SOA-C02 Questions and Answers

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

The default behavior of AWS CloudFormation when the creation of a resource fails is to roll back the stack and delete the stack.

Stack Creation Failure:

If any resource within the stack fails to create, CloudFormation rolls back the stack by deleting all the resources that were successfully created up to the point of failure.

This ensures that no partially created resources are left in the user's account.

Review the Events:

Open the CloudFormation console.

Select the stack and review the "Events" tab to identify the cause of the failure.

References:

AWS CloudFormation Stack Rollback

Troubleshooting AWS CloudFormation

For high-performance computing (HPC) applications that require minimized network latency and maximized network throughput, the best strategy is to use a cluster placement group. Here’s why:

Cluster Placement Group:

Instances in a cluster placement group are placed within a single Availability Zone, which allows them to communicate using high-bandwidth, low-latency connections.

This is ideal for HPC workloads that require high network throughput and low latency.

To configure integration with an external vendor and ensure that the vendor can use the AWS KMS key to encrypt the company's data in the vendor's AWS account, follow these steps:

Create a New KMS Key:

Navigate to the AWS KMS console.

Create a new KMS key that will be used to encrypt the data.

Specifying the capacity-optimized allocation strategy for Spot Instances and adding more instance types to the Auto Scaling group is the best action to meet the requirements. Increasing the size of the instances in the Auto Scaling group will not necessarily help with the launch time or reduce interruptions, as the Spot Instances could still be interrupted even with larger instance sizes.

To monitor and receive alerts when the EC2 instance service quota usage reaches 70% or more:

Service Quotas Console: Navigate to the Service Quotas console within AWS and identify the specific quota for EC2 instances.

Create a CloudWatch Alarm: Directly from the Service Quotas console, set up a CloudWatch alarm for the EC2 instance quota metric. Configure the alarm to trigger when the quota utilization reaches or exceeds 70%.

Notification Setup: Link this alarm to an Amazon SNS topic that will send a notification to relevant stakeholders or systems when the quota usage threshold is breached.

This method provides an automated, straightforward way to monitor resource limits and ensures that stakeholders are promptly notified, enabling them to take proactive measures to manage the quota and prevent service disruption.

To increase upload speeds into the S3 bucket from Europe and Australia, the SysOps administrator should use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration and multipart uploads. These methods are cost-effective and efficient.

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration:

This feature speeds up uploads by using the globally distributed edge locations of Amazon CloudFront. Data is routed to the closest edge location, which then forwards the data to the S3 bucket in the destination region.

This reduces latency and increases the upload speed for large files.

Multipart Uploads:

Multipart upload allows you to upload a single large object as a set of parts. Each part is independently uploaded and can be uploaded in parallel.

This method improves the upload efficiency and resiliency, especially for large files.

Configuration Steps:

Enable Transfer Acceleration on the S3 bucket through the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI.

Implement multipart upload in the application or scripts used for uploading files.

References:

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Multipart Upload Overview

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

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

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

Elastic Load Balancer.

How should a SysOps administrator meet these requirements?

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

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

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

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

Answer: D

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

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

To reconfigure the infrastructure to support a microservices approach with the least administrative overhead, using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with path-based routing is the most suitable solution.

Application Load Balancer (ALB):

ALBs are designed to distribute incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, in one or more Availability Zones.

ALBs support path-based routing, which allows you to route requests to different microservices based on the URL path.

Path-Based Routing:

With path-based routing, you can configure your ALB to route requests to specific target groups based on the URL path.

For example, requests to example.com/service1/* can be routed to one microservice, while requests to example.com/service2/* can be routed to another.

Implementation Steps:

Go to the EC2 console and navigate to "Load Balancers."

Create an ALB and configure the listener.

Define rules for path-based routing and create target groups for each microservice.

Register the appropriate EC2 instances with each target group.

References:

Application Load Balancers

ALB Path-Based Routing

To define a custom health check for EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB), follow these steps:

Configure Health Checks on ALB:

In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 dashboard, then to Load Balancers.

