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

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

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.

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

Use EC2 Image Builder:

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

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

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.

The Auto Scaling group’s MixedInstancesPolicy allows:

A combination of On-Demand and Spot Instances

Configuration of instance weighting, priorities, and pricing policies

Maintenance of minimum required instance count

From ASG with Mixed Instances documentation:

You can use MixedInstancesPolicy in an Auto Scaling group to launch a mix of On-Demand and Spot Instances, while ensuring availability and cost optimization.

This option enables:

3 On-Demand baseline instances (to meet the minimum requirement)

Bursting with 3 Spot Instances when pricing is favorable

Auto healing and scaling

Content-MD5 Header:

The Content-MD5 header provides an MD5 checksum of the object being uploaded. Amazon S3 uses this checksum to verify the integrity of the object.

Steps:

When uploading an object to S3, calculate the MD5 checksum of the object.

Include the Content-MD5 header with the base64-encoded MD5 checksum value in the upload request.

This ensures that S3 can detect if the object is corrupted during the upload process.

PUT Object - Amazon Simple Storage Service

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.

AWS CloudFormation Stack Policies

Creating and Applying a Stack Policy

Amazon Route 53's failover routing policy allows you to route traffic to a primary resource unless it is unavailable, in which case Route 53 can fail over to a secondary resource.

Steps:

Open Route 53 Console:

Open the Amazon Route 53 console.

Create Alias Records:

In your hosted zone, create two alias records.

One alias record should point to the ALB in the primary region and the other to the ALB in the secondary region.

Set Failover Routing Policy:

For the alias record pointing to the primary ALB, set the routing policy to "Failover" and designate it as the primary.

For the alias record pointing to the secondary ALB, set the routing policy to "Failover" and designate it as the secondary.

Enable Health Checks:

Ensure that "Evaluate Target Health" is set to "Yes" for both alias records. This ensures that Route 53 will check the health of the ALBs before routing traffic.

Configure Health Checks for ALBs:

Ensure that each ALB has appropriate health checks configured to accurately report the health of the instances.

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.

AWS CloudFormation CreationPolicy

Using Creation Policies with CloudFormation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amazon RDS Proxy is a fully managed, highly available database proxy for Amazon RDS that helps improve the scalability, availability, and security of database applications. It allows applications to pool and share database connections, reducing the overhead associated with opening and closing connections, which can be particularly beneficial in scenarios with fluctuating workloads, such as those managed by Auto Scaling groups.

By implementing RDS Proxy, you can:

Reduce CPU and Memory Overhead:By managing a pool of connections, RDS Proxy reduces the number of active connections to the database, thereby decreasing the CPU and memory usage on the RDS instance.

Improve Application Scalability:RDS Proxy can handle a large number of simultaneous connections, making it easier to scale applications without overloading the database.

Enhance Availability:In the event of a database failover, RDS Proxy can automatically connect to a standby database instance, preserving application connections and reducing failover times.

Therefore, creating an RDS Proxy and configuring it to connect to the existing PostgreSQL database is the most effective solution to meet the company's requirements.

To minimize latency and reduce the load on an Amazon S3 bucket serving static web content, creating an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin is the most effective solution.

Amazon CloudFront:

CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches copies of your content at edge locations around the world, reducing latency by serving content closer to end users.

By using CloudFront, you can offload the read operations from your S3 bucket to the edge locations, reducing the load on the bucket.

Creating a CloudFront Distribution:

Go to the CloudFront console and click "Create Distribution."

Select "Web" as the delivery method and specify the S3 bucket as the origin.

Configure the distribution settings, including cache behaviors and restrictions if needed.

Once the distribution is deployed, update your application to use the CloudFront URL for accessing static content.

Amazon CloudFront

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

In AWS, each subnet has a fixed CIDR block, and the number of available IP addresses is determined by this block. For example, a /28 subnet provides 16 IP addresses, but 5 are reserved by AWS, leaving 11 usable IPs.

Since the subnet is already at capacity:

Create a New Subnet:

Choose a CIDR block that doesn't overlap with existing subnets.

Ensure it's within the VPC's CIDR range.

Launch additional EC2 instances in this new subnet.

This approach allows for the deployment of more instances without modifying existing subnets.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/egress-only-internet-gateway.html

To allow outbound IPv6 traffic from instances in your VPC to the internet, but prevent inbound traffic from the internet, you should use an egress-only internet gateway.

Egress-Only Internet Gateway:

An egress-only internet gateway is a horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC component that allows outbound communication over IPv6 from instances in your VPC to the internet and prevents the internet from initiating an IPv6 connection with your instances.

