Amazon Web Services SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Exam Practice Test

To route traffic based on the URL path during a transition period where both an EC2-based legacy application and a new AWS Lambda function are in use:

Use of Application Load Balancer (ALB): ALBs support advanced request routing based on the URL path, among other criteria. This capability allows the ALB to evaluate the URL path of incoming requests and route them appropriately to either the legacy EC2 instances or the Lambda function.

Path-Based Routing Rules: Configure the ALB with rules that specify which URL paths should be directed to the EC2 instances and which should be routed to the Lambda function. For example, requests to /legacy/* might go to the EC2 instances, while /new/* could be directed to the Lambda function.

Integration with Lambda: ALBs can directly invoke Lambda functions in response to HTTP requests, making them ideal for scenarios where both server-based and serverless components are used in tandem.

This setup not only facilitates a smooth transition by enabling simultaneous operation of both components but also leverages the native capabilities of ALBs to manage traffic based on application requirements effectively.

To ensure that the application can scale based on the number of users that connect to the application, the SysOps administrator should create a scaling policy that scales the application based on the ActiveConnectionCount Amazon CloudWatch metric generated from the ELB.

ActiveConnectionCount Metric:

The ActiveConnectionCount metric indicates the number of active connections to the ELB. By monitoring this metric, the application can scale in response to the number of users actively connected.

Steps to Implement:

Go to the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling console.

Select the Auto Scaling group that manages the EC2 instances for the application.

Create a new scaling policy.

Set the policy to scale based on the ActiveConnectionCount metric from the ELB.

Elastic Load Balancing Metrics and Dimensions

Auto Scaling Policies

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.

AWS CLI Configuration

Managing Access Keys

Root user usage is strongly discouraged in AWS best practices, and cannot be restricted using identity-based IAM policies, because the root user has inherent and unalterable permissions. However, within an AWS Organization, Service Control Policies (SCPs) can be used to put maximum permission boundaries on even the root user in member accounts.

From the AWS Organizations User Guide:

SCPs affect all users and roles in attached accounts, including the root user.

If you attach an SCP that explicitly denies access to specific actions, even the root user is denied.

So, to prevent the root user from performing EC2 actions, you would:

Use the organization's management account

Create an SCP with a Deny on ec2:* actions for Principal: "arn:aws:iam::*:root"

Attach the SCP to member accounts

❌ Why other options are incorrect:

A. IAM policies cannot control root user access – Root is not governed by IAM identity-based policies.

C. AWS Config is a monitoring tool, not a preventive security control mechanism. It tracks what happened, not blocks it.

D. Amazon Inspector detects vulnerabilities; it does not prevent or deny actions by any user, including root.

AWS Config provides a managed rule named required-tags that checks whether specified resources have the tags you define. This rule can be used to evaluate DynamoDB tables for compliance with tagging requirements.

While the required-tags rule does not support the AWS-managed Systems Manager automation document AWS-SetRequiredTags for remediation, you can create a custom Systems Manager automation document to remediate noncompliant resources. By associating this custom document with the required-tags rule, AWS Config can automatically remediate DynamoDB tables that lack the appropriate tags.

This approach leverages AWS managed services and minimizes operational overhead by automating both detection and remediation processes.

To alleviate performance degradation on a heavily queried Amazon Aurora DB cluster:

A: Create an Aurora Replica node and implement an Auto Scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Ensure all reporting requests use the read-only connection string to redirect read queries to the replica. This setup alleviates the load on the primary DB instance by balancing read traffic, which can significantly improve stability during periods of high demand. Aurora Replicas are ideal for scaling read operations and can improve the performance of the primary instance by offloading read requests. More details on Aurora Replicas and their benefits can be found in the AWS documentation on Aurora Replicas Amazon Aurora Replicas.

To delete the AWS CloudFormation stack without deleting the DynamoDB table, you need to apply a deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource. The Retain deletion policy ensures that the specified resource is not deleted when the stack is deleted. Instead, it is retained.