Select your ALB and go to the "Health Checks" tab.

Set the HealthCheckPath to the specific path that your application uses to determine if an instance is healthy. This could be a specific URL or endpoint on your application.

It's a best practice to use aws s3 commands (such as aws s3 cp) for multipart uploads and downloads, because these aws s3 commands automatically perform multipart uploading and downloading based on the file size. By comparison, aws s3api commands, such as aws s3api create-multipart-upload, should be used only when aws s3 commands don't support a specific upload need, such as when the multipart upload involves multiple servers, a multipart upload is manually stopped and resumed later, or when the aws s3 command doesn't support a required request parameter. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/s3-multipart-upload-cli/

"C" because Elastic Load Balancing provides access logs that capture detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/load-balancer-access-logs.html

"D" because "you can configure CloudFront to create log files that contain detailed information about every user request that CloudFront receives"

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

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

AWS Secrets Manager for Credential Rotation:

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

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

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

Amazon RDS Proxy for Connection Management:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Create an RDS Proxy for the PostgreSQL DB instance.

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

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

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

References:

AWS Secrets Manager

Using AWS Secrets Manager to Rotate Amazon RDS Database Credentials

Amazon RDS Proxy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

Continuously identify non-compliant resources.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a solution to monitor and enforce resource tagging compliance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: AWS CloudTrail.

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

Option B: Amazon Inspector.

Primarily used for security assessments, not resource tagging compliance.

Option C: AWS Config.

Monitors and evaluates the configurations of AWS resources.

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

Option D: AWS Systems Manager.

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

References:

AWS Config

Managing Resource Tag Compliance with AWS Config

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

To investigate AWS Secrets Manager password rotation and troubleshoot the authentication failure of an application running on Amazon EC2 instances, you should check the AWS Lambda function logs responsible for the password rotation.

Understand Secrets Manager Password Rotation:

AWS Secrets Manager can automatically rotate secrets according to a specified rotation schedule using an AWS Lambda function.

To ensure high availability and disaster recovery for the RDS for MySQL database, follow these steps:

Create a Cross-Region Read Replica:

In the RDS console, create a cross-Region read replica of the primary database instance. This read replica will provide high availability and the lowest RTO and RPO in case of a disaster.

Problem Analysis:

Users experience consistent forced logouts, indicating session data is not maintained properly.

Causes may include issues with session persistence between CloudFront, ALB, and the backend servers.

Action: Configure Cookie Forwarding in CloudFront:

CloudFront must forward cookies to maintain session state. Without forwarding cookies, session-specific data cannot reach the backend.

Update the Cache Behavior Settings in CloudFront:

Go to the CloudFront distribution settings.

In Cache Behaviors, select Forward Cookies.

Specify the relevant cookies required by the application.

Action: Enable Group-Level Stickiness in ALB:

Group-level stickiness ensures that a user's session consistently maps to the same backend server, preventing session disruption.

Steps:

Open the ALB Console.

Navigate to the Listener Rules.

Enable Group-Level Stickiness for the target groups under the listener rule settings.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: Changing to the least outstanding requests algorithm will not address session stickiness issues.

C: Forwarding headers does not resolve session-specific problems caused by cookies not being forwarded.

E: Weighted target groups manage traffic distribution but do not address session persistence.

References:

Amazon CloudFront Cookie Forwarding

ALB Sticky Sessions Documentation

Adding a Route to the Route Tables:

When new subnets are created, they need appropriate routing to ensure communication with on-premises networks.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to VPC.

Select the route table associated with the new subnets.

Choose "Edit routes."

Add a new route with the destination CIDR block of the on-premises network.

For the target, select the virtual private gateway (VGW).

This ensures that traffic destined for the on-premises network is routed correctly through the VPN connection.