Routing Configuration:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

Select the route table associated with your VPC.

Add a route for IPv6 traffic (destination ::/0) to the egress-only internet gateway.

Egress-Only Internet Gateways

Routing for IPv6 Traffic

S3 Storage Lens and Lifecycle Policies:

Incomplete Multipart Upload Bytes Metric: This metric in S3 Storage Lens helps you identify the storage consumed by incomplete multipart uploads.

S3 Lifecycle Policies: Lifecycle policies allow you to automatically manage the lifecycle of objects, including deleting incomplete multipart uploads after a specified number of days.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to S3 and select the bucket.

Go to the "Metrics" tab and view the "Incomplete Multipart Upload Bytes" metric in the S3 Storage Lens dashboard.

To create a lifecycle policy:

Select the bucket.

Go to the "Management" tab.

Under "Lifecycle rules," click "Create lifecycle rule."

Define a rule name.

Choose "Multipart upload" and specify "Delete incomplete multipart uploads" after 7 days.

Save the rule.

AWS S3 Storage Lens

AWS S3 Lifecycle Policies

To ensure comprehensive and automated security scanning across multiple AWS accounts:

Security Hub Administrator Account: Designate one account within AWS Organizations as the Security Hub administrator account. This centralizes security findings management.

Automate Account Association: Configure Security Hub to automatically associate new accounts in the organization as member accounts. This ensures all new and existing accounts are continuously monitored under the same security policies.

Enable CIS Benchmark Scans: Within Security Hub, enable the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark standard. This automatically scans all member accounts against this set of security best practices and compliance standards.

This configuration provides an operationally efficient and scalable way to manage security and compliance across an extensive AWS environment, leveraging the native integration of AWS services.

To meet the requirements for data storage and retrieval, the most cost-effective solution is to store the data in S3 Standard for the first 90 days and set up an S3 Lifecycle rule to move the data to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 90 days.

S3 Standard:

Provides high availability and low latency access.

Suitable for frequently accessed data.

S3 Lifecycle Rule:

Set up a lifecycle rule to transition the data from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 90 days.

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval offers low-cost archival storage with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours, which meets the requirement of less than 5 hours.

Implementation Steps:

Open the S3 console.

Select the bucket and navigate to "Management" -> "Lifecycle rules."

Create a new lifecycle rule to transition objects from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 90 days.

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

S3 Lifecycle Configuration

To ensure that database credentials are never stored in plaintext and the password is rotated every 30 days, use AWS Secrets Manager:

Store Credentials in Secrets Manager:

Open the AWS Secrets Manager console.

Click on "Store a new secret."

Select "RDS database credentials" and provide the necessary details (username, password, database instance).

Configure the secret's name and details.

Enable Automatic Rotation:

During the secret creation process, enable automatic rotation.

Specify an automatic rotation schedule of 30 days.

Choose the Lambda function that Secrets Manager will use to update the database password automatically.

Update Lambda Functions:

Update each Lambda function to retrieve the database password from Secrets Manager.

Use the AWS SDK in your Lambda code to access Secrets Manager and fetch the secret value.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

Retrieve Secrets from AWS Lambda

To refer to resources created by the first CloudFormation template in the second template with minimal administrative effort, using the export and import functionality is the most efficient approach.

Exporting Outputs in the First Template:

In the first CloudFormation template, add an Outputs section to export the required values.

Use the Export field to specify the name of the exported value.

Example:

Outputs:

VPCID:

Description: The VPC ID

Value: !Ref MyVPC

Export:

Name: VPCID

Importing Values in the Second Template:

In the second CloudFormation template, use the Fn::ImportValue function to import the exported values from the first template.

Example:

Resources:

MySubnet:

Type: AWS::EC2::Subnet

Properties:

VpcId: !ImportValue VPCID

Efficiency and Best Practices:

This method ensures a clean separation of resources and allows easy reference to outputs from other stacks.

It simplifies the management and deployment process by leveraging CloudFormation's built-in export and import mechanisms.

AWS CloudFormation Exporting Stack Output Values

AWS CloudFormation Importing Values

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-automation.html

To ensure all EC2 instances have the required tags and terminate any noncompliant instances, AWS Config can be used to check the compliance, and AWS Systems Manager Automation can be invoked to take action on noncompliant instances.

Create AWS Config Rule:

Open the AWS Config console at AWS Config Console.

Create a new rule to check for the required tags on EC2 instances. Use the managed rule required-tags.

Create AWS Systems Manager Automation Document:

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

Create an Automation document to terminate noncompliant instances.

