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

The presigned URL expiration is the most common reason for access issues after some time. Additionally, if the SysOps administrator’s access key (used to generate the presigned URL) is invalid, the URL will no longer be usable. Block Public Access or ACL settings are irrelevant to presigned URLs.

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 improving upload performance globally for an Amazon S3 bucket, enabling S3 Transfer Acceleration is the best solution. This service optimizes file transfers to S3 using Amazon CloudFront's globally distributed edge locations. After enabling this feature, uploads to the S3 bucket are first routed to an AWS edge location and then transferred to S3 over an optimized network path. Option C is correct, and the developers should use the provided accelerate endpoint in their API calls. For more details, consult the AWS documentation on S3 Transfer Acceleration Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration.

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.

The kubeconfig file is a configuration file used to store cluster authentication information, which is required to make requests to the Amazon EKS cluster API server. The kubeconfig file will need to be configured on the SysOps administrator's machine in order for kubectl to be able to communicate with the cluster API server.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/running-a-kubernetes-job-in-amazon-eks-on-aws-fargate-using-aws-stepfunctions/

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.

CloudWatch alarms allow you to monitor AWS resources, and you can configure an SNS topic to send an email notification each time one of the alarms is triggered. This will ensure that the company receives email notifications each time one of the service quotas is exceeded, allowing the company to take action as needed.

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.

Technology to use is a VPC endpoint - "A VPC endpoint enables private connections between your VPC and supported AWS services and VPC endpoint services powered by AWS PrivateLink. AWS PrivateLink is a technology that enables you to privately access services by using private IP addresses. Traffic between your VPC and the other service does not leave the Amazon network." S3 is an example of a gateway endpoint. We want to see services in AWS while not leaving the VPC.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the functionality of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and regions with a single operation. Using a stack set, the SysOps administrator can manage deployments across different regions and accounts within AWS Organizations efficiently.

Setting up StackSets: First, define your CloudFormation template that describes all the resources that need to be deployed across the regions. Store this template in an S3 bucket accessible by the central administration account.

Service-Managed Permissions: When creating a stack set, select the option for service-managed permissions if you are using AWS Organizations. This allows AWS CloudFormation to automatically set up the necessary permissions in the target accounts.

Deploying the Stack Set: From the central administration account, create the stack set and specify the target accounts and regions. CloudFormation will then ensure that the resources defined in the template are instantiated in each of the specified regions and accounts.

This method simplifies management and ensures consistency of infrastructure across multiple regions and accounts, leveraging the organizational units in AWS Organizations for centralized governance.

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

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

Step Scaling Policy:

Step scaling policies allow you to define scaling actions based on different levels of CloudWatch alarms.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2 Auto Scaling.

Select your Auto Scaling group.

Create or edit a scaling policy and choose "Step scaling."

Define different steps based on CloudWatch alarm thresholds (e.g., CPU usage or request count).

Configure larger adjustments for higher thresholds and smaller adjustments for lower thresholds.

Example Configuration:

For CPU > 80%, increase capacity by 4 instances.

For CPU > 60%, increase capacity by 2 instances.

For CPU > 40%, increase capacity by 1 instance.

Objective:

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

Using Service Control Policies (SCPs):

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

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

Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Open the AWS Organizations console.

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

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "ec2:RunInstances",

"Resource": "*",

"Condition": {

"StringNotEquals": {

"aws:RequestedRegion": [

"us-east-1",

"us-west-2"

]

}

}

}

]

}

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

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

AWS References:

Service Control Policies (SCPs):SCP Best Practices

Restricting EC2 Regions with SCP:SCP Examples

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

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

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

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

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

AWS Compute Optimizer provides recommendations for optimizing the performance and cost of your AWS resources, including Lambda functions.

Steps:

Enable AWS Compute Optimizer:

Open the AWS Compute Optimizer console.

Choose "Get started".

Enable Compute Optimizer for your account.

View Lambda Function Recommendations:

After enabling Compute Optimizer, allow some time for data collection and analysis.

Navigate to the "Lambda Function Recommendations" section in the Compute Optimizer console.