To allow the EC2 instance in the private subnet to establish a secure connection to an external web server, follow these steps:

Modify Security Group:

Add an outbound rule to the security group of the EC2 instance with the following parameters:

Type: HTTPS

Destination: 0.0.0.0/0

This allows outbound HTTPS traffic to the internet.

To efficiently monitor and identify noncompliant resources in terms of tagging within AWS, using AWS Config with a managed rule for required tagging is most appropriate:

AWS Config Setup: Configure AWS Config to monitor and record configurations of AWS resources within your environment.

Managed Rule for Required Tags: Utilize the "required-tags" managed rule in AWS Config, which checks whether your resources have the specific tags you define as mandatory. This rule can be customized to specify which tags are required and can automatically evaluate all existing and new resources in your environment.

Compliance Reporting: AWS Config provides detailed compliance reporting that helps you identify resources that do not meet the tagging requirements, facilitating easy remediation.

This approach leverages AWS Config’s capabilities for continuous monitoring and evaluation without needing to write custom code or manage additional services, providing an operationally efficient solution for compliance management.

To increase the cache hit ratio for an Amazon CloudFront distribution, you can make several adjustments to its configuration:

Minimize Forwarding of Cookies, Query Strings, and Headers:

By default, CloudFront caches based on URL, but if it forwards headers, cookies, and query strings to the origin, it can decrease the cache hit ratio.

Navigate to your CloudFront distribution in the AWS Management Console.

In the Behaviors tab, edit the cache behavior.

Set the option to forward only the necessary cookies, query strings, and headers. This reduces the variations of objects stored in the cache.

Increase Time to Live (TTL) Settings:

Increasing the TTL allows objects to stay in the cache for a longer period, reducing the frequency of fetching data from the origin.

In the same Behaviors tab, adjust the Minimum TTL, Maximum TTL, and Default TTL settings to higher values. This ensures that content remains cached for a longer duration before it needs to be fetched again from the origin.

References:

Cache Behavior Settings

Optimizing Cache Behavior

To use tags to filter views in the AWS Cost Explorer console, the tags must be activated for cost allocation.

Activate User-Defined Tags for Cost Allocation:

Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Cost Allocation Tags."

Activate the user-defined tags that you want to use for cost allocation.

To optimize the routing of requests to the application for users in different geographic locations, use Amazon Route 53's latency-based routing:

Latency Routing Policy: Modify the Route 53 DNS settings for app.anycompany.com by changing the routing policy to latency. This policy routes user requests to the server that has the lowest latency relative to the user's location.

Configure Latency Records: Create latency records for each ALB—one for the ALB in us-west-2 and another for the new ALB in ap-southeast-2. Route 53 will automatically direct traffic to the endpoint that provides the lowest latency connection to the user.

Seamless User Experience: By using latency routing, the URL remains the same (app.anycompany.com), but the backend service location varies based on which endpoint is likely to respond the fastest. This setup provides a seamless experience for users, reducing latency without requiring any changes to how they access the application.

This method leverages Route 53's advanced DNS capabilities to ensure optimal performance and user experience by dynamically routing traffic based on geographic latency considerations.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The threat of ransomware encrypting and holding company data hostage.

Need to protect an Amazon S3 bucket.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure that data in the S3 bucket is protected against unauthorized encryption or deletion.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Deny Post, Put, and Delete on the bucket.

Denying these actions would prevent any uploads or modifications to the bucket, making it unusable.

Option B: Enable server-side encryption on the bucket.

Server-side encryption protects data at rest but does not prevent the encryption of data by ransomware.

Option C: Enable Amazon S3 versioning on the bucket.

S3 versioning keeps multiple versions of an object in the bucket. If a file is overwritten or encrypted by ransomware, previous versions of the file can still be accessed.

Option D: Enable snapshots on the bucket.

Amazon S3 does not have a snapshot feature; this option is not applicable.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Enabling Amazon S3 versioning is the best solution as it allows access to previous versions of objects, providing protection against ransomware encryption by retaining prior, unencrypted versions.