Link AWS Config Rule to Automation:

In the AWS Config console, configure the rule to invoke the Systems Manager Automation document if an instance is found to be noncompliant.

AWS Config Rules

AWS Systems Manager Automation

AWS Config Managed Rules

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.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

CloudWatch metrics show consistent high VolumeReadOps.

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

Analyze the Requirements:

Improve I/O performance.

Maintain data integrity.

Evaluate the Options:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

Amazon EBS Volume Types

General Purpose SSD (gp2) Volumes

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

To share an encrypted Amazon RDS DB instance snapshot across accounts, the least administrative overhead involves directly managing permissions on the AWS KMS key and sharing the snapshot. Here’s how to do it:

Take a Snapshot: Initiate a snapshot of your Amazon RDS DB instance in the production account. This captures the current state of the database.

Modify KMS Key Policy: Adjust the policy of the KMS key used for encryption (identified by the alias 'production-rds-key') to grant the kms:Decrypt permission to the migration account’s root user. This step is crucial as it allows the migration account to use the same encryption key to decrypt the snapshot.

Share the Snapshot: Share the newly created snapshot with the migration account using the RDS console or AWS CLI. The migration account will now be able to see and use this snapshot to create a new RDS instance.

AWS Documentation Reference:

You can refer to the AWS documentation on sharing encrypted snapshots: Sharing Encrypted Snapshots.

The reason is that it uses the Amazon CloudWatch billing alarm which is a built-in service specifically designed to monitor and alert on cost usage of your AWS account, which makes it a more suitable solution for this use case. The alarm can be configured to detect when costs reach 75% of the threshold and when it is triggered, it can publish a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. The email distribution list can be subscribed to the topic, so that they will receive the alerts when costs reach 75% of the threshold.

AWS Budgets allows you to track and manage your costs, but it doesn't specifically focus on data transfer costs between regions, and it might not provide as much granularity as CloudWatch Alarms.

Installing the CloudWatch agent enables log monitoring, and a CloudWatch metric filter allows alerting on specific errors. Using EventBridge to trigger a Systems Manager Automation runbook automates the restart of the web server, creating an efficient and automated solution.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

There are two applications, one in an on-premises data center and the other on an Amazon EC2 instance.

DNS resolution fails when the on-premises application tries to connect to the EC2 instance.

The goal is to implement DNS resolution between on-premises and AWS resources.

Analyze the Requirements:

Need to resolve the hostname of the EC2 instance from the on-premises network.

Utilize the existing AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection for DNS queries.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Set up an Amazon Route 53 inbound resolver endpoint with a forwarding rule for the onprem.private hosted zone.

This allows DNS queries from on-premises to be forwarded to Route 53 for resolution.

The resolver endpoint is associated with the VPC, enabling resolution of AWS resources.

Option B: Set up an Amazon Route 53 inbound resolver endpoint without specifying the forwarding rule.

This option does not address the specific need to resolve onprem.private DNS queries.

Option C: Set up an Amazon Route 53 outbound resolver endpoint.

Outbound resolver endpoints are used for forwarding DNS queries from AWS to on-premises, not vice versa.

Option D: Set up an Amazon Route 53 outbound resolver endpoint without specifying the forwarding rule.

Similar to Option C, this does not meet the requirement of resolving on-premises queries in AWS.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Setting up an inbound resolver endpoint with a forwarding rule for onprem.private and associating it with the VPC ensures that DNS queries from on-premises can resolve AWS resources effectively.

Amazon Route 53 Resolver

Integrating AWS and On-Premises Networks with Route 53

Using an Amazon Route 53 inbound resolver endpoint with a forwarding rule ensures that on-premises applications can resolve EC2 instance hostnames effectively.

To automate the creation and management of IAM roles for multiple AWS accounts in an AWS Organization, using AWS CloudFormation StackSets is the most operationally efficient solution.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets:

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the functionality of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple AWS accounts and regions with a single operation.

Using StackSets with AWS Organizations:

Create a CloudFormation template that defines the necessary IAM roles.

Use StackSets to deploy the template across multiple AWS accounts in your organization.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets

Creating IAM Roles with CloudFormation

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.

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

AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO):

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

It integrates seamlessly with AWS Organizations.

Integration with SAML 2.0 IdP:

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

This allows centralized management of user identities and access.

Steps to Implement:

Enable AWS SSO in your AWS Organizations management account.