Steps:

Modify the CloudFormation Template:

Add a deletion policy to the DynamoDB table resource.

json

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{

"Resources": {

"MyDynamoDBTable": {

"Type": "AWS::DynamoDB::Table",

"DeletionPolicy": "Retain",

}

}

}

To address high I/O requirements during the bootstrap process, increasing both IOPS and throughput on the EBS volume is recommended:

Increase EBS Volume IOPS: Enhances the instance’s ability to handle multiple read and write operations per second, essential for data-heavy tasks like downloading Docker images.

Increase EBS Volume Throughput: Provides higher data transfer rates, reducing bottlenecks during intensive I/O operations.

Increasing instance size is unnecessary if the primary issue is disk I/O, and changing from Nitro-based instances would not address the underlying storage performance need.

When working with AWS CloudFormation, understanding how the stack behaves during a failure is crucial for troubleshooting. By default, if a stack creation fails, CloudFormation will roll back any resources it created, leaving no trace of what went wrong. This default behavior makes debugging more difficult because the resources that may have caused the failure are deleted.

To change this behavior, AWS CloudFormation provides the --on-failure parameter when creating a stack using the AWS CLI or SDKs. The purpose of this parameter is to control what happens if stack creation fails.

From the AWS CloudFormation User Guide:

--on-failure

Required: No

Type: String

Valid values: DO_NOTHING | ROLLBACK | DELETE

Default: ROLLBACK

DO_NOTHING – If stack creation fails, do nothing. The stack remains in the CREATE_FAILED state. You can then investigate and take corrective action.

ROLLBACK – If stack creation fails, roll back all created resources.

DELETE – If stack creation fails, delete all created resources (i.e., behave as if the stack was never attempted).

✅ Why B is correct:

OnFailure=DO_NOTHING tells CloudFormation to retain all successfully created resources even if stack creation fails. This allows a SysOps administrator to inspect the created resources, review logs, or fix the template before attempting to resume or recreate the stack.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A. DisableRollback = FalseThis is default behavior, meaning rollback will occur (i.e., resources will be deleted). This does not help preserve resources after failure.

C. Rollback trigger of DO_NOTHINGThere is no such rollback trigger value called DO_NOTHING. Rollback triggers are for monitoring CloudWatch alarms during stack updates or creations and do not influence what happens when a creation fails unless a trigger fires.

D. OnFailure = ROLLBACKThis is the default, and it removes all resources when the stack creation fails, which is the opposite of the requirement.

Conclusion:

To preserve resources that were successfully created during a failed CloudFormation stack creation, the correct and verified approach is:

Set OnFailure=DO_NOTHING during stack creation.

This enables post-mortem debugging by retaining the resources for inspection.

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.

Using a Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint allows DNS queries for on-premises hosts to be forwarded to the on-premises DNS server over the Direct Connect connection, minimizing maintenance and automating name resolution without the need for manual entry or file management.

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.

Increasing DB Instance Size:

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

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the DB instance.

Modify the instance to increase its size.

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

Monitoring Performance:

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

Modifying an Amazon RDS DB Instance

To enforce tag-based restrictions across multiple accounts in an OU, Service Control Policies (SCPs) are the best tool.

From SCP documentation:

You can deny access to APIs like ec2:RunInstances if a specific tag is not present using a condition such as Null:aws:RequestTag/CostCenter-Project: true.

By attaching the SCP to the application OU, only the accounts within that OU are impacted.

To reduce the cost of running the application without affecting availability or design, applying rightsizing recommendations from AWS Cost Explorer to reduce the instance size is the best approach.

Rightsizing Recommendations:

AWS Cost Explorer provides rightsizing recommendations that help you identify underutilized instances.

By resizing instances to a more appropriate size based on their utilization, you can reduce costs while maintaining performance.

Steps to Implement:

Open the AWS Cost Management console.

Navigate to "Cost Explorer" and select "Rightsizing Recommendations."

Review the recommendations and choose to resize the instances based on their actual usage.

Advantages:

Rightsizing ensures that you are not paying for unused resources while maintaining the necessary capacity and performance for your application.

AWS Cost Explorer Rightsizing Recommendations

To monitor and remediate open SSH ports, AWS Config and Systems Manager Automation are ideal:

AWS Config Rule: Use AWS Config to monitor security groups and detect when SSH (port 22) is open to the public. Config rules can be set up to trigger remediation actions automatically.

