SOA-C02 Questions and Answers

Increasing DB Instance Size:

Increasing the instance size provides more CPU and memory resources, which can help handle higher loads.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the DB instance.

Modify the instance to increase its size.

Apply the changes during the next maintenance window or immediately if it is a critical issue.

Monitoring Performance:

After resizing, monitor the instance during the next report run to ensure that it handles the load effectively.

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.

https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-sysops-associate/AWS-Certified-SysOps-Administrator-Associate_Sample-Questions_C02.pdf

Evictions in Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached occur when the cache runs out of available memory and needs to remove existing data to store new data. To reduce evictions, you can either add more nodes to the cluster or increase the size of the individual nodes.

Add an Additional Node:

Open the Amazon ElastiCache console at Amazon ElastiCache Console.

Select your Memcached cluster and choose Modify.

Increase the number of nodes in the cluster to add more memory capacity.

Apply the changes to scale out the cluster.

Increase the Individual Node Size:

Open the Amazon ElastiCache console and select your Memcached cluster.

Choose Modify and change the node type to a larger instance size with more memory.

Apply the changes to scale up the cluster.

Both actions will provide additional memory capacity, reducing the likelihood of evictions due to insufficient memory.

References:

Scaling ElastiCache for Memcached

Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached User Guide

In AWS CloudFormation, the PrivateDnsName property of an EC2 instance cannot be directly set within the template. This property is automatically assigned by AWS when the instance is launched within a VPC and is associated with the private IP address of the instance. The attempt to explicitly set PrivateDnsName in a CloudFormation template will result in an error, causing the stack creation to fail. Therefore, option C is correct. For reference, the AWS documentation on EC2 instances in CloudFormation does not list PrivateDnsName as a configurable property AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

The provided IAM policy grants the following permissions:

Describe AWS Load Balancers:

The policy allows actions with the prefix elasticloadbalancing:. This includes actions like DescribeLoadBalancers and other Describe* actions related to Elastic Load Balancing.

To supply documentation of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance for the infrastructure managed by AWS, the SysOps administrator should download the applicable reports from the AWS Artifact portal.

AWS Artifact:

AWS Artifact is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS’ security and compliance reports and select online agreements.

It includes compliance reports for standards such as PCI DSS, SOC, ISO, and more.

Steps to Access Reports:

Open the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to the AWS Artifact console.

Browse and download the PCI DSS compliance report.

Providing Documentation:

Download the relevant PCI DSS reports and provide them to the auditors as required.

References:

AWS Artifact

PCI DSS Compliance

https://docs .aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/default-bucket-encryption.html

You can set the default encryption behavior on an Amazon S3 bucket so that all objects are encrypted when they are stored in the bucket. The objects are encrypted using server-side encryption with either Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3) or AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer master keys (CMKs).

https://aws.amazon .com/blogs/security/how-to-prevent-uploads-of-unencrypted-objects-to-amazon-s3/

How to Prevent Uploads of Unencrypted Objects to Amazon S3#

By using an S3 bucket policy, you can enforce the encryption requirement when users upload objects, instead of assigning a restrictive IAM policy to all users.

Using Amazon S3 Block Public Access as a centralized way to limit public access. Block Public Access settings override bucket policies and object permissions. Be sure to enable Block Public Access for all accounts and buckets that you don't want publicly accessible.

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/secure-s3-resources/#:~:text=Using%20Amazon%20S3%20Block%20 Public,don't%20want%20publicly%20accessible.

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.

A mount target provides an IP address for an NFSv4 endpoint at which you can mount an Amazon EFS file system. You mount your file system using its Domain Name Service (DNS) name, which resolves to the IP address of the EFS mount target in the same Availability Zone as your EC2 instance. You can create one mount target in each Availability Zone in an AWS Region. If there are multiple subnets in an Availability Zone in your VPC, you create a mount target in one of the subnets. Then all EC2 instances in that Availability Zone share that mount target. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/how-it-works.html

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

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

Enable All Features in AWS Organizations:

Open the AWS Organizations console at AWS Organizations Console.

Navigate to Settings and ensure that All features are enabled.

Verify and Enable Trusted Access:

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

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

Use AWS Compute Optimizer and Tag Policies:

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

References:

AWS Organizations

Enabling All Features in Your Organization

Enabling Trusted Access with Other AWS Services

To maintain a documented trail of any changes made to the security groups and receive notifications, AWS Config is the best solution.