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

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

AWS Single Sign-On

Integrating AWS SSO with SAML 2.0 Identity Providers

To enable HTTPS support on an Application Load Balancer, you must:

Use a public SSL/TLS certificate

Associate it with the HTTPS listener on the ALB

From the AWS Certificate Manager and ALB documentation:

You can use ACM to provision, manage, and deploy public SSL/TLS certificates for your load balancers.

After the certificate is issued, you can attach it to your ALB's HTTPS listener.

When encountering an InstanceLimitExceeded error, this indicates that you have reached your account limit for the number of EC2 instances.

Use Service Quotas:

Open the Service Quotas console.

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

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

Click on "Request quota increase."

Fill in the required information, specifying the new quota value.

Submit the request.

Launch Instances After Approval: Once the quota increase is approved, you will be able to launch additional instances.

EC2 Service Quotas

Service Quotas Console

To route traffic for a subdomain to a CloudFront distribution using Amazon Route 53, you should create an A record with the CloudFront distribution's domain name as the alias target.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Route 53 console at Amazon Route 53 Console.

Select Hosted Zone:

Select the hosted zone for your domain (example.com).

Create Record Set:

Click on Create record.

For Record name, enter static.

Select A - IPv4 address for the record type.

For Alias, choose Yes.

In the Alias Target field, select the CloudFront distribution's domain name from the dropdown menu.

Save Record Set:

Review the settings and click Create records.

This setup directs traffic for static.example.com to the CloudFront distribution, leveraging the distribution's caching and delivery capabilities.

Routing Traffic to a CloudFront Distribution by Using Your Domain Name

Creating Records in Route 53

Aurora Global Databases are designed for cross-Region disaster recovery with very low RPO, meeting the 20-second requirement. Setting up Aurora as a global database with the correct configuration ensures low-latency replication and rapid failover, making it ideal for compliance with strict disaster recovery requirements.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/distributor-working-with-packages-deploy.html

To ensure that all Amazon EC2 Windows instances have a third-party agent installed and updated automatically, the SysOps administrator can use AWS Systems Manager Distributor and State Manager.

Create a Systems Manager Distributor Package:

Distributor is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that allows you to package and distribute software across your instances.

Create a Distributor package for the third-party agent.

AWS Systems Manager Distributor

Create a Systems Manager State Manager Association:

State Manager is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that automates the process of keeping your Amazon EC2 instances in a defined state.

Create a State Manager association to run the AWS-ConfigureAWSPackage document. Populate the details of the third-party agent package.

Specify instance tags based on the appropriate tag value for Windows with a schedule of 1 day to ensure the agent is updated periodically.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The web application experiences performance degradation during random periods of increased traffic.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a scalable solution to handle varying traffic loads.

Maintain application performance during traffic spikes.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Monitor application latency with CloudWatch alarm and increase instance size.

Manually resizing instances is not efficient for handling random traffic spikes.

Option B: Use EventBridge rule to add EC2 instance to ALB.

This approach is not as efficient as Auto Scaling for dynamic traffic management.

Option C: Deploy to an Auto Scaling group with target tracking scaling policy.

Automatically adjusts the number of instances based on traffic demand.

Ensures consistent application performance by scaling in response to traffic changes.

Option D: Deploy to an Auto Scaling group with scheduled scaling policy.

Suitable for predictable traffic patterns but not for random traffic spikes.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Using an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy ensures the application scales dynamically based on traffic, maintaining performance.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

Auto Scaling with a target tracking policy provides a robust solution for handling random traffic increases by dynamically adjusting the number of instances.

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is a feature that automatically replicates objects across AWS regions. When CRR is configured, certain aspects are replicated by default, and some are not. Here are the details:

Objects in the source S3 bucket for which the bucket owner does not have permissions: CRR does not replicate objects for which the bucket owner does not have permissions.

Objects that are stored in S3 Glacier: Objects in the S3 Glacier storage class are not replicated by CRR.

Objects that existed before replication was configured: Only objects created or modified after the replication configuration will be replicated. Objects that existed before the configuration are not replicated by default.

Object metadata: CRR replicates the object metadata along with the object to ensure that the replica in the destination bucket is as accurate as possible.

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication

Replication Configuration Examples

Objective:

Ensure all traffic is encrypted using HTTPS.

Maintain the same endpoint (www.example.com) for existing users.

Use the validated ACM certificate for encryption.

Steps to Implement (Following Option D):

Step 1: Modify the HTTP Listener (Port 80):

Navigate to the ALB settings in the AWS Management Console.

Locate the existing HTTP listener on port 80.

Add a rule to redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS on port 443.

Redirection ensures users accessing http://www.example.com are automatically sent to https://www.example.com without any manual changes.