Systems Manager Automation Runbook: Create or use a predefined automation runbook that can remove the open SSH rule from security groups, thus closing port 22 to the public.

CloudWatch alarms are not ideal for monitoring security group configurations. Amazon Inspector focuses on vulnerability assessment rather than continuous monitoring for specific port access.

To enforce MFA for API calls using the AWS CLI, the users must use temporary security credentials obtained through the get-session-token command. Here’s how to do it:

Enable MFA for IAM Users:

Ensure that MFA is enabled and properly configured for each IAM user.

Configure IAM Policy for MFA Enforcement:

Attach an IAM policy that denies API calls unless MFA is used. This policy should be attached to all users.

Obtain Temporary Security Credentials Using MFA:

Users need to use the aws sts get-session-token command to obtain temporary credentials. This command requires the MFA token.

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aws sts get-session-token --serial-number arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/user --token-code 123456

Use Temporary Credentials for API Calls:

After obtaining the temporary credentials, set them as environment variables or configure them in the AWS CLI profile to make API calls.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...

export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=...

Enabling MFA for IAM Users

Using Temporary Security Credentials

AWS CLI get-session-token

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

Service Control Policies (SCPs):

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

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

Steps to Implement:

Navigate to the AWS Organizations console.

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

Apply the SCP to the production OU.

AWS Organizations SCPs

To ensure high availability and disaster recovery for the RDS for MySQL database, follow these steps:

Create a Cross-Region Read Replica:

In the RDS console, create a cross-Region read replica of the primary database instance. This read replica will provide high availability and the lowest RTO and RPO in case of a disaster.

For an RDS instance that needs high availability and automatic failover capabilities, setting it up as a Multi-AZ deployment is the most effective solution:

Multi-AZ Deployment: This feature allows Amazon RDS to automatically provision and manage a synchronous standby replica of your database in a different Availability Zone (AZ). The primary DB instance and the standby replica contain the same data, providing data redundancy and fail-safe mechanism.

Automatic Failover: In the event of a planned or unplanned outage of your primary DB instance (including DB instance failure, AZ failure, or network failure), RDS automatically fails over to the standby so that database operations can resume quickly without administrative intervention.

Data Integrity: This setup ensures no data loss for committed transactions, as the standby replica is always in sync with the primary.

By enabling Multi-AZ deployment, you ensure that your database environment has high availability and robustness, addressing both disaster recovery and operational continuity without losing any committed transactions.

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

Steps:

Enable AWS Compute Optimizer:

Open the AWS Compute Optimizer console.

Choose "Get started".

Enable Compute Optimizer for your account.

View Lambda Function Recommendations:

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

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

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

Export Recommendations:

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

To restrict access to an application based on geographic location (France in this case), the appropriate routing policy in Amazon Route 53 is geolocation routing. This policy allows you to specify traffic routing based on the geographic location of your users:

B: Use a geolocation routing policy. Select France as the location in the record. This ensures that only DNS queries originating from France are routed to the application, fulfilling the requirement to limit access to users within France initially. More information about setting up geolocation routing can be found in the AWS Route 53 documentation on geolocation routing Amazon Route 53 Geolocation Routing.

To identify changes made by the compromised access key, the SysOps administrator should search the AWS CloudTrail event history:

AWS CloudTrail:

CloudTrail logs all API calls made in an AWS account, which includes events initiated by access keys. This makes it the ideal service to investigate changes made using the compromised access key.

To design a high-traffic static website that is highly available and provides low latency globally, you can use Amazon S3, CloudFront, and Route 53. This solution leverages the global edge locations of CloudFront to deliver content with low latency.

Create an Amazon S3 Bucket:

Open the S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Create a new bucket and upload your website content.

Configure S3 for Static Website Hosting:

Go to the Properties tab of your bucket.

Enable Static website hosting and set the index document (e.g., index.html).

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Create a new distribution and set the S3 bucket as the origin.

Configure distribution settings, including caching behaviors and SSL/TLS settings.

Create Route 53 Alias Record:

Open the Route 53 console at Amazon Route 53 Console.

