estimate the carbon emissions associated with their AWS resources and services, such as EC2, S3, and Lambda. It also provides recommendations and best practices to reduce the carbon footprint and improve the sustainability of their AWS workloads4. AWS Compute Optimizer is an AWS service that helps users optimize the performance and cost of their EC2 instances and Auto Scaling groups. It provides recommendations for optimal instance types, sizes, and configurations based on the workload characteristics and utilization metrics. It does not help users measure the environmental impact of their AWS usage. Sustainability pillar is a concept that refers to the ability of a system to operate in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible manner. It is not an AWS service or tool that helps users measure the environmental impact of their AWS usage. OS-Climate (Open Source Climate Data Commons) is an initiative that aims to provide open source data, tools, and platforms to accelerate climate action and innovation. It is not an AWS service or tool that helps users measure the environmental impact of their AWS usage.

 AWS Regions are geographic areas around the world where AWS has clusters of data centers. Each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate AZ’s within a geographic area. By hosting the customer’s data in a specific AWS Region, the company can meet the requirement of hosting the data in the customer’s country. AWS Shield is a service that provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection. Amazon S3 Object Lock is a feature that allows you to store objects using a write-once-read-many (WORM) model. You can use it to prevent an object from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed amount of time or indefinitely. Placement groups are logical grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone. Placement groups enable applications to participate in a low-latency, 10 Gbps network. None of these services or infrastructure components can help the company host the customer’s data in a different country.

 Amazon CloudFront is the AWS service that offers a global content delivery network (CDN) that helps companies securely deliver websites, videos, applications, and APIs at high speeds with low latency. Amazon CloudFront is a web service that speeds up distribution of static and dynamic web content, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and image files, to users. Amazon CloudFront uses a global network of edge locations, located near users’ geographic locations, to cache and serve content with high availability and performance. Amazon CloudFront also provides features such as AWS Shield for DDoS protection, AWS Certificate Manager for SSL/TLS encryption, AWS WAF for web application firewall, and AWS Lambda@Edge for customizing content delivery with serverless code. Amazon EC2, Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudFormation are not services that offer a global CDN. Amazon EC2 is a service that provides scalable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that provides monitoring and observability for AWS resources and applications. AWS CloudFormation is a service that provides a common language to model and provision AWS resources and their dependencies.

 Consolidated billing is an AWS feature that allows users to combine the usage and costs of multiple AWS accounts into a single bill. This enables users to obtain billing discounts that are based on the company’s use of AWS services, such as volume pricing tiers, Reserved Instance discounts, and Savings Plans discounts5. Resource tagging is an AWS feature that allows users to assign metadata to AWS resources, such as EC2 instances, S3 buckets, and Lambda functions. This enables users to organize, track, and manage their AWS resources, such as filtering, grouping, and reporting. Pay-as-you-go pricing is an AWS pricing model that allows users to pay only for the resources and services they use, without any upfront or long-term commitments. This enables users to lower their costs by scaling up or down as needed, and avoiding over-provisioning or under-utilization. Spot Instances are spare EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. They are suitable for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch processing, data analysis, and testing. Spot Instances are allocated based on the current supply and demand, and can be reclaimed by AWS with a two-minute notice when the demand exceeds the supply.

AWS Shield Standard and AWS WAF are the AWS services or tools that are designed to protect a workload from SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and DDoS attacks. According to the AWS Shield Developer Guide, "AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection."5 According to the AWS WAF Developer Guide, “AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications or APIs against common web exploits that may affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF gives you control over how traffic reaches your applications by enabling you to create security rules that block common attack patterns, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting, and rules that filter out specific traffic patterns you define.” VPC endpoint, virtual private gateway, and AWS Config are not designed to protect a workload from these types of attacks.

Decoupling the components of an application means reducing the dependencies and interactions between them, which can improve the application’s reliability, scalability, and performance. Decoupling can be achieved by using services such as Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and AWS Lambda1

Deploying the application by using multiple Availability Zones is the best way to increase resilience for the application. According to the Amazon RDS User Guide, "Amazon RDS provides high availability and failover support for DB instances using Multi-AZ deployments. In a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. The primary DB instance is synchronously replicated across Availability Zones to a standby replica to provide data redundancy, eliminate I/O freezes, and minimize latency spikes during system backups."4 Deploying a copy of the application in another AWS account, using multiple VPCs, or using multiple subnets do not provide the same level of resilience as using multiple Availability Zones.