References:

Amazon S3 Versioning

Best Practices for Protecting Data with Amazon S3

Enabling S3 versioning ensures that previous versions of objects are preserved, providing a safeguard against ransomware by allowing recovery of unencrypted versions of data.

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

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

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

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

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

Reuse templates to replicate stacks in multiple environments After you have your stacks and resources set up, you can reuse your templates to replicate your infrastructure in multiple environments. For example, you can create environments for development, testing, and production so that you can test changes before implementing them into production. To make templates reusable, use the parameters, mappings, and conditions sections so that you can customize your stacks when you create them. For example, for your development environments, you can specify a lower-cost instance type compared to your production environment, but all other configurations and settings remain the same. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AW SCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html#reuse

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

Update the Launch Template User Data:

Navigate to the EC2 console.

Select the launch template used by the Auto Scaling group.

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

#!/bin/bash

yum update -y

yum install -y awslogs

cat < /etc/awslogs/awslogs.conf

[general]

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

[/var/log/messages]

file = /var/log/messages

log_group_name = /my-log-group

log_stream_name = {instance_id}/messages

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

[/var/log/secure]

file = /var/log/secure

log_group_name = /my-log-group

log_stream_name = {instance_id}/secure

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

EOF

systemctl start awslogsd

systemctl enable awslogsd

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

Configure the Log Group Retention Period:

Navigate to the CloudWatch console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Logs".

Select the log group created by the CloudWatch Logs agent.

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

Set the retention period to 90 days.

Verify the Configuration:

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

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

References:

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Agent

Setting Log Retention in CloudWatch

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

CloudTrail must be re-enabled immediately if it is disabled.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement an automatic solution to monitor and re-enable CloudTrail.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Add the AWS account to AWS Organizations and enable CloudTrail in the management account.

This provides centralized management but does not ensure automatic re-enabling of CloudTrail.

Option B: Create an AWS Config rule with automatic remediation.

AWS Config can monitor changes and automatically remediate by re-enabling CloudTrail.

Option C: Create an AWS Config rule that invokes a Lambda function.

This requires custom code, which is not preferred.

Option D: Create an EventBridge rule with a Systems Manager Automation document.

This can re-enable CloudTrail but is more complex compared to AWS Config’s built-in remediation.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Using AWS Config with automatic remediation ensures CloudTrail is re-enabled without writing custom code.

References:

AWS Config Rules

Automatic Remediation with AWS Config

Creating an AWS Config rule with automatic remediation ensures that CloudTrail is immediately re-enabled if it is disabled.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

Analyze the Requirements:

Reduce the risk of data loss.

Ensure quick recovery in the event of a database failure.

Aim for operational efficiency.

Evaluate the Options:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

References:

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ Deployments

Backing Up and Restoring an Amazon RDS DB Instance

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

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

AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO):

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

It integrates seamlessly with AWS Organizations.

Integration with SAML 2.0 IdP:

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

This allows centralized management of user identities and access.

Steps to Implement:

Enable AWS SSO in your AWS Organizations management account.

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

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

References:

AWS Single Sign-On

Integrating AWS SSO with SAML 2.0 Identity Providers

To improve application responsiveness and handle high CPU utilization:

Create Auto Scaling Group:

Create an Auto Scaling group (ASG) for the EC2 instances running the application.

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

Create Service Control Policies (SCPs):

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

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

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

Using the ALB’s RequestCount metric will allow the SysOps administrator to collect information about total requests for a 2-week period and determine when requests exceeded the threshold of 100 requests per second. Configuring a time range of 2 weeks and a period of 1 minute will ensure that the data can be accurately examined to determine peak traffic times and volumes.

To ensure that the Auto Scaling group scales out when CPU utilization rises above 50%, the administrator should configure the Auto Scaling group to dynamically scale based on demand. This is achieved by setting up a scaling policy that triggers based on specific CloudWatch alarms—like CPU utilization exceeding 50%. This dynamic scaling method directly responds to changes in workload, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and promptly as demand increases. Option C is the correct answer, aligning with best practices for managing EC2 Auto Scaling based on real-time metrics. Further guidance is available in AWS documentation on dynamic scaling Dynamic Scaling for EC2.

