SOA-C02 Practice Exam Questions with Answers AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Certification

The most likely reason for being unable to authenticate an AWS CLI call to an AWS service is the absence of an access key. AWS CLI requires an access key and secret key to authenticate requests.

Access Key and Secret Key:

AWS uses access keys to identify and authenticate the identity of the requester.

Ensure that the AWS CLI is configured with a valid access key and secret key.

Check AWS CLI Configuration:

Use the aws configure command to set up the AWS CLI with the necessary credentials.

Verify that the ~/.aws/credentials file contains the correct access key and secret key.

References:

AWS CLI Configuration

Managing Access Keys

CloudWatch Metrics Explorer is a powerful tool for creating dynamic dashboards based on tags. This method is efficient for monitoring Auto Scaling groups:

Use Metrics Explorer: Navigate to the Metrics Explorer in the CloudWatch console and select the CPUUtilization metric. Use the aws:autoscaling:groupName tag to filter the metric, ensuring that it only shows data for EC2 instances within the specified Auto Scaling group.

Create Visualization: Configure the visualization settings as needed and add it to a CloudWatch dashboard.

Monitor Automatically: This setup will automatically update to include metrics from new EC2 instances that join the Auto Scaling group, without any need for manual intervention or scripting.

AWS Documentation Reference:You can learn more about using Metrics Explorer here: Using CloudWatch Metrics Explorer.

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

To automatically shut down EC2 instances with low CPU utilization:

Create CloudWatch Alarms:

Go to the CloudWatch console and create an alarm for each EC2 instance.

Set the alarm to monitor the CPUUtilization metric with a period of 1 hour and a threshold of 10%.

To enable troubleshooting of EC2 instances marked as unhealthy before they are terminated by the Auto Scaling group, you can use lifecycle hooks:

Add a Lifecycle Hook: Configure a lifecycle hook in the Auto Scaling group. This hook will hold the instance in a "wait" state either when it launches or terminates (in this case, when it's about to be terminated due to health check failure).

Integration with Amazon EventBridge (CloudWatch Events): Set up the lifecycle hook to send an event to EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) when an instance is in the termination lifecycle state.

Invoke Lambda Function: Configure EventBridge to trigger an AWS Lambda function when it receives the termination lifecycle event from the Auto Scaling group. This Lambda function can then perform necessary diagnostics, logging, or data capture activities on the instance before it's terminated.

This configuration allows the SysOps administrator to perform necessary investigations on why instances were marked unhealthy before they are automatically replaced, offering a chance to diagnose and potentially correct underlying issues.

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

To address the performance issues of a CPU-heavy application running on a t2.large EC2 instance, the best course of action is to upgrade to a compute-optimized instance. Compute-optimized instances provide a higher ratio of CPU resources compared to memory, making them ideal for applications that require high CPU performance.

Upgrade to a Compute-Optimized Instance:

Identify a suitable compute-optimized instance type, such as the c5.large, which offers better CPU performance compared to the t2.large.

Stop the current EC2 instance and change the instance type to the chosen compute-optimized instance.

To ensure all EC2 instances upload build artifacts through a single IP address:

A: Move all of the EC2 instances behind a NAT gateway. Provide the IP address of the NAT gateway to the third-party service for the allow list. A NAT gateway enables instances in a private subnet to connect to services outside AWS (such as a third-party service) but prevents the internet from initiating connections with those instances. Using a NAT gateway standardizes all outgoing traffic to use a single IP address. More information on NAT gateways can be found in AWS documentation NAT Gateways.

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

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

Update Auto Scaling Group:

In the navigation pane, choose Auto Scaling Groups.

Select the Auto Scaling group that you want to modify.

Choose Edit.

Add Multiple Availability Zones:

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

Ensure that the selected subnets belong to different Availability Zones.

Save Changes:

Save the configuration changes to update the Auto Scaling group.

References:

Distributing Instances Across Multiple Availability Zones

Auto Scaling Groups

The requirement is to automate recovery if the service crashes on any of the EC2 instances.