 Server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed encryption keys (SSE-S3) and server-side encryption with AWS KMS managed keys (SSE-KMS) are the encryption types that can be used to protect objects at rest in Amazon S3. Server-side encryption means that Amazon S3 encrypts the objects before saving them on disks and decrypts them when they are downloaded. SSE-S3 uses one master key per bucket that is managed by Amazon S3. SSE-KMS uses a customer master key (CMK) that is stored in AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and provides additional benefits, such as audit trails and key rotation. For more information, see Protecting Data Using Server-Side Encryption and Protecting Data Using Encryption.

The Envision phase of the cloud transformation journey is where the company defines its vision, business drivers, and desired outcomes for the cloud adoption. The company also identifies its capability gaps by using the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) perspectives, which are business, people, governance, platform, security, and operations2.

Amazon Textract is a service that automatically extracts text and data from scanned documents. Amazon Textract goes beyond simple optical character recognition (OCR) to also identify the contents of fields in forms and information stored in tables. Amazon Textract can analyze images of scanned financial invoices and extract the total balance amounts, as well as other relevant information, such as invoice number, date, vendor name, etc5.

The AWS service that will meet the requirements of the company that is hosting a web application on Amazon EC2 instances and wants to implement custom conditions to filter and control inbound web traffic is AWS WAF. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. The company can use AWS WAF to create custom rules that block malicious requests that match certain patterns, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting. AWS WAF can be applied to web applications that are behind an Application Load Balancer, Amazon CloudFront, or Amazon API Gateway. Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Macie, and AWS Shield are not the best services to use for this purpose. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior across the AWS accounts and resources. Amazon Macie is a data security and data privacy service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover, classify, and protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. AWS Shield is a managed distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards web applications running on AWS. These services are more useful for detecting and preventing different types of threats and attacks, rather than filtering and controlling inbound web traffic based on custom conditions.

AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS Outposts enables you to run AWS services in your on-premises data center, which can support the requirement of retaining certain data on-premises due to legal obligations5.

 Identity and access management is the customer’s responsibility, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. This means that the customer is responsible for managing user access to the AWS resources, using tools such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), and AWS Organizations. The customer is also responsible for securing their data in transit and at rest, using encryption, key management, and other methods. Hard drive initialization, protection of data center hardware, and security of Availability Zones are AWS’s responsibility, as they are part of the infrastructure, physical security, and network security that AWS provides to the customer12

 The AWS service that requires the customer to patch the guest operating system is Amazon EC2. Amazon EC2 is a service that provides scalable compute capacity in the cloud, and allows customers to launch and run virtual servers, called instances, with a variety of operating systems, configurations, and specifications. The customer is responsible for patching and updating the guest operating system and any applications that run on the EC2 instances, as part of the security in the cloud. AWS Lambda, Amazon OpenSearch Service, and Amazon ElastiCache are not services that require the customer to patch the guest operating system. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows customers to run code without provisioning or managing servers. Amazon OpenSearch Service is a fully managed service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale OpenSearch clusters in the AWS Cloud. Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed service that provides in-memory data store and cache solutions, such as Redis and Memcached. These services are managed by AWS, and AWS is responsible for patching and updating the underlying infrastructure and software.

AWS Service Catalog is a service that allows you to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS. You can use AWS Service Catalog to centrally manage commonly deployed IT services and help your organization achieve consistent governance and meet your compliance requirements, while enabling users to quickly deploy only the approved IT services they need1. AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS software development kits (SDKs) are tools that enable you to easily integrate your applications with AWS services using your preferred programming language. AWS AppSync is a service that simplifies application development by letting you create a flexible API to securely access, manipulate, and combine data from one or more data sources. None of these services can help you limit your employees’ AWS access to a portfolio of predefined AWS resources.