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

Using AWS Systems Manager to schedule a maintenance window for restarting EC2 instances outside business hours provides a straightforward and automated approach.

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Window: Allows for daily scheduling, ensuring that restarts occur consistently outside of business hours.

AWS-RestartEC2Instance Runbook: This runbook can be assigned to the maintenance window, automating the reboot process and minimizing manual intervention.

Reduced Disruption: The scheduled restart ensures the application remains operational during business hours.

 Objective:

Publish VPC flow logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

 Root Cause:

VPC flow logs require an IAM role with permissions to create log groups, log streams, and write logs to CloudWatch Logs.

If the logs:CreateLogGroup permission is missing, the flow log cannot create the required log group, and logs will not appear in CloudWatch.

 Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Verify the IAM role attached to the VPC flow logs.

Step 2: Add the following permissions to the IAM policy:

logs:CreateLogGroup

logs:CreateLogStream

logs:PutLogEvents

Step 3: Update the IAM role policy and retry creating flow logs.

 AWS References:

VPC Flow Logs Permissions:Permissions for VPC Flow Logs

 Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option B: logs:CreateExportTask is for exporting logs from CloudWatch to S3, not for creating log groups.

Option C: IPv6 addresses do not impact the publishing of flow logs to CloudWatch Logs.

Option D: VPC peering does not block flow log functionality.

AWS Config rules can be used to automatically detect and remediate noncompliant resources, such as security groups that allow inbound traffic from 0.0.0.0/0.

Steps:

Create a Custom AWS Config Rule:

Open the AWS Config console.

Choose "Rules" and then "Add rule".

Create a custom rule or use a predefined rule such as security-group-rule-restricted.

Configure Remediation:

Use AWS Config to set up automatic remediation.

Define an AWS Systems Manager Automation document that changes the source address from 0.0.0.0/0 to the approved CIDR block.

Associate this automation document with the AWS Config rule.

Deploy Across Accounts:

Use AWS Config Aggregator to aggregate the compliance data across multiple accounts.

Ensure the remediation actions are consistently applied across all accounts.

References:

AWS Config Rules

AWS Config Remediation

Creating a Custom AWS Config Rule

To rotate an AWS KMS customer master key (CMK) with imported key material every 6 months, follow these steps:

Create a New CMK with New Imported Material:

Generate new key material according to your security policies.

Create a new CMK in AWS KMS and import the new key material into this CMK.

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

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

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

To ensure that the new web subnet can communicate with the database instance, follow these steps:

Create an Inbound Allow Rule for MySQL/Aurora (3306):

On the network ACL for the database subnets, add an inbound allow rule to permit traffic from the third web subnet on port 3306 (MySQL/Aurora).

Increasing the IOPS for the gp3 EBS volume will address the high VolumeQueueLength by allowing more read/write operations, directly improving performance for I/O-intensive tasks. ElastiCache and enhanced networking do not directly affect EBS performance for this issue.

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

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

Improve S3 Upload Performance:

Using multiple bucket prefixes can improve throughput by allowing parallel upload streams.

Steps:

Modify the application to write files to different prefixes in the S3 bucket.

Example: Instead of writing all files to s3://bucket-name/, write to s3://bucket-name/prefix1/, s3://bucket-name/prefix2/, etc.

For a disaster recovery (DR) plan with a 15-minute RTO and RPO, the most cost-effective steps include:

B: Configuring the Aurora cluster to replicate data to the DR region using the Aurora global database option. This allows continuous replication with typically low replication lag, meeting the 15-minute RPO requirement efficiently.

C: Pre-configuring the DR region with an ALB and an Auto Scaling group using the same configuration as the primary region. This ensures readiness and quick failover, aligning with the 15-minute RTO target.