Option A: Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instances. Configure the CloudWatch agent to monitor the service. Set the CloudWatch action to restart if the service health check fails . This is a valid solution because the CloudWatch agent can be configured to monitor the service and take action (restart the service) if the health check fails .

Option C: Tag the EC2 instances. Use AWS Systems Manager State Manager to create an association that uses the AWS-RunShellScript document. Configure the association command with a script that checks if the service is running and that starts the service if the service is not running. For targets, specify the EC2 instance tag. Schedule the association to run every 5 minutes678. This is a valid solution because AWS Systems Manager State Manager can be used to maintain a consistent state of the EC2 instances. It can run a script to check if the service is running and start the service if it’s not running678.

Option B: Tag the EC2 instances. Create an AWS Lambda function that uses AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to log in to the tagged EC2 instances and restart the service. Schedule the Lambda function to run every 5 minutes . This is not a valid solution because AWS Lambda functions are not designed to log in to EC2 instances and restart services. They are used for running serverless applications.

Option D: Update the EC2 user data that is specified in the Auto Scaling group’s launch template to include a script that runs on a cron schedule every 5 minutes131415. This is not a valid solution because user data scripts are run only during the launch of an EC2 instance. They are not designed to run on a schedule.

Option E: Update the EC2 user data that is specified in the Auto Scaling group’s launch template to ensure that the service runs during startup. Redeploy all the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group with the updated launch template131416. This is not a valid solution because while user data can be used to ensure that the service runs during startup, it does not provide a solution for when the service crashes after the EC2 instance has started.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudtrail-log-file-validation-intro.html

"When you enable log file integrity validation, CloudTrail creates a hash for every log file that it delivers. Every hour, CloudTrail also creates and delivers a file that references the log files for the last hour and contains a hash of each. This file is called a digest file. Validated log files are invaluable in security and forensic investigations"

To securely allow a security administrator to review the VPC configuration of developer AWS accounts, the best approach is to create a cross-account IAM role with read-only access to VPC resources. Here’s how to do it:

Create IAM Policy:

In each developer account, create an IAM policy with read-only permissions "Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": [

"ec2:DescribeVpcs",

"ec2:DescribeSubnets",

"ec2:DescribeRouteTables",

"ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",

"ec2:DescribeNetworkAcls"

],

"Resource": "*"

}

]

}

Create Cross-Account IAM Role:

Create an IAM role in each developer account, assign the read-only policy to the role, and allow the security administrator's account to assume the role.

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::security-admin-account-id:root"

},

"Action": "sts:AssumeRole"

}

]

}

Assume the Role:

The security administrator can assume the role from their own account using the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI.

aws sts assume-role --role-arn arn:aws:iam::developer-account-id:role/role-name --role-session-name security-admin-session

Review VPC Configuration:

After assuming the role, the security administrator can review the VPC configuration using the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI with the temporary credentials.

References:

IAM Policies and Roles

Cross-Account Access

AWS CLI Assume Role

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.

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

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

Minimize Forwarding of Cookies, Query Strings, and Headers:

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

Navigate to your CloudFront distribution in the AWS Management Console.

In the Behaviors tab, edit the cache behavior.

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

Increase Time to Live (TTL) Settings:

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

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

References:

Cache Behavior Settings

Optimizing Cache Behavior

Using an RDS read replica will improve the performance and availability of the RDS instance by offloading read queries to the replica. This will also ensure that the reporting job completes in a timely manner and does not affect the performance of other queries that might be running on the RDS instance. Additionally, updating the reporting job to query the reader endpoint will ensure that all read queries are directed to the read replica.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create an S3 Batch Operations Job:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to Batch Operations and create a new job.

Specify the Operation:

Choose the operation to replace all object tags.

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

Execute the Job:

Review the job configuration and submit it.

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

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

References:

Amazon S3 Batch Operations

Tagging Amazon S3 Objects

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

Target Tracking Scaling Policy:

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

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

Scheduled Scaling Policies:

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

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

Select your Auto Scaling group and choose Actions > Edit.