Step 2: Create an HTTPS Listener (Port 443):

Add a new listener for HTTPS on port 443 to the ALB.

Configure the listener to use the ACM certificate for www.example.com.

Set the default action to forward requests to the target group serving the application.

Step 3: Test the Configuration:

Verify that both http://www.example.com and https://www.example.com work seamlessly, with HTTP requests being redirected to HTTPS.

AWS References:

ALB HTTPS Redirection:Redirect HTTP to HTTPS using ALB

SSL Certificates with ACM:Using ACM certificates with ALB

Best Practices for ALB Configuration:ALB Listener Rules

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A and B: Do not address the redirection from HTTP to HTTPS, leaving the application exposed to unencrypted traffic.

Option C: Incorrectly suggests modifying the HTTP listener’s default rule for SSL, which is technically unsupported. The HTTP listener cannot use an SSL certificate.

Objective:

Provision Spot Instances with the highest availability while using a wide range of instance types.

Capacity Optimized Strategy:

The capacity optimized strategy ensures that Spot Instances are launched from the pools with the highest available capacity at the time of the request.

This approach minimizes the likelihood of interruptions and increases the chances of launching the desired capacity.

Steps to Implement:

In the Auto Scaling group configuration, set the Spot Allocation Strategy to Capacity Optimized.

Define multiple instance types in the launch template to allow flexibility.

AWS References:

Spot Allocation Strategies:Spot Instance Allocation Strategies

Capacity Optimized Details:Capacity Optimized Spot Instances

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Simply launching up to maximum capacity does not address availability concerns.

Option B: The diversified strategy spreads instances across Spot pools but does not prioritize capacity.

Option D: Spot Instance Advisor provides recommendations but is not a direct allocation strategy.

For member accounts in AWS Organizations to receive notifications about estimated costs exceeding a predetermined amount, billing alerts must be enabled in the management/payer account.

Enable Billing Alerts in the Management Account:

Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console at AWS Billing Console.

In the navigation pane, choose Billing preferences.

Under Billing preferences, ensure that Receive Billing Alerts is enabled.

Create a Budget and Set Up Notifications:

Open the AWS Budgets console at AWS Budgets Console.

Create a budget and configure it to monitor the estimated costs.

Set up notifications for when the budget thresholds are exceeded and specify the email addresses of the managers in the member accounts.

By enabling billing alerts in the management account, you allow member accounts to receive notifications about their estimated costs.

Setting Up Alerts and Notifications

Creating an AWS Budget

Using AWS Systems Manager Distributor and State Manager is an automated and scalable solution for managing software installation across EC2 instances.

Systems Manager Distributor: Allows packaging and distributing the auditing software across multiple Regions.

State Manager Association: Automates software installation on both existing and new instances, ensuring consistent deployment across all managed instances.

Manually connecting to instances or using Lambda is not scalable or efficient for this type of ongoing software management.

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

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

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

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

Problem Analysis:

The Cache-Control header (max-age=1 hour) conflicts with the CloudFront Maximum TTL setting (5 minutes).

CloudFront adheres to the lower of the two settings, leading to assets being cached for only 5 minutes.

Understanding Cache Behavior in CloudFront:

CloudFront evaluates headers such as Cache-Control and Expires along with its TTL settings.

The effective cache duration is the minimum value among these settings.

Resolution:

Align the Cache-Control max-age header and CloudFront Maximum TTL settings:

Update the CloudFront behavior to use a consistent value (e.g., set both to 1 hour).

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: The Expires header value is irrelevant as CloudFront primarily considers Cache-Control and TTL settings.

B: The issue is not about expiring cached assets but about the duration of cache retention.

C: Cache invalidation is not required as it addresses purging specific objects from cache.

To direct users to the region that provides the fastest response times, transitioning to a latency routing policy in Amazon Route 53 is the best solution.

Latency-Based Routing:

Latency-based routing allows you to route your traffic to the AWS region that provides the lowest latency.

Implementation:

In each new region (us-east-1 and ap-south-1), create a new Elastic Load Balancer and a new set of EC2 instances to run a copy of the application.

Open the Route 53 console.

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

Create latency-based records pointing to the load balancers in each region.

Amazon Route 53 Latency-Based Routing

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

The scenario indicates:

Function is being throttled (i.e., invoked more often than allowed)

Function is fast (< 100ms)

Provisioned concurrency is set but still throttled

This suggests the reserved concurrency limit is too low

From the AWS Lambda Concurrency Documentation:

Reserved concurrency limits the maximum concurrency for a function and also guarantees the capacity.