Review the recommendations for your Lambda functions, which may include adjustments to memory size or other configurations to improve performance and reduce costs.

Export Recommendations:

In the Compute Optimizer console, you can export the recommendations to a CSV file for further analysis and action.

References:

AWS Compute Optimizer

Optimizing Lambda Function Configurations

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

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Select the RDS Instance:

In the navigation pane, choose Databases.

Select the database instance that you want to modify.

Modify the Instance:

Choose the Modify button.

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

Choose the appropriate instance class and storage settings if needed.

Apply Changes:

Review your settings, and then choose Continue.

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

Review and Confirm:

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

References:

Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance

Multi-AZ Deployments

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

Enable Detailed Monitoring:

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

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.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Ensure all users in the organization have read-level access to a specific S3 bucket.

The data should not be accessible outside the organization.

Analyze the Requirements:

Grant read access to users within the organization.

Prevent access from outside the organization.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Specify "*" as the principal and PrincipalOrgId as a condition.

This grants access to all AWS principals but restricts it to those within the specified organization using the PrincipalOrgId condition.

Option B: Specify all account numbers as the principal.

This is impractical for a large organization and requires constant updates if accounts are added or removed.

Option C: Specify PrincipalOrgId as the principal.

The PrincipalOrgId condition must be used within a policy, not as a principal.

Option D: Specify the organization's management account as the principal.

This grants access only to the management account, not to all users within the organization.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Using "*" as the principal with the PrincipalOrgId condition ensures all users within the organization have the required access while preventing external access.

References:

Amazon S3 Bucket Policies

AWS Organizations Policy Examples

Using "*" as the principal with the PrincipalOrgId condition efficiently grants read access to the S3 bucket for all users within the organization.

To control the production account efficiently, the most operationally efficient solution is to create a service control policy (SCP) and apply it to the production OU. SCPs allow you to manage permissions for AWS Organizations at the organizational unit (OU) or account level.

Service Control Policies (SCPs):

SCPs are a type of policy that can restrict what services and actions can be used in the accounts within an OU.

They are applied at the organizational unit level and provide a way to enforce corporate policies across multiple AWS accounts.

Steps to Implement:

Navigate to the AWS Organizations console.

Create a new SCP that specifies the allowed or denied services and actions.

Apply the SCP to the production OU.

References:

AWS Organizations SCPs

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.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_policies_scps.html

If you're using AWS Organizations, check the service control policies for any statements that explicitly deny Amazon S3 access. In particular, check the service control policies for statements denying the s3:PutBucketPolicy action. https://aws.amazon.com/tw/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/s3-access-denied-bucket-policy/

AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet. This service is designed to work seamlessly with Chef recipes, making it the most operationally efficient solution for continuing to use existing Chef recipes after migrating applications to AWS.

Creating an OpsWorks Stack:

Open the AWS OpsWorks console at AWS OpsWorks Console.

Create a new stack and select Chef as the configuration management engine.

Adding Layers:

Add layers to the stack that represent different parts of your application. Each layer can have its own set of Chef recipes.

Assign instances to these layers as needed.

Deploying Chef Recipes:

Upload your existing Chef recipes to the OpsWorks stack.

Configure the layers to use these recipes during setup, deployment, and other lifecycle events.

References:

AWS OpsWorks

Working with Stacks

AWS Backup provides a centralized way to manage backups across AWS services. Here's how to implement the required backup strategy with minimal administrative effort:

Create Backup Plans: Set up different backup plans in AWS Backup, each configured for a specific backup frequency—daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.

Set Retention Periods: For each backup plan, configure the retention settings to align with the required retention durations: 6 days, 4 weeks, 11 months, and 7 years respectively.

Tag Resources: Apply tags to each EC2 and RDS resource that needs to be backed up. This allows for the automated inclusion of these resources in the respective backup plans based on their tags.

Assign Resources to Backup Plans: Use the tags to define which resources are included in each backup plan, ensuring that all necessary resources are backed up according to the defined schedules and retention policies.