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

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

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

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

References:

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

Scheduled Scaling

To make the production environment highly available in accordance with company policy:

Database Migration: Move the MariaDB database from a single EC2 instance to Amazon RDS for MariaDB configured for Multi-AZ. This setup ensures high availability of the database with synchronous replication to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.

Application Scalability: Deploy the application on EC2 instances within an Auto Scaling group. Configure the Auto Scaling group to operate across multiple Availability Zones to ensure that the application remains available even if one zone becomes unavailable.

Load Balancing: Place the EC2 instances behind an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). The load balancer will distribute incoming application traffic across the multiple, geographically dispersed EC2 instances, further enhancing the availability and fault tolerance of the application.

This solution leverages AWS managed services to increase the reliability and availability of both the application and database layers, adhering to best practices for deploying critical production environments on AWS.

To centrally store traffic logs for a website delivered through Amazon CloudFront and ensure all data is encrypted at rest, using an S3 bucket with default server-side encryption is the optimal solution.

Create an S3 Bucket:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Create a new S3 bucket for storing the logs.

Enable Default Encryption:

Select the S3 bucket, navigate to Properties, and enable Default encryption.

Choose AES-256 for server-side encryption.

Configure CloudFront Logging:

Open the Amazon CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Select the CloudFront distribution and navigate to Edit.

In the logging section, enable logging and specify the S3 bucket created for log storage.

This setup ensures that all logs are encrypted at rest using AES-256 and stored centrally in an S3 bucket.

References:

Amazon CloudFront Access Logs

Amazon S3 Default Encryption

Aurora Auto Scaling:

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

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the Aurora cluster.

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

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

Set the target value for the DatabaseConnections metric to 195.

Define the minimum and maximum number of replicas.

Save the configuration.

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

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.

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 achieve a limited rollout of the new website to 20% of the company's customers using Amazon Route 53, a weighted routing policy is the most appropriate solution.

Weighted Routing Policy:

Weighted routing lets you associate multiple resources with a single domain name and choose how much traffic is routed to each resource.

Configuration:

Open the Route 53 console.

Select the hosted zone and choose "Create Record Set."

Create two records for your domain:

One record for the original resource with a weight of 80.

Another record for the new resource with a weight of 20.

References:

Amazon Route 53 Weighted Routing

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

Using AWS CloudFormation stack sets allows you to manage CloudWatch alarms across multiple accounts efficiently:

Create Stack Set: Use a CloudFormation template that defines the required CloudWatch alarms and configures them to publish alerts to an SNS topic.

Specify SNS Topic: Ensure the SNS topic is located in the logging account and has the necessary permissions set to receive publications from all accounts in the organization.

Deploy Across Organization: Implement the stack set across all accounts, ensuring centralized management and standardized deployment.

AWS Documentation Reference:Learn more about deploying resources with CloudFormation StackSets: Working with AWS CloudFormation StackSets.

To implement a highly available solution that provides the functionality to use a minimum of three On-Demand instances and three Spot instances when prices are at a certain threshold, defining an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group using a launch template is the most suitable solution. This approach minimizes operational overhead by consolidating configuration and management tasks.

Define a Launch Template:

Use the provided AMI in the launch template.

Configure the instance type, key pair, security groups, and other necessary parameters.

Create an Auto Scaling Group:

Use the launch template for the Auto Scaling group.

Specify a desired capacity of three On-Demand instances.

Configure the Auto Scaling group to use mixed instances policies, which allow you to specify a combination of On-Demand and Spot instances.

Set the maximum price for Spot instances in the launch template to ensure that Spot instances are used only when their prices are below the specified threshold.

Configuration Steps:

Open the EC2 console and navigate to "Launch Templates."

Create a new launch template with the necessary configurations.

Navigate to "Auto Scaling Groups" and create a new Auto Scaling group using the launch template.

Configure the desired capacity, minimum capacity, and maximum capacity.

Under "Advanced Options," specify the mixed instances policy and set the maximum price for Spot instances.