These steps provide a robust disaster recovery setup that minimizes downtime and data loss while optimizing costs by using built-in AWS functionalities and avoiding over-provisioning. More information can be found in the AWS documentation on Aurora Global Databases Aurora Global Databases and disaster recovery planning AWS Disaster Recovery.

To securely manage and rotate the credentials for an Amazon RDS database created by a CloudFormation template, you should use AWS Secrets Manager. The AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource can be used to create a secret, and the resolve:secretsmanager dynamic reference can be used to retrieve the secret.

Define Secrets Manager Resource in CloudFormation Template:

Add an AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource to the CloudFormation template to store the database credentials.

Reference the Secret in RDS Resource:

Use the resolve:secretsmanager dynamic reference to retrieve the secret when creating the AWS::RDS::DBInstance resource.

Example CloudFormation Template:

MyDatabaseSecret:

Type: AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Properties:

Name: MyDatabaseSecret

GenerateSecretString:

SecretStringTemplate: '{"username": "admin"}'

GenerateStringKey: "password"

PasswordLength: 16

ExcludeCharacters: '"@/\\'

MyRDSInstance:

Type: AWS::RDS::DBInstance

Properties:

DBInstanceIdentifier: MyRDSInstance

Engine: mysql

MasterUsername: !Sub '{{resolve:secretsmanager:MyDatabaseSecret:SecretString:username}}'

MasterUserPassword: !Sub '{{resolve:secretsmanager:MyDatabaseSecret:SecretString:password}}'

DBInstanceClass: db.t2.micro

AllocatedStorage: 20

References:

AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Dynamic References

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

Enable All Features in AWS Organizations:

Open the AWS Organizations console at AWS Organizations Console.

Navigate to Settings and ensure that All features are enabled.

Verify and Enable Trusted Access:

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

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

Use AWS Compute Optimizer and Tag Policies:

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

References:

AWS Organizations

Enabling All Features in Your Organization

Enabling Trusted Access with Other AWS Services

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

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

Create a Stack Policy:

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

json

Copy code

{

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": "Update:*",

"Principal": "*",

"Resource": "*"

},

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "Update:*",

"Principal": "*",

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

}

]

}

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

Apply the Stack Policy:

Navigate to the CloudFormation console.

Select the stack you want to protect.

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

Paste the stack policy JSON and save the policy.

Perform Stack Updates:

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

Review and Adjust:

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

References:

AWS CloudFormation Stack Policies

Creating and Applying a Stack Policy

To securely connect to Amazon S3 buckets from Amazon EC2 instances over a private connection without incurring additional costs, you can use a gateway VPC endpoint for S3. This method allows you to create a single gateway VPC endpoint for all S3 buckets in the same region, ensuring secure, private communication.

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint:

Navigate to the VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Endpoints" and then click "Create Endpoint".

Select "AWS services" and then choose "com.amazonaws..s3" from the service name dropdown.

Select the VPC in which to create the endpoint and the appropriate route tables.

Click "Create endpoint".

Update the Route Tables:

The gateway VPC endpoint will automatically update the selected route tables to include routes that direct S3 traffic through the endpoint.

Ensure that the route tables associated with your subnets include routes for the S3 service pointing to the gateway VPC endpoint.

Verify the Configuration:

Ensure that instances in the VPC can access the S3 buckets using private IP addresses.

Check the routing configuration to confirm that traffic to S3 is routed through the gateway VPC endpoint.

References:

Gateway VPC Endpoints for Amazon S3

Creating a Gateway Endpoint

If users are unable to connect to a specific Ubuntu EC2 instance using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager while other instances are accessible, the issue is likely due to IAM permissions:

Instance Profile Permissions: Ensure that the EC2 instance has the necessary IAM permissions to interact with Systems Manager. The AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore managed policy includes permissions required for the SSM Agent on the instance to communicate with the AWS Systems Manager service.