AWS Config:

AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations.

You can set up AWS Config to record changes to your security groups.

Setting Up AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console and choose "Set up AWS Config."

Select the resource types you want to record (in this case, security groups).

Specify an Amazon S3 bucket to store configuration snapshots and history files.

Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic for notifications about configuration changes.

Subscribe the SysOps administrator's email address to the SNS topic.

References:

AWS Config

Setting Up AWS Config

To ensure high availability and that instances are placed on distinct underlying hardware, a spread placement group should be used. Spread placement groups place instances on distinct hardware, reducing the risk of simultaneous failures.

Create Spread Placement Group:

Open the EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

Navigate to Placement Groups in the sidebar.

Click Create placement group and select Spread for the strategy.

Launch Instances:

When launching new instances, select the placement group you created.

Ensure the instances are in the same AWS Region but spread across distinct hardware.

Verify Placement:

After launching, verify that the instances are in the spread placement group by checking the instance details in the console.

References:

Placement Groups

Creating a Spread Placement Group

To ensure CloudTrail is re-enabled immediately if it is disabled, you can use AWS Config with an automatic remediation action.

Create AWS Config Rule:

Configure an AWS Config rule that triggers when there are changes to the CloudTrail configuration.

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

This approach uses CloudWatch for monitoring and Lambda for automation, allowing for quick and efficient quota management:

Setup CloudWatch Alarm: Monitor the usage of EC2 instances against the service quota using CloudWatch.

Lambda Function: Write a Lambda function that triggers a quota increase request via the Service Quotas API when the threshold is met.

Integration: Configure the CloudWatch alarm to trigger this Lambda function when the instance count approaches the service quota.

AWS Documentation Reference:Information on monitoring with CloudWatch and automating actions with Lambda can be found in these guides: Amazon CloudWatch Alarms, AWS Lambda.

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

Specify the Principal:

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

Add Condition with PrincipalOrgId:

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

Example bucket policy:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

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

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"aws:PrincipalOrgID": "o-exampleorgid"

}

}

}

]

}

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

Request Quota Increase:

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to Amazon EC2 service.

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

Select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Provide the necessary details and submit the request.

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

References:

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The issue of "request timed out" when pinging the public IP address of the EC2 instance could be due to the Network ACL (NACL) inbound rules.

Check NACL Inbound Rules:

Network ACLs act at the subnet level and can explicitly allow or deny traffic to or from a subnet.

Ensure that the NACL associated with the subnet containing the EC2 instance has inbound rules that allow ICMP traffic (which is used for ping).

Example rule to allow inbound ICMP traffic:

Rule Number: 100

Type: ICMP

Protocol: 1

Port Range: N/A (ICMP doesn't use ports)

Source: 0.0.0.0/0 (or specific IP range)

Allow/Deny: ALLOW

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/custom-tags.html "User-defined tags are tags that you define, create, and apply to resources. After you have created and applied the user-defined tags, you can activate by using the Billing and Cost Management console for cost allocation tracking. "

To meet this requirement, the SysOps administrator should activate the company-defined tags as user-defined cost allocation tags. This will ensure that the tags appear on the billing report and that the resources can be tracked with the specific tags. The other options (activating the tags as AWS generated cost allocation tags, creating a new cost category and selecting the account billing dimension, and creating a new AWS Cost and Usage Report and including the resource IDs) will not meet the requirements and are not the correct solutions for this issue.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-attribute-dependson.html

Syntax The DependsOn attribute can take a single string or list of strings. "DependsOn" : [ String, ... ] Example The following template contains an AWS::EC2::Instance resource with a DependsOn attribute that specifies myDB, an AWS::RDS::DBInstance. When CloudFormation creates this stack, it first creates myDB, then creates Ec2Instance.

To effectively use Amazon CloudFront as a content delivery network for an application using an Application Load Balancer as the origin, several configuration steps need to be correctly implemented:

DNS Configuration: Ensure that the DNS records for the domain serving the content point to the CloudFront distribution's DNS name rather than directly to the ALB. If the DNS still points to the ALB, users' requests will bypass CloudFront, leading directly to the ALB and maintaining the existing load on your web servers.