References:

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Launch Templates

Auto Scaling Mixed Instances Policies

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

Update AWS Account Name:

The AWS account name can only be changed by the root user of the account.

Steps:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console using the root user credentials.

Navigate to the "My Account" page.

Update the account name field and save the changes.

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.

Retain the Security Group:

When deleting a CloudFormation stack, you can specify resources to be retained instead of deleted.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudFormation and select the stack.

Choose to delete the stack.

In the deletion options, specify that the security group should be retained.

This will delete the stack but keep the security group, ensuring no impact on other applications.

To reduce costs effectively for jobs that are flexible in their scheduling and have a clear, predictable runtime:

Spot Instances with Defined Duration (Spot Blocks): Spot Instances offer significant discounts compared to On-Demand pricing. For workloads like the described jobs that have a predictable duration (slightly less than 2 hours), requesting Spot Instances with a defined duration (also known as Spot Blocks) is ideal. This option allows you to request Spot Instances guaranteed to not be terminated by AWS due to price changes for the duration specified.

Cost Efficiency: This method ensures that the instances will run for the duration required to complete the jobs without interruption, unless AWS experiences an exceptional shortage of capacity. The cost savings compared to On-Demand Instances can be substantial, especially for regular, predictable workloads.

Risk Mitigation: Although Spot Instances can be interrupted, using them with a defined duration reduces the risk of interruptions within the set time frame, making them suitable for jobs that can tolerate a restart in rare cases of interruption after the block time expires.

This strategy combines cost savings with the performance requirements of the jobs, making it an optimal choice for tasks that are not time-critical but need completion within a predictable timeframe.

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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/hosted-zones-private.html

To apply an existing Amazon Route 53 private hosted zone to a new VPC, the appropriate step is to associate the private hosted zone with the new VPC. This allows the resources within the VPC to use the custom DNS settings defined in the private hosted zone. Option A is the correct step to ensure that DNS queries from the new VPC are resolved using the specified private hosted zone. Detailed steps for this process can be found in the AWS Route 53 documentation on associating hosted zones with VPCs Associating Hosted Zones with VPCs.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

Continuously identify non-compliant resources.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a solution to monitor and enforce resource tagging compliance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: AWS CloudTrail.

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

Option B: Amazon Inspector.

Primarily used for security assessments, not resource tagging compliance.

Option C: AWS Config.

Monitors and evaluates the configurations of AWS resources.

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

Option D: AWS Systems Manager.

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

References:

AWS Config

Managing Resource Tag Compliance with AWS Config

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

STORAGE_FULL State:

When an RDS instance is in the STORAGE_FULL state, automated backups cannot be performed because there is insufficient storage available.

Steps to Resolve:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the DB instance.

Check the storage metrics to confirm the STORAGE_FULL state.

Increase the allocated storage for the DB instance to provide sufficient space for automated backups.

To remotely connect to the EC2 instance, the SysOps administrator must ensure that the security group allows inbound SSH traffic.

Modify the Security Group:

Navigate to the EC2 console.

Select the security group associated with the EC2 instance.

Add an inbound rule to allow SSH traffic (TCP port 22) from the SysOps administrator's IP address.

Example rule:

Type: SSH

Protocol: TCP

Port Range: 22

Source:

When setting up an AWS managed VPN connection and creating a customer gateway resource, if the customer gateway device resides behind a NAT device, you should use the public IP address of the NAT device. This is because the VPN connection from AWS will be established to the public IP address that AWS can reach.

Identify the Public IP Address of the NAT Device:

Determine the public IP address assigned to the NAT device in front of the customer gateway.

Create Customer Gateway Resource:

Navigate to the VPC console in the AWS Management Console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Customer Gateways" and then click "Create Customer Gateway".

Enter a name for the customer gateway.

For the "IP Address", enter the public IP address of the NAT device.

Configure VPN Connection:

Create a VPN connection by navigating to the "VPN Connections" section and clicking "Create VPN Connection".