AWS Systems Manager is a service that enables users to centralize and automate the management of their AWS resources. It provides a unified user interface to view operational data, such as inventory, patch compliance, and performance metrics. It also allows users to automate common and repetitive tasks, such as patching, backup, and configuration management, across all of their Amazon EC2 instances1. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides best practices and recommendations to optimize the performance, security, and cost of AWS resources2. AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates the deployment of code and applications to Amazon EC2 instances or other compute services3. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a service that simplifies the deployment and management of web applications using popular platforms, such as Java, PHP, and Node.js4.

AWS Auto Scaling is the AWS service that allows users to optimize the number of EC2 instances based on the usage pattern, as it automatically adjusts the capacity to maintain steady and predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. Spot Instances are a way to reduce the cost of EC2 instances by bidding on unused EC2 capacity, but they are not suitable for applications that require steady and reliable performance. Reserved Instances are a way to reduce the cost of EC2 instances by committing to a certain amount of usage for a period of time, but they are not flexible to adjust to the usage pattern. AWS CloudFormation is a way to automate the creation and management of AWS resources, but it does not optimize the number of EC2 instances based on the usage pattern. These concepts are explained in the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course3.

Identity and access management is one of the foundational capabilities for the operations perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). It involves managing the identities, roles, permissions, and credentials of users and systems that interact with AWS resources. Performance and capacity management is a capability for the platform perspective. Application portfolio management is a capability for the business perspective. Product management is a capability for the governance perspective.

AWS customer carbon footprint tool is a tool that helps customers measure and manage their carbon emissions from their AWS usage. It provides data on the carbon intensity, energy consumption, and estimated emissions of AWS services across regions and time periods. It also enables customers to review and forecast their emissions, and compare them with industry benchmarks. AWS Health Dashboard is a service that provides personalized information about the health and performance of AWS services and resources. AWS Support Center is a service that provides access to AWS support resources, such as cases, forums, and documentation. Amazon QuickSight is a service that provides business intelligence and analytics for AWS data sources.

 The trade of infrastructure expenses for operating expenses is one of the benefits of the AWS Cloud. By moving to the AWS Cloud, the company can avoid the upfront costs of purchasing and maintaining on-premises infrastructure, such as servers, storage, network, and software. Instead, the company can pay only for the AWS resources and services that they use, as they use them. This reduces the risk and complexity of planning and managing IT infrastructure, and allows the company to focus on innovation and growth. Increased speed to market, massive economies of scale, and the ability to go global in minutes are also benefits of the AWS Cloud, but they are not the best ones to describe this scenario. Increased speed to market means that the company can launch new products and services faster by using AWS services and tools. Massive economies of scale means that the company can benefit from the lower costs and higher performance that AWS achieves by operating at a large scale. The ability to go global in minutes means that the company can deploy their applications and data in multiple regions and availability zones around the world to reach their customers faster and improve performance and reliability5

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, while customers are responsible for the security in the cloud. This means that AWS is responsible for the physical servers, networking, and operating system that run DynamoDB, while customers are responsible for the security of their data and access to the database. Customers need to manage database access permissions, such as creating and managing AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and roles, and using encryption and key management options to protect their data123. References: 1: Shared Responsibility Model - Amazon Web Services (AWS), 2: Security in Amazon DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB, 3: AWS Shared Responsibility Model - Introduction to DevOps …

Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility and help to reduce your costs by up to 66%. These plans automatically apply to EC2 instance usage regardless of instance family, size, AZ, Region, OS or tenancy, and also apply to Fargate or Lambda usage. For example, with Compute Savings Plans, you can change from C4 to M5 instances, shift a workload from EU (Ireland) to EU (London), or move a workload from EC2 to Fargate or Lambda at any time and automatically continue to pay the Savings Plans price.

https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/compute-pricing/

AWS IAM Identity Center provides centralized access management across multiple AWS accounts, enabling organizations to manage employee access efficiently. It is specifically designed for this purpose within AWS Organizations. AWS STS provides temporary credentials but does not manage multiple account access centrally, while IAM Access Analyzer and Secrets Manager serve different purposes related to access and secret management.

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that delivers real-time streaming data to destinations such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, and Splunk. You can use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to capture, transform, and load streaming data from multiple sources, such as web applications, mobile devices, IoT sensors, and social media.