AWS Documentation Reference:More details on setting up and managing AWS Backup can be found here: AWS Backup.

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.

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 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.

When users report that old content is still appearing on the website after modifying files in an S3 bucket used by CloudFront, creating a CloudFront invalidation is the best solution.

CloudFront Invalidation:

Invalidation is the process of removing objects from the CloudFront cache before they expire.

This ensures that the updated content is served to the users.

Creating an Invalidation:

Open the CloudFront console.

Select the distribution and go to the "Invalidations" tab.

Create a new invalidation and specify the paths of the updated files.

References:

Invalidating Files in Amazon CloudFront

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully managed native Microsoft Windows file system that supports the SMB protocol and Windows ACLs, ensuring compatibility with existing applications and processes. Using a Multi-AZ deployment ensures high availability by providing automatic failover to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.

Create Amazon FSx for Windows File Server:

Open the Amazon FSx console at Amazon FSx Console.

Choose Create file system.

Select Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, then click Next.

Configure File System Settings:

In the File system details section, provide the necessary details such as Deployment type, Storage capacity, and Throughput capacity.

Select Multi-AZ deployment to ensure high availability.

Choose the Windows authentication method, either AWS Managed Microsoft AD or Self-managed Microsoft AD.

Network & Security Configuration:

Select the VPC, subnet, and security groups to attach to the file system.

Ensure subnets are in different Availability Zones for Multi-AZ configuration.

Review and Create:

Review the settings and click Create file system.

Access the File System:

Once the file system is created, you can map the network drive using the provided DNS name and manage permissions using Windows ACLs.

References:

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server Documentation

Creating a Multi-AZ File System

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

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

Immutable Deployment:

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

Rolling with Additional Batch:

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

How to Configure Deployment Policies:

Open Elastic Beanstalk Console:

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

Update Environment Configuration:

Select the environment you want to configure.

Go to Configuration and then Rolling updates and deployments.

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

References:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk Deployment Policies

Managing and Configuring Environments

If a user is unable to connect to an EC2 instance via RDP, the issue could be related to network ACLs or route table configurations.

Network ACL Blocking Traffic:

A network ACL (NACL) associated with the bastion's subnet might be blocking traffic on port 3389 (RDP).

Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Network ACLs.

Check the inbound and outbound rules for the NACL associated with the subnet. Ensure that port 3389 is allowed.

Route Table Missing Route to Internet Gateway:

The subnet's route table may not have a route to the internet gateway, which is necessary for internet connectivity.

Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Route Tables.

Check the route table associated with the subnet. Ensure there is a route with destination 0.0.0.0/0 pointing to the internet gateway (igw-xxxxxxxx).

Ensuring proper configuration of network ACLs and route tables will enable the required internet connectivity for RDP access.

References:

Network ACLs

Route Tables

To prevent accounts from leaving an AWS Organization, an SCP that denies the LeaveOrganization action should be applied to the root organizational unit (OU).

Service Control Policy (SCP): By denying LeaveOrganization, member accounts are restricted from leaving the organization.

Root OU Application: Applying this policy at the root level ensures that no account in the organization can bypass it.

The RemoveAccountFromOrganization action pertains to removing an account by the organization’s management account rather than preventing member accounts from leaving. AWS Config’s account-part-of-organizations rule does not enforce this restriction but only monitors it.

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.

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 resolve the issue of an AWS Lambda function unable to connect to a database that has been moved to a private subnet, the Lambda function needs to be connected to the same VPC as the database. This is done by configuring the Lambda function with VPC access. This involves specifying the VPC, subnets, and security groups for the Lambda function so that it can communicate with the database using its private endpoint. Option B is correct as it directly addresses the issue without compromising security. AWS documentation on configuring VPC access for Lambda provides guidance on this setup Configuring VPC Access for Lambda.

To efficiently manage application deployments and updates on Amazon EC2 instances within an Auto Scaling group, along with ensuring security through vulnerability scans:

EC2 Image Builder: This AWS service automates the creation, management, and deployment of customized, secure, and up-to-date "golden" server images. By using EC2 Image Builder, you can automate the installation of software, patches, and security configurations.