TTL Settings: The Time to Live (TTL) settings in the CloudFront distribution dictate how long the content is cached in CloudFront edge locations before CloudFront fetches a fresh copy from the origin. If the TTL values are set to 0, it means that CloudFront does not cache the content at all, resulting in each user request being forwarded to the ALB, which does not reduce the load.

AWS Documentation Reference:For more information on DNS and TTL configurations for CloudFront, you can refer to the following AWS documentation:

Configuring DNS

CloudFront TTL Settings.

To allow access using current LDAP credentials while migrating to AWS, the best approach is to federate the LDAP directory with IAM using SAML.

Set Up SAML-Based Federation:

AWS supports identity federation using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0. You need to configure your LDAP directory to federate with AWS IAM via SAML.

"You can add tags to resources when you create the resource. You can use the resource's service console or API to add, change, or remove those tags one resource at a time. To add tags to—or edit or delete tags of—multiple resources at once, use Tag Editor. With Tag Editor, you search for the resources that you want to tag, and then manage tags for the resources in your search results." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ARG/latest/userguide/tag-editor.html

To host a static website on Amazon S3, the SysOps administrator needs to configure the bucket for public access and set up the static website hosting. Here's how to complete this process:

Turn off "Block all public access": Amazon S3 buckets have "Block all public access" settings enabled by default for security. Since the webpage needs to be accessible publicly, this setting must be disabled. This step is crucial to allow public read access to the web content.

Set a bucket policy: After disabling "Block all public access," set a bucket policy that explicitly allows public read access to the S3 bucket. This policy should allow the s3:GetObject action for everyone, which can be set by specifying "Principal": "*". This policy ensures that anyone can view the webpage but does not grant permissions to modify or delete the content.

Create an index.html document and configure static website hosting: The next step is to create an index.html file, which will serve as the entry point of the website. After creating this file, upload it to the bucket. Then, configure the bucket for static website hosting through the S3 management console. This setting enables the S3 bucket to serve the webpage directly from the index.html file.

Combining these actions, the S3 bucket will be properly configured to host and serve the static website with minimal operational overhead and maximum accessibility.

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

Amazon RDS does not support enabling encryption for an existing unencrypted DB instance directly. However, you can achieve encryption by following these steps:

Take a Snapshot of the RDS Instance:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Select the DB instance, then choose Actions and Take snapshot.

Enter a name for the snapshot and take the snapshot.

Copy and Encrypt the Snapshot:

After the snapshot is complete, select the snapshot, choose Actions, and then Copy snapshot.

In the copy snapshot dialog, select the Enable encryption checkbox and choose a customer-managed CMK (Customer Master Key) or the default AWS managed key.

Restore the Encrypted Snapshot to a New RDS Instance:

Once the snapshot copy is complete, select the copied (encrypted) snapshot.

Choose Actions and Restore snapshot.

Provide the required details to launch a new DB instance from the encrypted snapshot.

Update Connections:

Update your application or endpoints to point to the new encrypted RDS instance.

References:

Encrypting Amazon RDS Resources

Copying an Amazon RDS DB Snapshot

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 meet the requirement of using only IPv6 for all EC2 instances while allowing outbound internet access and preventing inbound internet access, an egress-only internet gateway is the correct solution. An egress-only internet gateway allows outbound communication over IPv6 and blocks inbound communication, ensuring that the instances can access the internet but are not directly accessible from the internet.

Create an Egress-Only Internet Gateway:

Open the Amazon VPC console at Amazon VPC Console.

In the navigation pane, choose Egress-only internet gateways.

Choose Create egress-only internet gateway, and then attach it to your VPC.

Create a Custom Route Table:

In the VPC console, navigate to Route Tables.

Create a new route table or select an existing one.

Add a route with the destination set to ::/0 (which represents all IPv6 addresses) and the target set to the egress-only internet gateway.

Attach the Route Table to IPv6-Only Subnets:

Associate the route table with the IPv6-only subnets in your VPC.

This configuration ensures that your IPv6-only EC2 instances can access the internet while being protected from inbound internet traffic.

References:

Egress-Only Internet Gateways

IPv6 Addresses

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).

AWS Config is the best service to automatically manage and remediate S3 bucket permissions that violate corporate policies against public access. AWS Config continuously monitors and records AWS resource configurations and allows you to create rules that trigger automatic responses when public access configurations are detected. This approach is highly operationally efficient as it automates compliance and enforcement of security policies without manual intervention. Option A is correct. AWS Config can be used to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources, including S3 buckets. Reference AWS Config.