If your invocations exceed the reserved concurrency limit, Lambda throttles the function.

To reduce S3 storage costs while ensuring the images remain highly available and immediately accessible, transitioning the images to S3 Standard-IA after 7 days is the most cost-effective solution.

Understand Storage Classes:

S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access) is designed for data that is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower storage costs compared to S3 Standard, but higher retrieval costs.

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 block traffic to a specific external IP address that has been identified as suspicious by GuardDuty, you should use a network ACL to add an outbound deny rule.

Create or Update Network ACL:

Open the Amazon VPC console at Amazon VPC Console.

Select Network ACLs in the navigation pane.

Create a new network ACL or select an existing one that is associated with the subnet containing the EC2 instance.

Add Outbound Deny Rule:

Choose Inbound Rules or Outbound Rules and then choose Edit rules.

Add a new rule to deny traffic to the specific external IP address.

Rule Number: Choose a rule number that is not used by another rule.

Type: All traffic or specific to the protocol and port.

Destination: The external IP address identified by GuardDuty.

Allow/Deny: Deny

Apply Changes:

Save the rule and ensure it is active.

Using a network ACL to block traffic at the subnet level provides an additional layer of security.

Network ACLs

Working with Network ACLs

To allow the Lambda function to access both the new RDS database in a private subnet and the internet, the Lambda function needs to be reconfigured for VPC access with a NAT gateway setup.

Reconfigure Lambda for VPC Access:

Attach the Lambda function to the private subnets where the RDS instance is located.

Add NAT gateways to the public subnets to allow outbound internet access from the private subnets.

NAT Gateway:

NAT gateways allow instances in private subnets to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but they prevent the internet from initiating connections with those instances.

Steps to Implement:

Create NAT gateways in the public subnets.

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

Ensure the Lambda function has the necessary IAM role permissions to access the VPC and RDS.

Configuring a Lambda Function to Access Resources in a VPC

NAT Gateways

To resolve issues with high disk I/O during the bootstrap process:

Increase EBS Volume IOPS: Higher IOPS allows the EBS volume to handle more input/output operations per second, which is critical for high I/O demands like downloading large Docker images.

Increase EBS Volume Throughput: Boosting throughput allows for faster data transfer rates, which is useful when the workload requires sustained high data throughput during initialization.

Increasing the instance size or changing the instance type is not necessary if the root cause is related specifically to EBS performance. Nitro instances generally provide higher performance and are well-suited for high I/O tasks.

To improve the performance of an Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) when users report slower file retrieval times, configuring the file system for Provisioned Throughput is an effective solution.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon EFS console at Amazon EFS Console.

Select the File System:

In the EFS console, select the file system that you want to modify.

Modify Throughput Settings:

Choose File system policy and then Manage file system policy.

Under Throughput mode, select Provisioned Throughput.

Specify the desired throughput in MiB/s based on your application's needs.

Apply Changes:

Save the changes to apply the new throughput settings to the file system.

Amazon EFS Performance

Managing Throughput Modes

To set up a notification for failed health checks of targets in the ALB, follow these steps:

Create a CloudWatch Alarm:

Navigate to CloudWatch and create a new alarm based on the UnHealthyHostCount metric of the target group.

To share Amazon RDS database snapshots between different accounts while ensuring all data is encrypted at rest, follow these steps:

Update the KMS Key Policy:

Navigate to the AWS KMS console.

Select the KMS key used to encrypt the RDS snapshots.

Update the key policy to grant the relevant AWS accounts permission to use the key.

Since the EC2 instance is attempting to access the internet using HTTP (port 80) but is configured only to allow HTTPS (port 443) traffic, the security group needs adjustment:

Security Group Configuration: The outbound rules of the security group associated with the EC2 instance must allow traffic over HTTP. Add an outbound rule that enables port 80 to destination 0.0.0.0/0. This rule will allow the instance to send HTTP requests to any IP address on the internet.

Test Connectivity: After updating the security group, test the connectivity using the curl command again to ensure the configuration allows internet access via HTTP.

This change is necessary because the existing security group configuration does not permit outbound HTTP traffic, which is essential for accessing websites using HTTP.

To identify who is creating the Elastic IP addresses, the following steps should be taken:

Enable CloudTrail Logging:

Ensure AWS CloudTrail is enabled to log all API activities in your AWS account.

Objective:

Provide a static IP address that the vendor can whitelist for accessing the application.

Using Network Load Balancer (NLB):

Unlike Application Load Balancers, NLBs support static IP addresses through Elastic IPs.