Custom Recipes: Define a custom recipe in EC2 Image Builder that includes steps to install the application and its dependencies. Additionally, configure the recipe to perform vulnerability scans as part of the image creation process.

Automated Pipeline: Set up an Image Builder pipeline that triggers on a regular schedule (e.g., weekly) to incorporate the latest application updates and security patches into the AMI. The new AMIs can then be automatically used by the Auto Scaling group to launch updated and secure instances.

This solution not only streamlines the management of application deployments and updates but also ensures that all instances launched by the Auto Scaling group meet the latest security and compliance standards, minimizing operational overhead and enhancing security.

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

Elastic Load Balancing provides access logs that capture detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer. Each log contains information such as the time the request was received, the client's IP address, latencies, request paths, and server responses. You can use these access logs to analyze traffic patterns and troubleshoot issues.

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

Objective:

Receive a notification when both disk space usage and DiskReadOps exceed threshold values.

Composite Alarms:

Composite alarms allow combining multiple metric alarms into a single alarm. Notifications are triggered only when all conditions are met.

Steps to Implement:

Step 1: Install the CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instances and configure it to monitor disk space.

Step 2: Create individual metric alarms:

One for disk space usage.

One for the DiskReadOps metric.

Step 3: Create a composite alarm:

Include both metric alarms.

Configure the composite alarm to send notifications to the SNS topic when both conditions are met.

AWS References:

Composite Alarms in CloudWatch:Creating Composite Alarms

CloudWatch Agent Installation:Install CloudWatch Agent

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option B: This would trigger notifications for either condition, not both simultaneously.

Option C: EBSByteBalance% is unrelated to free disk space.

Option D: Detailed monitoring is not required for composite alarms.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

Analyze the Requirements:

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

Evaluate the Options:

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

CLI configuration is not relevant to using a presigned URL.

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

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

Option C: A bucket policy is required.

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

Option D: The object has already been uploaded.

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

References:

Amazon S3 Presigned URLs

IAM Policies for Amazon S3

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

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

Requesting a Quota Increase:

Open the AWS Service Quotas console in the participant account.

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

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

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

Quota Management in AWS Organizations:

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

Each participant account must manage its own quotas independently.

References:

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

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.

To upgrade the instance type of a Memcached cluster in Amazon ElastiCache due to increased usage and the need for more memory:

ModifyCacheCluster API: Utilize the ModifyCacheCluster API call. This API allows you to change various settings of an existing cache cluster, including the instance type, which is referred to as cacheNodeType.

Instance Upgrade: Specify a new, larger cacheNodeType that provides more memory. This upgrade will involve a brief interruption as nodes are replaced with the larger type, but it is necessary to accommodate the increased load and memory requirements.

Cluster Availability: Ensure that the Memcached cluster is configured for minimal downtime during this change. The upgrade process is handled by ElastiCache, and the new nodes will join the cluster with more memory capacity.

This approach enables you to effectively scale up the resources available to your Memcached cluster, enhancing its performance and capacity to handle larger workloads.

To support a wide variety of cloud storage workloads, Amazon EFS offers two performance modes, General Purpose mode and Max I/O mode. You choose a file system's performance mode when you create it, and it cannot be changed. If the PercentIOLimit percentage returned was at or near 100 percent for a significant amount of time during the test, your application should use the Max I/O performance mode. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/performance.html

Implement an Amazon CloudFront distribution to offload the traffic from the Auto Scaling group does not breach the requirement of no changes in the network infrastructure. Reason is that cloudfront is a distribution that allows you to distribute content using a worldwide network of edge locations that provide low latency and high data transfer speeds. It plug in to existing setup, not changes to it.

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

Amazon Aurora:

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

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

Aurora Replicas:

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

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

Implementation Steps:

Migrate the MySQL database to an Amazon Aurora DB cluster.