When an EC2 instance stops responding and the system status checks are failing, the recommended first step is to stop and then start the instance. This action will cause the instance to be moved to a new host, potentially resolving the underlying hardware issue.

Stop and Start the Instance:

In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 dashboard and stop the affected instance.

After the instance has stopped, start it again to launch it on a new host.

AWS Storage Gateway provides a hybrid cloud storage service that enables on-premises applications to seamlessly use AWS cloud storage. The gateway-stored volumes configuration is suitable for scenarios where all data must be available locally and the backup application can write only to block-based storage that is POSIX-compliant.

Deploy AWS Storage Gateway:

Launch the AWS Storage Gateway service from the AWS Management Console.

Download and deploy the Storage Gateway VM on your on-premises infrastructure.

Activate the Gateway:

Activate the Storage Gateway by connecting it to your AWS account.

Follow the setup wizard to complete the activation process.

Configure Gateway-Stored Volumes:

Create a gateway-stored volume where the primary data is stored locally, and an asynchronous copy is stored in AWS.

Specify the size of the volume and configure it to match your backup application's requirements.

Connect the Backup Application:

Present the created volume to your on-premises backup application as an iSCSI target.

Configure the backup application to write data to the iSCSI target provided by the Storage Gateway.

Monitor and Manage:

Use the AWS Management Console to monitor the gateway and the volumes.

Ensure that the data is being backed up to AWS correctly and that local copies are maintained as required.

References:

AWS Storage Gateway User Guide

Gateway-Stored Volumes

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.

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

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

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

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The EC2 instance processes large data files and uses a 1 TB General Purpose SSD (gp2) EBS volume.

CloudWatch metrics show consistent high VolumeReadOps.

The requirement is to improve I/O performance while ensuring data integrity.

Analyze the Requirements:

Improve I/O performance.

Maintain data integrity.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Change the instance type to a large, burstable, general-purpose instance.

Burstable instances provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst to a higher level when needed. However, this does not address the I/O performance directly.

Option B: Change the instance type to an extra-large general-purpose instance.

A larger instance type might improve performance, but it does not directly address the I/O performance of the EBS volume.

Option C: Increase the EBS volume to a 2 TB General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume.

Increasing the size of a General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume can increase its IOPS. The larger the volume, the higher the baseline performance in terms of IOPS.

Option D: Move the data that resides on the EBS volume to the instance store.

Instance store volumes provide high I/O performance but are ephemeral, meaning data will be lost if the instance is stopped or terminated. This does not ensure data integrity.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Increasing the EBS volume size to 2 TB will provide higher IOPS, improving I/O performance while maintaining data integrity.

References:

Amazon EBS Volume Types

General Purpose SSD (gp2) Volumes

Increasing the size of the General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume is an effective way to improve I/O performance while ensuring data integrity remains intact.

To meet the requirement of directing users to the Region closest to them and providing automated failover, the SysOps administrator should perform the following steps:

Create Amazon CloudWatch Alarms:

Create CloudWatch alarms that monitor the health of the ALB in each Region. This ensures that the system can detect unhealthy endpoints and trigger the failover mechanism.

To prevent all teams within an AWS Organizations structure from using Amazon DynamoDB while allowing access to other AWS services, the most effective solution is to use a Service Control Policy (SCP). SCPs apply at the organization, organizational unit (OU), or account level and can override individual IAM policies, including the root user's permissions:

B: Create a service control policy (SCP) in the management account to deny all DynamoDB actions. Apply the SCP to the root of the organization. This policy will effectively block DynamoDB actions across all member accounts without affecting the ability to access other AWS services. SCPs are powerful tools for centrally managing permissions in AWS Organizations and can enforce policy compliance across all accounts. Further information on SCPs and their usage can be found in the AWS documentation on Service Control Policies AWS Service Control Policies.

To efficiently find out how often the AWS Lambda function has failed in the last 7 days, use Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights.

Access CloudWatch Logs Insights:

Navigate to the CloudWatch console.

Select "Logs Insights" from the navigation pane.

Understand the Problem:

A user attempts to deploy a CloudFormation template to create an S3 bucket but the stack creation fails.

The user authenticates using Active Directory credentials.