Select the created customer gateway and complete the VPN setup wizard.

Update Routing and Configuration:

Ensure that the routing configurations on both the AWS side and the on-premises side are updated to route traffic through the VPN connection.

Configure the customer gateway device (behind the NAT) to accept traffic from the NAT device and route it appropriately.

References:

AWS Managed VPN Connections

Customer Gateway Resource

To record all S3 API activity, the SysOps administrator should create an AWS CloudTrail trail to log data events for all S3 objects. This solution provides comprehensive logging of all API activities at the object level within S3 buckets.

AWS CloudTrail:

CloudTrail allows you to log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure.

It records all API calls for Amazon S3 objects, providing a detailed history of changes made to S3 resources.

Configuration Steps:

Go to the CloudTrail console and create a new trail.

Enable data events and specify the S3 buckets to monitor.

CloudTrail will then record S3 object-level API operations such as GetObject, DeleteObject, and PutObject.

To implement a caching service while maintaining high availability for an Amazon RDS DB instance, the combination of Amazon ElastiCache for Redis and enabling Multi-AZ for the data store will meet these requirements.

Create an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis Data Store:

Redis is an in-memory data structure store that can be used as a database, cache, and message broker. It provides high availability through its replication feature.

Go to the ElastiCache console.

Choose "Create" and select "Redis."

Configure the Redis cluster with the required parameters.

Enable Multi-AZ for the Data Store:

Multi-AZ deployment provides enhanced availability and durability for Redis. In case of a failure, it automatically fails over to the replica node.

During the creation of the Redis cluster, enable Multi-AZ.

This ensures that there is a standby replica in another Availability Zone, providing high availability.

References:

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis

ElastiCache for Redis Multi-AZ

To ensure that the CloudFormation stack fails and rolls back if the process stalls, you should add a CreationPolicy with a timeout set to 4 hours to the CloudFormation template.

CreationPolicy:

The CreationPolicy attribute enables you to specify how long CloudFormation should wait for a resource to be created or updated.

You can use this to ensure that the instance completes its software installation process within a specified period.

Adding CreationPolicy to the Template:

Add the CreationPolicy attribute to the EC2 resource in the CloudFormation template.

Set the Timeout to 4 hours (PT4H).

Example:

Resources:

MyInstance:

Type: 'AWS::EC2::Instance'

Properties:

InstanceType: t2.micro

ImageId: ami-0abcdef1234567890

CreationPolicy:

ResourceSignal:

Count: 1

Timeout: PT4H

Ensuring Rollback:

If the instance does not signal success within the specified timeout, CloudFormation will mark the stack as failed and roll back the changes.

References:

AWS CloudFormation CreationPolicy

Using Creation Policies with CloudFormation

To enforce compliance with tagging policies in real-time:

AWS Config Setup: Implement an AWS Config rule to continuously monitor and evaluate EC2 instances for compliance with the tagging requirements. The required-tags managed rule can be configured to specifically check for the presence of a 'department' tag.

Automatic Remediation: Configure AWS Config to automatically execute the AWS-TerminateEC2Instance Systems Manager Automation document as a remediation action. This runbook will terminate any EC2 instance identified as noncompliant due to missing required tags.

Operational Efficiency: This setup allows for the enforcement of company tagging policies automatically and in near real-time, reducing the manual overhead of monitoring and ensuring compliance.

This method provides an efficient and effective solution to ensure that all EC2 instances meet the company's tagging requirements and that any noncompliant instances are dealt with promptly.

To receive email notifications when IAM CreateUser API calls are made, you need to create an EventBridge rule that captures these events from CloudTrail and then routes them to an SNS topic that has an email subscription.

Enable CloudTrail:

Ensure AWS CloudTrail is enabled in your account to log API activity. Go to AWS CloudTrail Console and enable it if not already enabled.

Create SNS Topic:

Open the Amazon SNS console at Amazon SNS Console.

Create a new topic and name it (e.g., IAMCreateUserNotifications).

Create an email subscription for the topic by entering your email address and confirming the subscription via the email received.

