Score Higher on Verified SAP-C02 | AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Exam Questions with Answers

The correct answer is D. Deploy the application on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) with AWS Fargate and enable auto scaling behind an Application Load Balancer. Create additional read replicas for the DB instance. Create an Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka cluster and configure the application services to use the cluster. Store static content in Amazon S3 behind an Amazon CloudFront distribution.

Option D meets the requirements of the scenario because it allows you to reduce operational overhead and support the product release by using the following AWS services and features:

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a fully managed service that allows you to run Kubernetes applications on AWS without needing to install, operate, or maintain your own Kubernetes control plane. You can use Amazon EKS to deploy your containerized application services on a Kubernetes cluster that is compatible with your existing tools and processes.

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine that eliminates the need to provision and manage servers for your containers. You can use AWS Fargate as the launch type for your Amazon EKS pods, which are the smallest deployable units of computing in Kubernetes. You can also enable auto scaling for your pods, which allows you to automatically adjust the number of pods based on the demand or custom metrics.

An Application Load Balancer (ALB) is a load balancer that distributes traffic across multiple targets in multiple Availability Zones using HTTP or HTTPS protocols. You can use an ALB to balance the load across your Amazon EKS pods and provide high availability and fault tolerance for your application.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is a fully managed relational database service that supports the PostgreSQL open source database engine. You can create additional read replicas for your DB instance, which are copies of your primary DB instance that can handle read-only queries and improve performance. You can also useread replicas to scale out beyond the capacity of a single DB instance for read-heavy workloads.

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is a fully managed service that makes it easy to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka to process streaming data. Apache Kafka is an open source platform for building real-time data pipelines and streaming applications. You can use Amazon MSK to create and manage a Kafka cluster that is highly available, secure, and compatible with your existing Kafka applications. You can also configure your application services to use the Amazon MSK cluster as a source or destination of streaming data.

Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers high durability, availability, and scalability. You can store static content such as images, videos, or documents in Amazon S3 buckets, which are containers for objects. You can also serve static content directly from Amazon S3 using public URLs or presigned URLs.

Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. You can use Amazon CloudFront to create a distribution that caches static content from your Amazon S3 bucket at edge locations closer to your users. This can improve the performance and user experience of your application.

Option A is incorrect because creating an EC2 Auto Scaling group behind an ALB would not reduce operational overhead as much as using AWS Fargate with Amazon EKS, as you would still need to manage EC2 instances for your containers. Creating additional read replicas for the DB instance would not provide high availability or fault tolerance in case of a failure of the primary DB instance, unlike deploying the DB instance in Multi-AZ mode. Creating Amazon Kinesis data streams would not be compatible with your existing Apache Kafka applications, unlike using Amazon MSK.

Option B is incorrect because creating an EC2 Auto Scaling group behind an ALB would not reduce operational overhead as much as using AWS Fargate with Amazon EKS, as you would still need to manage EC2 instances for your containers. Creating Amazon Kinesis data streams would not be compatible with your existing Apache Kafka applications, unlike using Amazon MSK. Storing and serving static content directly from Amazon S3 would not provide optimal performance and user experience, unlike using Amazon CloudFront.

Option C is incorrect because deploying the application on a Kubernetes cluster created on the EC2 instances behind an ALB would not reduce operational overhead as much as using AWS Fargate with Amazon EKS, as you would still need to manage EC2 instances and Kubernetes control plane for your containers. Using Amazon API Gateway to interact with the application would add an unnecessary layer of complexity and cost to your architecture, as you would need to create and maintain an API gateway that proxies requests to your ALB.

The company has migrated an application to EC2 and will deploy it in an additional Region. The usage is expected to be stable for 3 years, but parts of the application will be redesigned over the next 2 years to use AWS Lambda. Therefore, the company will gradually shift a portion of its compute usage from EC2 to Lambda.

Savings Plans are a flexible pricing model that provide lower prices in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in dollars per hour) for a 1- or 3-year term. There are two main types of Savings Plans:

• Compute Savings Plans: Apply to any EC2 instance usage regardless of Region, instance family, OS, tenancy, and also apply to AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda usage.

• EC2 Instance Savings Plans: Apply only to a specific instance family in a specific Region.

In this scenario, because there will be a gradual migration from EC2-based compute to Lambda-based compute, a plan that only applies to EC2 (EC2 Instance Savings Plan) risks underutilization as more usage moves to Lambda. Compute Savings Plans, by contrast, can cover EC2 now and Lambda later, maintaining high utilization of the commitment and maximizing effective discount.

Option A recommends evaluating Savings Plans recommendations each year in AWS Cost Management and purchasing a 1-year Compute Savings Plan based on those recommendations. The Cost Management tools and Cost Explorer provide Savings Plans recommendations based on actual usage patterns. Buying 1-year Compute Savings Plans and re-evaluating annually allows the company to adjust its committed spend each year as portions of the application move from EC2 to Lambda. This approach maximizes the chance that the Savings Plans coverage matches the actual combined EC2 and Lambda usage over time and avoids being locked into an EC2-only commitment that becomes increasingly underutilized.

Option B is not optimal because it recommends a 3-year EC2 Instance Savings Plan. That commitment applies only to specific EC2 instance families in a Region and does not apply to Lambda. As the company migrates portions of its workloads to Lambda, the EC2 Instance Savings Plan may become underutilized, reducing the effective discount and potentially increasing overall cost. Compute Optimizer also does not provide Savings Plans purchase recommendations; Savings Plans recommendations come from Cost Management and Cost Explorer.

Option C uses 1-year EC2 Instance Savings Plans and adjusts the commitment each year. While this gives some flexibility, EC2 Instance Savings Plans still do not apply to Lambda usage, so over time there is a risk of underutilizing the EC2 commitment as the Lambda portion grows. This does not maximize savings relative to Compute Savings Plans, which can cover both services.

Option D proposes a 3-year EC2 Instance Savings Plan and suggests decreasing the hourly commitment during the term as workloads move to Lambda. However, Savings Plans commitments cannot be decreased during the term. The company would remain obligated to the original 3-year commitment even if EC2 usage drops, leading to wasted commitment.

Therefore, purchasing 1-year Compute Savings Plans each year based on Savings Plans recommendations from AWS Cost Management (option A) is the best strategy to maximize cost savings while the company transitions part of the workload from EC2 to Lambda.

GitHub Webhooks to Trigger CodePipeline:

Configure GitHub webhooks to trigger the AWS CodePipeline pipeline. This ensures that every code push to the repository automatically triggers the pipeline, initiating the build and deployment process.

Unit Testing with Jenkins and AWS CodeBuild:

Use Jenkins integrated with the AWS CodeBuild plugin to perform unit testing. Jenkins will manage the build process, and the results will be handled by CodeBuild.

Notifications for Bad Builds:

Configure Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) to send alerts for any failed builds. This keeps the engineering team informed of build issues immediately, allowing for quick resolutions.

Blue/Green Deployment with AWS CodeDeploy:

Utilize AWS CodeDeploy with a blue/green deployment strategy. This method reduces downtime and risk by running two identical production environments (blue and green). CodeDeploy shifts traffic between these environments, allowing you to test in the new environment (green) while the old environment (blue) remains live. If issues arise, you can quickly roll back to the previous environment.

This solution provides seamless, zero-downtime deployments, and the ability to quickly roll back changes if necessary, fulfilling the requirements of the startup company.

References

AWS DevOps Blog on Integrating Jenkins with AWS CodeBuild and CodeDeploy?32?.

Plain English Guide to AWS CodePipeline with GitHub?33?.

Jenkins Plugin for AWS CodePipeline?34?.