Analyze the Requirements:

Identify permissions required for successful CloudFormation stack creation.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: The user's IAM policy does not allow the cloudformation:CreateStack action.

Without this permission, the user cannot create CloudFormation stacks.

Option B: The user's IAM policy does not allow the cloudformation:CreateStackSet action.

StackSet is used for managing stacks across multiple accounts and regions, not relevant for a single stack creation.

Option C: The user's IAM policy does not allow the s3:CreateBucket action.

This permission is required to create an S3 bucket as part of the stack.

Option D: The user's IAM policy explicitly denies the s3:ListBucket action.

This permission is not required for bucket creation but for listing existing buckets.

Option E: The user's IAM policy explicitly denies the s3:PutObject action.

This permission is required to put objects in a bucket, not to create the bucket.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A and C: The user must have permissions for cloudformation:CreateStack and s3:CreateBucket to successfully create the stack and the S3 bucket.

References:

AWS CloudFormation Permissions

IAM Policies and Permissions

Ensuring the user has the required permissions for cloudformation:CreateStack and s3:CreateBucket is crucial for successful stack creation.

 Create an SNS Topic and Subscription:

Amazon SNS allows you to send notifications to multiple endpoints.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to SNS and create a new topic.

Create a subscription for the topic using the email protocol.

Enter the architecture team's email address as the subscriber.

 Create an IAM role with the CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy:

This policy grants the necessary permissions for the CloudWatch agent to collect and send metrics.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to IAM and create a new role.

Choose "EC2" as the trusted entity.

Attach the "CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy" managed policy to the role.

Attach this IAM role to your EC2 instances.

Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics:

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

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudWatch and select "Synthetics."

Click on "Create canary."

Choose "Heartbeat monitoring" as the blueprint.

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

Set the frequency and retention settings as per your requirement.

Create the canary.

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

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

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

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

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

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/

To control access to Amazon EC2 instances using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager based on specific tags:

Attach an IAM Policy to Users or Groups: Create and attach an Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy to the IAM users or groups who need access to the EC2 instances. This policy should specify the permissions required to use Session Manager to start sessions with the instances.

Create an IAM Policy with Tag-Based Conditions: Create an IAM policy that includes a condition element to allow access to EC2 instances based on specific tags. This policy can be designed to grant the ssm:StartSession permission only for instances that match certain tags, as defined in the condition block of the IAM policy. Here is a sample condition block that could be used:

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"ec2:ResourceTag/YourTagName": "YourTagValue"

}

}

This ensures that only authorized users can initiate sessions with instances that have the specified tags, enhancing security and operational management.

By implementing these policies, you ensure that only the appropriate personnel have the controlled access required, based on the specific business needs and security guidelines.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/flow-logs-records-examples.html#flow-log-example-accepted-rejected

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/flow-logs-records-examples.html#

Accepted and rejected traffic: In this example, RDP traffic (destination port 3389, TCP protocol) to network interface eni-1235b8ca123456789 in account 123456789010 was rejected. 2 123456789010 eni-1235b8ca123456789 172.31.9.69 172.31.9.12 49761 3389 6 20 4249 1418530010 1418530070 REJECT OK

For EBS volumes restored from snapshots to immediately achieve the required IOPS performance, Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) can be utilized:

Enable FSR: Fast Snapshot Restore can be enabled on specific snapshots. This feature pre-warms the EBS volume created from a snapshot to its full performance level immediately after it is provisioned.

Operational Impact: By enabling FSR, any EBS volume created from these enabled snapshots will provide the provisioned IOPS performance right from the start, eliminating the performance lag that typically occurs as the data is lazily loaded from S3.

Cost Considerations: While FSR increases costs due to the pre-warming of data, it is justified by the need for immediate high performance, especially in environments where EBS volume responsiveness is critical to application performance.

This solution directly addresses the challenge of initial performance degradation and ensures that the EBS volumes can handle the required workload immediately upon restoration from a snapshot.

Access to Amazon DynamoDB requires credentials. Those credentials must have permissions to access AWS resources, such as an Amazon DynamoDB table or an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance. The following sections provide details on how you can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and DynamoDB to help secure access to your resources. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/authentication-and-access-control.html

To efficiently manage and automate the creation and termination of development environments:

AWS CloudFormation Templates:

Provide a standardized CloudFormation template for developers to create identical development environments.