Create EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console at Amazon EventBridge Console.

Create a new rule and provide a name and description.

For the Event source, select AWS events or EventBridge Schema.

In Event pattern, select AWS services and choose CloudTrail as the service.

Specify the event type as AWS API Call via CloudTrail.

In the Event source dropdown, select IAM and in the API operation, enter CreateUser.

Add Target:

Add a target and select SNS topic.

Choose the SNS topic you created earlier (IAMCreateUserNotifications).

Configure Permissions:

Ensure that the EventBridge rule has permission to publish to the SNS topic.

This configuration will trigger an email notification whenever an IAM CreateUser API call is made, keeping you informed of new user creations.

References:

Creating an EventBridge Rule That Triggers on an Event

Setting Up a CloudWatch Event to Trigger SNS

Creating CloudTrail Event Rules

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

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 meet regulatory and compliance requirements for archiving sensitive data on Amazon S3 Glacier with no modifications allowed by any account, attaching a vault lock policy to an S3 Glacier vault and validating the vault lock policy after 24 hours is the most appropriate solution.

Vault Lock Policy:

Amazon S3 Glacier Vault Lock allows you to easily deploy and enforce compliance controls for individual S3 Glacier vaults via a lockable policy.

You can specify controls such as Write Once Read Many (WORM) in a vault lock policy and lock the policy from future edits.

Implementing Vault Lock:

Attach a vault lock policy to the S3 Glacier vault that contains the archived data.

Initiate the vault lock process, which involves providing a policy and locking it after a validation period of 24 hours.

Steps:

Open the S3 Glacier console.

Select the vault and configure a vault lock policy with the required compliance controls.

Use the InitiateVaultLock API to set the policy and start the lock process.

Validate and complete the lock process after 24 hours using the lock ID.

References:

Amazon S3 Glacier Vault Lock

Managing S3 Glacier Vault Lock Policies

Based on the attached policy, the following actions are allowed for the IAM user:

Allow Amazon RDS DescribeDBInstances Action:

The policy allows rds:Describe* actions on all resources without any condition, so the user can describe RDS instances in any region.

Example action:

rds:DescribeDBInstances

The issues experienced by users with legacy browsers typically stem from the SSL/TLS ciphers that are supported or enforced by the ALB. Modern security policies may exclude older ciphers that are necessary for compatibility with older browsers. Here’s how to resolve it:

Access the ALB Settings: Go to the AWS Management Console, navigate to the ALB settings, and locate the SSL negotiation configurations.

Modify Security Policy: Update the SSL/TLS security policy on the ALB to include ciphers that are compatible with legacy browsers. AWS provides predefined security policies, and some of these policies are designed to support older ciphers while still maintaining a level of security that complies with general best practices.

Apply Changes: Once the security policy is updated, the ALB will start using this new configuration, which should resolve compatibility issues with legacy browsers without needing to replace the SSL certificate or alter the infrastructure.

This solution maintains the operational efficiency of the setup and avoids the need for additional resources like a second ALB or new certificates.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the capability of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and AWS Regions

If a Lambda function is not being invoked by an Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) rule, the likely issue is a missing permission. The Lambda function needs permission to be invoked by the EventBridge rule.

Steps:

Add Permission to Lambda Function:

Open the AWS Lambda console.

Select your Lambda function.

Choose "Configuration" and then "Permissions".

Under the "Resource-based policy" section, add a policy that grants EventBridge permission to invoke your function.

Example policy:

json

Copy code

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"Service": "events.amazonaws.com"

},

"Action": "lambda:InvokeFunction",

"Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:function:FUNCTION_NAME",

"Condition": {

"ArnLike": {

"AWS:SourceArn": "arn:aws:events:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:rule/RULE_NAME"

}

}

}

]

}

Verify the EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console.

Select the rule that targets your Lambda function.

Ensure that the rule is correctly configured to match events and the target is your Lambda function.