NLBs operate at the transport layer (Layer 4) and are ideal for use cases requiring a static IP.

Steps to Implement:

Step 1: Create an NLB in the same VPC as the application.

Step 2: Associate Elastic IP addresses with the NLB subnets.

Step 3: Update the target group to point to the existing EC2 instances.

Step 4: Update DNS records to map the application domain (www.example.com) to the NLB 's static IP or DNS name.

AWS References:

Elastic IPs with NLB:Static IPs for NLB

NLB vs. ALB:Comparison of Load Balancers

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: ALBs do not support Elastic IPs.

Option B: AWS WAF is for web access control, not providing static IPs.

Option C: VPC endpoints do not replace load balancers and are unrelated to static IP requirements.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts and workloads. It provides detailed monitoring for unauthorized access attempts, including console login attempts from unusual locations.

Amazon GuardDuty:

GuardDuty analyzes VPC flow logs, AWS CloudTrail logs, and DNS logs to detect suspicious activity.

It generates findings, such as UnauthorizedAccess

/ConsoleLoginSuccess, to alert administrators about potential security issues.

Setup:

Enable GuardDuty in your AWS account.

Configure GuardDuty to monitor unauthorized console logins.

Set up notifications for the relevant findings to alert administrators.

Amazon GuardDuty

GuardDuty Finding Types

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.

IAM Policies and Roles

Cross-Account Access

AWS CLI Assume Role

CloudFront provides built-in viewer device detection headers, including:

CloudFront-Is-Mobile-Viewer

CloudFront-Is-SmartTV-Viewer

CloudFront-Is-Tablet-Viewer

From the CloudFront origin request policies documentation:

You can configure CloudFront to forward these device type headers to the origin so that different content (e.g., lower-resolution images for mobile) can be served and cached separately.

This allows differentiated caching based on the viewer's device type.

To monitor the p90 (90th percentile) statistic of a specific field in log data over time, the appropriate approach is to create a metric filter on the log data. Metric filters in Amazon CloudWatch Logs allow you to extract metric data from log events and transform them into CloudWatch metrics. These metrics can then be visualized and analyzed over time.

Starting from May 23, 2019, CloudWatch Logs introduced support for percentiles in metric filters. This enhancement enables users to specify percentile statistics, such as p90, p95, p99, etc., when defining metric filters. By doing so, you can gain insights into the distribution of your metric data, which is particularly useful for understanding outliers or unusual behaviors in metrics like application latency.

Once the metric filter is set up to extract the desired field (e.g., application latency) and compute the p90 statistic, you can visualize this metric in CloudWatch Dashboards or set up alarms based on threshold values.

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.

The most operationally efficient solution to ensure that administrator passwords for Amazon RDS DB instances are changed at least annually is to use AWS Secrets Manager with automatic rotation.

AWS Secrets Manager:

AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect access to your applications, services, and IT resources without the upfront cost and complexity of managing your own hardware security infrastructure.

Secrets Manager enables you to rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle.

Configure Automatic Rotation:

Store the database credentials in AWS Secrets Manager.

Configure the secret to rotate automatically every 365 days.

AWS Secrets Manager provides built-in integration for rotating credentials for supported databases, including Amazon RDS.

Steps to Configure:

Open the Secrets Manager console.

Create a new secret and provide the necessary database credentials.

Enable automatic rotation and set the rotation interval to 365 days.

Secrets Manager will handle the rotation process, updating the credentials in the database and ensuring they are securely stored.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating Your AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

AWS EBS snapshots are incremental, meaning that after the initial full snapshot, only the blocks that have changed since the last snapshot are saved. Here’s how the storage adds up based on your scenario:

First Snapshot: Captures all 10 GiB of data.

Second Snapshot: Only 4 GiB have changed, so only these changed blocks are stored.

Third Snapshot: An additional 2 GiB of data are added, making only these new 2 GiB stored.

Thus, the total storage required is 10 GiB (initial snapshot) + 4 GiB (second snapshot) + 2 GiB (third snapshot) = 16 GiB.

AWS Documentation Reference:

Details on how EBS snapshots store data can be found here: Amazon EBS Snapshots.

The company wants to:

Distribute traffic across two AWS Regions

Minimize response time

From the Route 53 Routing Policies Documentation:

Latency-based routing allows you to route traffic to the AWS Region that provides the lowest latency for the user.

Ideal for applications deployed in multiple AWS Regions.

This matches the scenario exactly.

AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) is designed to protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF can help mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities by allowing users to create rules to filter specific types of HTTP requests.