Select the hosted zone for your domain.

Create a new record set, choose ALIAS as the record type, and point it to the CloudFront distribution.

Amazon S3 Static Website Hosting

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

Routing Traffic to a CloudFront Distribution

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.

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.

To configure Route 53 for high availability with failover between a primary and a secondary server, the following steps should be taken:

Create Health Checks:

Create HTTP health checks for both the primary and secondary servers. Ensure these health checks are configured to look for HTTP 2xx or 3xx status codes.

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

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 enable debug or info-level logging in Lambda Insights, you need to configure an environment variable that controls the log level.

From AWS Lambda Insights Documentation:

To enable debug logging for Lambda Insights, set the environment variable:

LAMBDA_INSIGHTS_LOG_LEVEL=debug or info.

This variable allows you to adjust the verbosity of telemetry logs, which helps in performance analysis.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A: pdb.set_trace() is a Python-level debugger, not related to Lambda Insights.

B and D: These are invalid parameters and not recognized by the Lambda runtime or Insights agent.

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

Objective:

Add custom dimensions to the metrics collected by the Amazon CloudWatch agent.

Using append_dimensions:

The append_dimensions field in the Amazon CloudWatch agent configuration file allows adding custom dimensions to the metrics collected.

Dimensions help categorize and filter metrics in CloudWatch for more granular insights.

Steps to Implement:

Step 1: Edit the Amazon CloudWatch agent configuration file (commonly located at /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/config.json).

Step 2: Add the append_dimensions field under the desired metrics section, specifying the custom dimensions in key-value pairs:

{

"metrics": {

"append_dimensions": {

"InstanceId": "${aws:InstanceId}",

"CustomDimensionKey": "CustomDimensionValue"

}

}

}

Step 3: Restart the CloudWatch agent:

sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl \

-a stop

sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl \

-a start

AWS References:

Amazon CloudWatch Agent Configuration:CloudWatch Agent Configuration

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Writing a custom script is unnecessary as the CloudWatch agent natively supports appending dimensions.

Option B: EventBridge rules do not interact with CloudWatch metrics for adding dimensions.

Option C: AWS Lambda functions are not required for this use case.

Objective:

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

Composite Alarms:

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

Steps to Implement:

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

Step 2: Create individual metric alarms:

One for disk space usage.

One for the DiskReadOps metric.

Step 3: Create a composite alarm:

Include both metric alarms.

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

AWS References:

Composite Alarms in CloudWatch:Creating Composite Alarms

CloudWatch Agent Installation:Install CloudWatch Agent

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

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

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

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

To view the cost details of each project in an AWS account using Cost Explorer, you need to activate cost allocation tags and tag the resources with a project identifier.

Activate Cost Allocation Tags:

Navigate to the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Cost allocation tags".

Select the tags you want to activate (e.g., "Project") and click "Activate".

Tag Resources with Project Identifier:

Go to the AWS Management Console for each service where resources are deployed (e.g., EC2, S3, RDS).

For each resource, add a tag with the key "Project" and a value that identifies the project (e.g., "ProjectA").

Ensure that all relevant resources are tagged appropriately.

View Cost Allocation in Cost Explorer:

Navigate to the Cost Explorer console.

Use the "Group by" option to group costs by the "Project" tag.

Review the cost details for each project based on the tags applied to the resources.

Using Cost Allocation Tags

Analyzing Your Costs with Cost Explorer

Applying SCPs to an Organizational Unit:

Service Control Policies (SCPs) allow you to manage permissions for multiple AWS accounts within an organization.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Organizations.

Create an Organizational Unit (OU) if not already created.

Move the target accounts into the OU.

Create an SCP that denies the use of the specific EC2 instance family.

Attach the SCP to the OU.

This approach ensures that the policy is applied consistently across all accounts in the OU.

AWS Organizations SCPs

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 minimize cost while maintaining immediate retrievability for files stored in Amazon S3, you can use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition objects to different storage classes based on their access patterns. Given that files are frequently accessed in the first 30 days and rarely accessed afterward, transitioning to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days is the most cost-effective solution.