References:

AWS Lambda Permissions Model

Amazon EventBridge Rules

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Share an AMI with other AWS accounts while ensuring it is encrypted with AWS KMS keys and accessible only to authorized accounts.

Analyze the Requirements:

Encrypt the AMI with a customer-managed key (CMK).

Share the AMI securely with specific AWS accounts.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Create a CMK and modify the key policy but do not create a copy of the AMI.

This does not re-encrypt the AMI with the CMK.

Option B: Create a CMK, modify the key policy, create a copy of the AMI, and specify the CMK.

This ensures the AMI is encrypted with the CMK and shared securely.

Option C: Create a CMK, modify the key policy, create a copy of the AMI, and make it public.

Making the AMI public does not meet the requirement of sharing with specific accounts only.

Option D: Modify the key policy of the AWS managed key and share the AMI.

AWS managed keys cannot have their key policies modified to add permissions for other accounts.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Creating a CMK, modifying the key policy, creating a copy of the AMI with the CMK, and specifying the permissions ensures the AMI is securely shared with specific AWS accounts.

References:

Copying an AMI

Creating and Managing Keys

Sharing AMIs

This solution ensures the AMI is encrypted with a customer-managed key and shared securely with the specified AWS accounts.

To generate a monthly report showing all S3 buckets and their compliance with the requirement to block public read access, the SysOps administrator can take the following steps:

Create an AWS Config Aggregator:

Create an AWS Config aggregator in an aggregator account. Use the organization as the source to aggregate AWS Config data across all accounts in the organization.

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

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

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

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

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

To address the issue of slow startup times during unexpected traffic surges, a warm pool for the Auto Scaling group is an effective solution:

Warm Pool Concept: A warm pool allows you to maintain a set of pre-initialized or partially initialized EC2 instances that are not actively serving traffic but can be quickly brought online when needed.

Management of Instances: Instances in the warm pool can be kept in a stopped state and then started much more quickly than launching new instances, as the machine-specific data caches are already created.

Scalability and Responsiveness: During a surge in traffic, especially unpredictable ones like those triggered by advertisements, instances from the warm pool can be rapidly activated to handle the increased load, ensuring that the application remains responsive without the typical delays associated with boot processes.

This method significantly reduces the time to scale out by utilizing pre-warmed instances, enhancing the application's ability to cope with sudden and substantial increases in traffic.

AWS Secrets Manager allows you to store, manage, and automatically rotate database credentials. This service is designed to be used for such requirements efficiently.

Store Database Credentials in AWS Secrets Manager:

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

Choose Store a new secret.

Select Credentials for RDS database and provide the database connection details and credentials.

Choose Next to configure the secret.

Configure Rotation:

Enable automatic rotation for the secret.

Set the rotation interval to 365 days.

Select or create a Lambda function that will be used to rotate the secret. AWS Secrets Manager provides a template for this function which can be customized if necessary.

Apply and Monitor:

Apply the changes and ensure that your application retrieves credentials from AWS Secrets Manager.

Monitor the rotation activity in Secrets Manager to ensure that the credentials are being rotated as expected.

References:

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating Your AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

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.

? 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.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

Analyze the Requirements:

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

Evaluate the Options:

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

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

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

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

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

This requires custom code, which is not preferred.

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

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

References:

AWS Config Rules

Automatic Remediation with AWS Config

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

To ensure that all traffic, including rejected traffic, is logged in VPC Flow Logs, you need to create a new flow log with a filter setting to capture all traffic.

Create a New Flow Log:

Open the VPC console.

Select the VPC for which you want to create the flow log.

Choose "Create flow log."

In the filter setting, select "All" to capture all traffic (accepted and rejected).

Flow Log Configuration:

Ensure that the destination for the flow logs (e.g., CloudWatch Logs or S3) is properly configured.

Specify the appropriate IAM role to allow VPC Flow Logs to publish logs to the destination.

References:

VPC Flow Logs

Creating a Flow Log

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

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

}

]

}

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

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

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

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

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

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

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Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

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

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

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

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

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

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

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

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

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

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

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

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

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

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

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

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

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

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