Create a Web ACL:

Go to the AWS WAF & Shield console.

Click "Create web ACL" and specify a name and the AWS resource to protect (e.g., an Application Load Balancer).

Add Rules to Mitigate XSS:

Within the Web ACL, add a new rule.

Select "Rule builder" and choose a rule type. For mitigating XSS, use "AWS Managed Rules" or create a custom rule.

AWS Managed Rules include a predefined set for XSS that you can enable.

Configure the XSS Rule:

If using a custom rule, configure it to inspect requests and block any that contain XSS patterns.

Use regular expressions or specific patterns to identify malicious scripts.

Deploy the Web ACL:

Once configured, save the Web ACL.

Associate it with your Application Load Balancer or CloudFront distribution to start filtering requests.

Monitor and Adjust:

Monitor the requests being blocked by AWS WAF.

Adjust the rules as necessary to ensure legitimate traffic is not affected and the application remains protected.

AWS WAF Developer Guide

AWS WAF Managed Rules

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.

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

Scheduled Scaling

To reduce the cost of EC2 instances with a 1-year commitment across different regions, purchasing a Compute Savings Plan is the most suitable option.

Compute Savings Plan:

Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility and help to reduce your costs by up to 66%, offering savings on a variety of EC2 instance usage.

These plans apply to usage across any AWS Region, and they also apply to AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate usage.

Flexibility Across Regions:

Unlike Reserved Instances, which are tied to a specific instance family and region, Compute Savings Plans provide savings across any EC2 instance usage, regardless of region, instance family, operating system, or tenancy.

This flexibility is ideal for the company's requirement to migrate workloads from the eu-west-1 region to the eu-west-3 region within the commitment period.

Implementation:

Open the AWS Cost Management console.

Navigate to the "Savings Plans" section.

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan with a 1-year term.

AWS Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

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

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

"The limit for a backtrack window is 72 hours.....Backtracking is only available for DB clusters that were created with the Backtrack feature enabled....Backtracking "rewinds" the DB cluster to the time you specify. Backtracking is not a replacement for backing up your DB cluster so that you can restore it to a point in time....You can backtrack a DB cluster quickly. Restoring a DB cluster to a point in time launches a new DB cluster and restores it from backup data or a DB cluster snapshot, which can take hours."

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/AuroraMySQL.Managing.Backtrack.html

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

Steps:

Create a Custom AWS Config Rule:

Open the AWS Config console.

Choose "Rules" and then "Add rule".

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

Configure Remediation:

Use AWS Config to set up automatic remediation.

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

Associate this automation document with the AWS Config rule.

Deploy Across Accounts:

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

Ensure the remediation actions are consistently applied across all accounts.

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

Stop and Start the Instance:

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

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

Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics:

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

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudWatch and select "Synthetics."

Click on "Create canary."

Choose "Heartbeat monitoring" as the blueprint.

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

Set the frequency and retention settings as per your requirement.

Create the canary.

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

AWS CloudWatch Synthetics

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.

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.

The most operationally efficient solution to provide email notifications and insert a record into a database when a file is put into an S3 bucket is to use S3 event notifications that target an SNS topic with two subscriptions.

Set Up S3 Event Notification:

Open the S3 console and select the bucket.

Navigate to "Properties" -> "Event notifications" -> "Create event notification."

Configure the event to trigger on s3:ObjectCreated:*.

Create an SNS Topic:

Open the SNS console and create a new topic.

Set up two subscriptions for the SNS topic:

One subscription to send the email notification.

Another subscription to invoke an AWS Lambda function that inserts the record into the database.

Lambda Function for Database Insertion:

Create an AWS Lambda function to handle the database insertion.

Configure the function to trigger from the SNS topic.

Configuring S3 Event Notifications

Amazon SNS Subscriptions

Invoking Lambda with SNS

To automate the invocation of an AWS Lambda function at the end of each day, you can use Amazon EventBridge (formerly known as CloudWatch Events) to create a scheduled rule.

Create a Scheduled EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console at Amazon EventBridge Console.

Choose Create rule.

Provide a name and description for the rule.

For Rule type, choose Schedule.

Define a cron expression that runs the rule at the end of each day. For example, cron(0 0 * * ? *) runs the function at midnight UTC.

Set the Target:

In the Targets section, choose Add target.

For Target type, select Lambda function.

Choose the Lambda function you want to invoke.

Create the Rule:

Review the settings and choose Create rule.

This setup ensures that the Lambda function runs automatically at the specified time every day.

Amazon EventBridge Scheduler

Managing EventBridge Rules

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 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/

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/