To reduce the time required for new instances to become available in an Auto Scaling group, pre-installing the necessary software in the AMI used by the Auto Scaling group is the most effective solution.

Use EC2 Image Builder:

Utilize EC2 Image Builder to create a custom AMI that includes all the required software and configurations.

This reduces the setup time during instance launch, as the user data script will no longer need to install the software.

Storing the credentials in AWS Secrets Manager and configuring automatic rotation with a rotation interval of 30 days is the most efficient way to meet the requirements with the least operational overhead. AWS Secrets Manager automatically rotates the credentials at the specified interval, so there is no need for an additional AWS Lambda function or manual rotation. Additionally, Secrets Manager is integrated with Amazon RDS, so the credentials can be easily used with the RDS database.

To manage user accounts and permissions across multiple AWS accounts and integrate with an on-premises Active Directory, using AD Connector is the most operationally efficient solution. AD Connector serves as a directory gateway with which you can redirect directory requests to your on-premises Microsoft Active Directory without storing any directory data in the cloud. This setup allows IAM Identity Center to use the existing corporate credentials, ensuring centralized management and seamless user access control. Option C perfectly meets these requirements by leveraging existing infrastructure with minimal changes. AWS documentation on AD Connector offers guidance AWS Directory Service AD Connector.

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

To make the application highly available, update the Auto Scaling group to launch new instances in a second Availability Zone within the same AWS Region.

Understand High Availability Requirements:

High availability involves distributing instances across multiple Availability Zones to ensure the application remains accessible even if one Availability Zone experiences issues.

Enabling Instance Scale-In Protection:

Instance scale-in protection prevents Auto Scaling from terminating specific instances.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2 and select "Auto Scaling Groups."

Select your Auto Scaling group.

Go to the "Instance management" tab.

Select the instances you want to protect and click "Actions."

Choose "Enable scale-in protection."

This ensures that instances are not terminated during troubleshooting.

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.

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

Attach IAM Role with Necessary Permissions:

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

Steps to Attach IAM Role:

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

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

Permissions for Session Manager:

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

References:

Session Manager Prerequisites

Attach an IAM Role to an Instance

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that delivers your content with low latency and high transfer speeds. By distributing the static content (images and videos) to CloudFront edge locations, users in the United States and Europe can access the content from the nearest edge location, significantly improving the load times.

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the Amazon CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Choose Create Distribution and select Web.

Specify the S3 bucket as the origin where your static content is stored.

Configure Distribution Settings:

Configure the settings, such as cache behaviors and SSL/TLS settings.

Optionally, configure additional features like geo-restriction and logging.

Update DNS Configuration:

Update your DNS records to point to the CloudFront distribution. This can be done via Amazon Route 53 or your DNS provider.

Monitor Performance:

Use CloudFront reports and logs to monitor the performance and adjust configurations if needed.

References:

Amazon CloudFront Overview

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The application read performance degrades when user connections exceed 200.

Need to automatically scale the database based on user demand.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement auto scaling based on user connections to ensure optimal performance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Migrate to a new Aurora multi-master DB cluster.

Multi-master clusters provide read and write scalability but may require significant changes to the application.

Option B: Modify the DB cluster to serverless mode.

Aurora Serverless provides automatic scaling, but it is more suitable for variable workloads with unpredictable demand.

Option C: Create an auto scaling policy with a target metric of 195 DatabaseConnections.

This directly addresses the need to scale based on user connections.

Auto scaling can add or remove replicas to maintain optimal performance.

Option D: Increase the Aurora Replica instance size.

This may improve performance but does not address scalability for sudden increases in user connections.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Creating an auto scaling policy with a target metric of 195 DatabaseConnections ensures the DB cluster scales automatically to handle increased load.

References:

Amazon Aurora Auto Scaling

Scaling Aurora DB Instances

Auto scaling based on DatabaseConnections ensures the Aurora DB cluster maintains optimal performance as user demand fluctuates.

NAT Gateway Setup:

A NAT gateway allows instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but prevents the internet from initiating a connection with those instances.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to VPC and select "NAT Gateways."

Create a NAT gateway in the public subnet of each Availability Zone.

Allocate an Elastic IP address to each NAT gateway.

Update the route tables for the private subnets to route internet-bound traffic to the NAT gateways.

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/