Attach Managed Policy: Attach the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy to the IAM role that is associated with the Ubuntu instance's instance profile. This step is crucial as it authorizes the instance to use Systems Manager services, including Session Manager.

Verify Configuration and Connectivity: After updating the instance profile, verify that users can connect via Session Manager. This solution does not require any changes to network security settings like security groups.

By ensuring that the instance has the appropriate IAM permissions, you resolve issues related to access control and Systems Manager functionality, allowing authorized personnel to connect securely without using SSH or RDP.

The AWS Personal Health Dashboard provides a personalized view into the performance and availability of the AWS services underlying your AWS resources. It can alert you about upcoming hardware maintenance that could affect your EC2 instances.

Access AWS Personal Health Dashboard:

Open the AWS Personal Health Dashboard at AWS Personal Health Dashboard.

View Service Health:

The dashboard shows a list of recent events, including upcoming scheduled maintenance that might impact your EC2 instances.

You can filter events to view those that specifically affect your EC2 instances.

Set Up Notifications:

You can configure AWS CloudWatch Events or Amazon SNS to send notifications based on Personal Health Dashboard events.

References:

AWS Personal Health Dashboard

Monitoring AWS Health Events with Amazon CloudWatch Events

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/health/latest/ug/cloudwatch-events-health.html

To achieve maximum cost savings and flexibility for a 24/7 running application across different AWS regions and operating systems, the best approach is to use a Compute Savings Plan. Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility by automatically applying to any EC2 instance usage regardless of instance family, size, OS, tenancy, or AWS Region, and also apply to AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda usage.

Understand Compute Savings Plans:

Compute Savings Plans offer significant savings over On-Demand prices, with the flexibility to use the compute option that best suits your needs.

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan:

Login to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to the Savings Plans section.

Choose Purchase Savings Plan and select Compute Savings Plan.

Define the hourly commitment amount and the term length (one or three years).

Monitor and Optimize Usage:

Ensure that your usage aligns with the Savings Plan to maximize savings.

Use AWS Cost Explorer and Savings Plans Utilization reports to monitor usage.

References:

Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

To efficiently transfer a significant amount of data between VPCs in different regions, establishing an inter-region VPC peering connection is the most cost-effective method. This setup allows direct network connectivity between two VPCs in different regions, which can handle large data transfers without the need for intermediate devices or services. Option C is the most straightforward and economical choice for this requirement. Further details can be found in the AWS documentation on VPC Peering VPC Peering.

To automate the process of disabling unused IAM user accounts that have not been active for 90 days, using an AWS Config managed rule with an AWS Systems Manager automation runbook is the most operationally efficient method.

Set Up AWS Config Managed Rule:

Open the AWS Config console.

Create a rule using the managed rule iam-user-no-policies-check.

Configure the rule to trigger when IAM users have not been active for 90 days.

AWS Systems Manager Automation Runbook:

Create a Systems Manager automation document (runbook) to disable the access keys for inactive IAM users.

Use the aws:executeAutomation action to disable access keys and passwords.

Schedule the Automation:

Use Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) to schedule the automation to run periodically.

References:

AWS Config Managed Rules

AWS Systems Manager Automation

Scheduling AWS Systems Manager Automation

To improve security and availability, the best approach is to configure Multi-AZ for both the web and database tiers.

Multi-AZ Auto Scaling for Web Tier: Deploying the web-tier instances in an Auto Scaling group across multiple AZs with an internet-facing ALB provides high availability and fault tolerance.

RDS Multi-AZ for SQL Server: Migrating the SQL Server to RDS with Multi-AZ deployment ensures database redundancy and failover without additional management overhead.

Placing the web tier in multiple Regions would add unnecessary complexity, and migrating the database to DynamoDB is not suitable for applications requiring SQL Server’s relational capabilities.