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

References:

Amazon Aurora

High Availability for Amazon Aurora

To prevent Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Multi-AZ DB instances from running low on disk space, enabling storage auto-scaling is the most straightforward solution. This feature automatically adjusts the storage capacity of the DB instance when it approaches its limit, thus preventing the database from running out of space and triggering CloudWatch alarms. Option C is the least intrusive and most effective solution as it only requires a modification to the existing CloudFormation template to enable auto-scaling on storage. For reference, see AWS documentation on managing RDS storage automatically Managing RDS Storage Automatically.

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

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

Recycle Bin:

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

Creating a Retention Rule:

Open the Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager console.

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

References:

Amazon EBS Recycle Bin

The most operationally efficient way to monitor state changes in EC2 instances and notify the operations team is by using Amazon EventBridge. EventBridge can be configured with a rule that listens for state change events from EC2 instances. These events can then be directed to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic, which will distribute the notification to the relevant parties. This solution does not require deploying additional scripts or functions, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. Option B is correct. For more details, see the Amazon EventBridge documentation Amazon EventBridge.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Elastic Load Balancer.

How should a SysOps administrator meet these requirements?

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

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

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

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

Answer: D

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

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

Objective:

Address high and unpredictable CPU usage by automating the scaling of resources.

Using Auto Scaling Policies:

Scaling policies can dynamically adjust the number of instances in an Auto Scaling group based on metrics like CPU utilization.

Steps to Implement:

Step 1: Increase the maximum capacity of the Auto Scaling group (e.g., from 2 to a higher value like 5).

Step 2: Create a scaling policy:

Use a target tracking scaling policy with a threshold of 80% CPU utilization.

When the CPU usage exceeds 80%, additional instances will be launched automatically.

Step 3: Monitor scaling behavior and adjust thresholds or capacities if necessary.

AWS References:

Target Tracking Scaling Policies:Scaling Policies for Auto Scaling Groups

Dynamic Scaling Best Practices:Dynamic Scaling in Auto Scaling

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Deploying additional instances outside the Auto Scaling group is not scalable and defeats the purpose of automation.

Option B: Switching to burstable instances does not resolve the issue since the workload is CPU-bound and consistently high.

Option D: Increasing desired capacity does not account for the unpredictability of peak periods, as it sets a static scaling behavior rather than dynamic.

An SCP applied to the application OU that denies ec2:RunInstances when the CostCenter-Project tag is missing ensures that all accounts in the OU adhere to the tagging policy. This approach is centralized and applies only to the intended OU.

Using the interface endpoint, applications in your on-premises data center can easily query S3 buckets over AWS Direct Connect or Site-to-Site VPN. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/choosing-your-vpc-endpoint-strategy-for-amazon-s3/

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

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

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

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

AWS Compute Optimizer

AWS Compute Savings Plans.

Cluster placement groups are designed to place EC2 instances close together within a single Availability Zone, which reduces latency and maximizes network performance between instances.

Cluster Placement Group: Reduces network latency by keeping instances in close proximity within the same hardware, providing low-latency, high-throughput networking.

High Network Performance: Ideal for latency-sensitive applications, especially those running within a clustered architecture.

Spread placement groups are designed for high availability rather than low latency. Jumbo frames may improve throughput but not significantly reduce latency.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/PostgreSQL.Concepts.General.SSL.htm

Amazon RDS supports SSL/TLS encryption for connections to the database, and this can be enabled by creating a custom parameter group and setting the rds.force_ssl parameter to 1. This will ensure that all connections to the database are encrypted, protecting the data and maintaining compliance with the company's requirements.l

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

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.

Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics allows you to create canaries that monitor your endpoints and APIs. Canaries are scripts that run on a schedule to check your application’s availability and performance, and can detect issues before your customers do.

Create a CloudWatch Synthetics Canary:

Open the Amazon CloudWatch console at Amazon CloudWatch Console.

Navigate to Synthetics and choose Create Canary.

Use the CloudWatch Synthetics Recorder plugin to generate the script for the canary run.

Configure the Canary:

Define the schedule for the canary to run (e.g., every minute).

Specify the endpoint URL of the website.