Understand S3 Storage Classes:

S3 Standard: Suitable for frequently accessed data.

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA): Suitable for data that is less frequently accessed but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower storage costs compared to S3 Standard but has a retrieval fee.

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA): Similar to S3 Standard-IA but stores data in a single Availability Zone, making it less resilient.

S3 Glacier: Suitable for archival storage where data retrieval time is not critical (minutes to hours).

Requirements and Solution:

Access Pattern: Frequent access in the first 30 days, rare access afterward.

Retrievability: Immediate access required for one year.

Cost Efficiency: Minimize storage costs after the first 30 days.

Implementing Lifecycle Policy:

Lifecycle Policy: Configure a lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.

Step-by-Step Implementation:

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to the Bucket:

Select the bucket where the files are stored.

Configure Lifecycle Policy:

Go to the Management tab.

Choose Lifecycle and then + Add lifecycle rule.

Enter a rule name and scope (e.g., apply to all objects in the bucket or specific prefixes).

Under Lifecycle rule actions, choose Transition current versions of objects between storage classes.

Add a transition:

Days after object creation: 30

Storage class: S3 Standard-IA

Optionally, add expiration actions if objects should be deleted after a certain period.

Review and Save:

Review the configuration and save the lifecycle rule.

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

Lifecycle Configuration Elements

Transitioning Objects Using Amazon S3 Lifecycle

Using CloudFormation Stack Sets:

CloudFormation stack sets allow you to deploy CloudFormation stacks across multiple AWS accounts and regions.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudFormation and select "StackSets."

Click on "Create StackSet."

Provide the template URL or upload a template file.

Configure the stack set options and specify the accounts and regions.

Deploy the stack set to the specified accounts and regions.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets

Service Control Policies (SCPs) in AWS Organizations act as permission guardrails, defining the maximum available permissions for IAM entities within an organization. An SCP does not grant permissions but instead limits them. When an SCP is attached to an organizational unit (OU), it restricts the permissions of all accounts within that OU.

In this scenario, the SCP explicitly denies the iam:CreateUser action. However, if the SCP does not explicitly allow other necessary actions, such as ec2:RunInstances, those actions are implicitly denied. This is because, by default, all actions are denied unless explicitly allowed in the SCP.

To resolve the issue, the SCP should be updated to include an explicit allow statement for the ec2:RunInstances action. This will permit users in the OU to launch EC2 instances while still denying the creation of IAM users.

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.

AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) helps protect your web applications from common web exploits and bots. A rate-based rule allows you to control the rate of requests to your application.

Create a Global-Scoped AWS WAF Web ACL:

Navigate to the AWS WAF console.

Create a new Web ACL and choose "Global" for the scope.

Set the default action to "Allow".

Configure a Rate-Based Rule:

Within the Web ACL, add a new rule and select "Rate-based rule".

Define the rate limit (e.g., 2000 requests per 5 minutes).

Set the action to "Block".

Associate Web ACL with CloudFront Distribution:

After creating the Web ACL and rule, go to your CloudFront distribution settings.

In the "General" tab, associate the Web ACL with your CloudFront distribution.

Review and Confirm:

Review the configuration and ensure the Web ACL is correctly associated with the CloudFront distribution.

AWS WAF Rate-Based Rules

Associating AWS WAF with CloudFront

To resolve DNS names for on-premises resources from EC2 instances in a VPC, you use Amazon Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoints to forward DNS queries to on-premises DNS servers.

From the Route 53 Resolver documentation:

Resolver outbound endpoints allow DNS queries from resources in your VPC to be forwarded to DNS servers in your on-premises network over Direct Connect or VPN.

In AWS, there are default limits (also known as quotas) for the number of various resources that can be created in an account. One of these limits is the number of Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) that can be created in a single AWS account within a Region. The default limit for the number of VPCs per account per Region is typically 5.

If an organization is running multiple applications, each requiring a new VPC, it is possible to reach this limit, causing subsequent CloudFormation stack deployments that attempt to create additional VPCs to fail.

Check VPC Limits:

To verify the current limit and usage of VPCs in your account, you can use the AWS Service Quotas console.

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to AWS services and select Amazon VPC.