To prioritize alarm notifications over information notifications in an Amazon SQS environment, creating separate queues for each type of notification is the best approach. This allows the application processing the queues to prioritize fetching messages from the alarm notifications queue first. Option D directly addresses the need for prioritization without complicating the existing infrastructure. This setup is supported by best practices for using Amazon SQS, where using multiple queues to segregate message types is a recommended strategy Amazon SQS Best Practices.

To manage common components across multiple CloudFormation templates efficiently:

Create Nested Stacks:

Develop separate CloudFormation templates for the common components.

Use these templates as nested stacks within the main templates.

Dedicated Hosts are physical servers that are dedicated to a single customer, ensuring that the customer’s workloads are not shared with other customers or with other AWS accounts within the company. This will ensure that the company’s security policy is followed and that sensitive workloads are running on hardware that is not shared with other customers or with other AWS accounts within the company.

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

Enable Default Server-Side Encryption:

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

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

To send an email notification when an ACM certificate has less than 14 days until expiration, the most operationally efficient solution is to create an Amazon EventBridge rule that directly monitors AWS ACM for certificate expiry details. EventBridge can capture aws.acm events related to certificate expiration and evaluate the DaysToExpiry metric directly. Configure the rule to send notifications to an Amazon SNS topic when DaysToExpiry is less than 14, and subscribe the necessary email addresses to this SNS topic. This approach avoids the need for custom metrics or manual monitoring, providing a streamlined and automatic notification system. Option B is the correct answer as it leverages native integration between ACM, EventBridge, and SNS for minimal operational overhead. More details on EventBridge rules can be found in AWS documentation EventBridge Rules.

https://docs.aws.amazon.co m/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/private-content-restricting-access-to-s3.html

To ensure that users access objects in Amazon S3 by using only CloudFront URLs, the SysOps administrator should create an origin access identity (OAI) and grant it permissions to read objects in the S3 bucket.

Create an Origin Access Identity (OAI):

OAI is a special CloudFront user that you associate with your distribution to restrict access to the S3 bucket.

This ensures that only CloudFront can access the S3 bucket directly, and users must go through CloudFront to access the content.

Steps to Implement:

Open the CloudFront console.

Select your distribution and go to the "Origins and Origin Groups" tab.

Edit the S3 origin and create a new OAI or use an existing one.

Update the S3 bucket policy to grant the OAI read permissions.

Bucket Policy Example:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::cloudfront:user/CloudFront Origin Access Identity [OAI_ID]"

},

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

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

}

]

}

References:

Using an Origin Access Identity to Restrict Access to Your S3 Content

To make an internal web application highly available, you should configure the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group to launch instances in multiple Availability Zones within the same AWS Region. This ensures that the application remains available even if one Availability Zone becomes unavailable.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

Update Auto Scaling Group:

In the navigation pane, choose Auto Scaling Groups.

Select the Auto Scaling group that you want to modify.

Choose Edit.

Add Multiple Availability Zones:

In the Availability Zones and subnets section, select at least one additional Availability Zone.

Ensure that the selected subnets belong to different Availability Zones.

Save Changes:

Save the configuration changes to update the Auto Scaling group.

References:

Distributing Instances Across Multiple Availability Zones

Auto Scaling Groups

To encrypt an existing Amazon RDS DB instance that is not encrypted, you cannot directly enable encryption. Instead, you need to follow these steps:

Take a Snapshot:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Select the DB instance and take a snapshot.

Copy and Encrypt the Snapshot:

After the snapshot is created, select the snapshot and choose Copy Snapshot.

In the copy snapshot dialog, enable encryption and choose a KMS key.

Restore the Encrypted Snapshot:

Once the encrypted snapshot is created, select it and choose Restore Snapshot.

Provide the necessary details to create a new DB instance from the encrypted snapshot.

This process ensures that the new DB instance is encrypted at rest.

References:

Encrypting Amazon RDS Resources

Copying an Amazon RDS Snapshot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

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

}

]

}

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

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

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

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

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

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

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Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

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

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

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

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

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

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

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

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

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

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

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

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

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

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

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

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

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

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