Configure the canary to check for specific errors or issues based on your requirements.

Create Alarms:

Set up CloudWatch alarms to notify you when the canary detects issues. You can configure the alarm to send notifications via Amazon SNS.

References:

Creating and Managing Canaries

CloudWatch Synthetics

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Each Lambda function generates 1 GB of log data daily in its own CloudWatch Logs log group.

The security team needs a count of application errors, grouped by type, across all log groups.

Analyze the Requirements:

Aggregate and analyze log data across multiple log groups.

Count and group errors by type.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Perform a CloudWatch Logs Insights query.

CloudWatch Logs Insights allows querying and analyzing log data.

The stats command and count function can aggregate and count errors across log groups.

Option B: Perform a CloudWatch Logs search with groupby and count.

CloudWatch Logs search does not support these functions; Logs Insights is needed for advanced queries.

Option C: Perform an Amazon Athena query.

Athena can query data in S3 but is not directly applicable to CloudWatch Logs.

Option D: Perform an Amazon RDS query.

RDS queries are for database data, not applicable to log data in CloudWatch.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: CloudWatch Logs Insights is designed for querying and analyzing log data, making it the appropriate choice for counting and grouping errors.

References:

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights

CloudWatch Logs Insights provides powerful querying capabilities to aggregate and analyze log data, including counting and grouping errors.

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

The problem requires modifying the inbound SSH rule to restrict access to a list of trusted IPs instead of deleting it entirely. AWS Config rules can be configured with automatic remediation actions using either Systems Manager Automation runbooks or Lambda functions. However, AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks are often more appropriate for managing infrastructure changes like security group modifications because they are reusable, parameterized, and easier to audit.

Create a Systems Manager Automation runbook: This runbook will contain steps to add or modify the existing security group rule, allowing SSH access only from the specified IP addresses.

Update the AWS Config rule: Modify the Config rule to call this new runbook for its automatic remediation. This will prevent deletion of the SSH rule and instead update it based on the IP list.

To allow AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager to access your EC2 instances, you need to attach an IAM instance profile with the necessary permissions to the instances.

Create IAM Role for Systems Manager:

Open the IAM console at IAM Console.

Create a new role and choose EC2 as the trusted entity.

Attach the AmazonEC2RoleforSSM managed policy to the role.

Attach IAM Role to Instances:

Open the Amazon EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

Select the instances that you want to manage with Systems Manager.

Choose Actions, then Instance Settings, and select Attach/Replace IAM Role.

Attach the IAM role you created.

This setup ensures that Systems Manager has the necessary permissions to manage the instances.

References:

Setting Up AWS Systems Manager

Create an IAM Instance Profile for Systems Manager

Problem Analysis:

The CloudWatch agent configuration is inconsistent across instances.

A centralized and automated mechanism is needed for consistent configuration management.

Action: Store Configuration in Systems Manager Parameter Store:

Parameter Store allows for secure, centralized storage of configuration files.

Steps:

Open Systems Manager Console.

Navigate to Parameter Store.

Create a parameter with the CloudWatch agent configuration file content.

Action: Use State Manager to Apply Configuration:

Systems Manager State Manager automates repetitive tasks such as ensuring consistent configuration.

Steps:

Open State Manager Console.

Create an association using the AmazonCloudWatch-ManageAgent document.

Configure the document to use Parameter Store as the configuration source.

Use tags (key = "OS", value = "Windows") to target the Windows EC2 instances.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: Using an S3 bucket for configuration storage lacks integration with Systems Manager for automation.

B: OpsCenter is for managing operational issues, not configuration files.

E: S3 as a configuration source is valid but introduces additional operational complexity compared to Parameter Store.

References:

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store

AWS State Manager Documentation

CloudWatch Agent Management

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

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

Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

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

Steps to Implement:

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

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

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

References:

Route 53 Resolver Endpoints

Creating an Outbound Endpoint

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

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

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

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

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

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

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

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

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

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

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

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

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

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

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

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

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

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

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

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

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

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

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

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

}

]

}

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

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

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

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

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

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

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