Check the VPCs per Region quota to see the limit and how many VPCs are currently in use.

Requesting a Quota Increase:

If the default limit is reached, you can request a quota increase.

In the Service Quotas console, select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Fill in the required information and submit the request. AWS typically reviews and approves these requests, but it may take some time.

CloudFormation Stack Failure:

When a CloudFormation stack fails due to reaching the VPC limit, the error message will indicate the issue related to the quota being exceeded.

You can view the specific error in the CloudFormation console under the Events tab of the stack.

Preventative Measures:

To avoid this issue, monitor resource usage and limits regularly.

Consolidate applications within fewer VPCs if possible, using subnets and security groups to isolate resources.

Amazon VPC Quotas

Service Quotas for VPC

Requesting a Quota Increase

To ensure that the new web subnet can communicate with the database instance, follow these steps:

Create an Inbound Allow Rule for MySQL/Aurora (3306):

On the network ACL for the database subnets, add an inbound allow rule to permit traffic from the third web subnet on port 3306 (MySQL/Aurora).

To optimize the cost of a computing environment consisting of control nodes that are always on and task nodes that operate for a limited number of hours each day, consider the following strategies:

Purchase EC2 Instance Savings Plans for the Control Nodes: Since the control nodes are required to be operational 24/7, purchasing EC2 Instance Savings Plans is a cost-effective choice. These plans provide a lower price compared to on-demand instances, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a one or three-year period.

Use Spot Instances for the Task Nodes: Given that task nodes are used for a shorter duration (4 hours a day) and presumably can tolerate interruptions, using Spot Instances can significantly reduce costs. Spot Instances offer unused EC2 capacity at a fraction of the regular price, which can lead to substantial cost savings. Additionally, configure the system to fall back to On-Demand Instances during periods when Spot Instances are not available to ensure availability.

This combination leverages cost savings for continuous use and flexible, lower-cost options for intermittent use, optimizing overall operational costs efficiently.

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.

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

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) provides a scalable and highly available file storage solution for use with Amazon EC2 instances. To achieve high availability and durability:

EFS Standard Storage Class: Stores data redundantly across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring data durability and availability.

Mount Targets: For optimal performance and availability, create a mount target in each Availability Zone. EC2 instances should connect to the mount target in their respective Availability Zone.

By configuring EFS in this manner, the company ensures that all EC2 instances, regardless of their Availability Zone, have reliable and efficient access to shared data.

To use the static website as a backup to the web application and ensure automated failover, the SysOps administrator should set up failover routing policies in Amazon Route 53.

Failover Routing Policies:

Route 53 failover routing allows you to route traffic to a primary resource when it is healthy and automatically failover to a secondary resource when the primary becomes unhealthy.

Steps to Implement:

Primary Failover Record: Create a primary failover routing policy record and set the value to the ALB. Associate this record with a Route 53 health check that monitors the ALB.

Secondary Failover Record: Create a secondary failover routing policy record and set the value to the static website.

Amazon Route 53 Failover Routing

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 securely manage and rotate the credentials for an Amazon RDS database created by a CloudFormation template, you should use AWS Secrets Manager. The AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource can be used to create a secret, and the resolve:secretsmanager dynamic reference can be used to retrieve the secret.

Define Secrets Manager Resource in CloudFormation Template:

Add an AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource to the CloudFormation template to store the database credentials.

Reference the Secret in RDS Resource:

Use the resolve:secretsmanager dynamic reference to retrieve the secret when creating the AWS::RDS::DBInstance resource.

Example CloudFormation Template:

MyDatabaseSecret:

Type: AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Properties:

Name: MyDatabaseSecret

GenerateSecretString:

SecretStringTemplate: '{"username": "admin"}'

GenerateStringKey: "password"

PasswordLength: 16

ExcludeCharacters: '"@/\\'

MyRDSInstance:

Type: AWS::RDS::DBInstance

Properties:

DBInstanceIdentifier: MyRDSInstance

Engine: mysql

MasterUsername: !Sub '{{resolve:secretsmanager:MyDatabaseSecret:SecretString:username}}'

MasterUserPassword: !Sub '{{resolve:secretsmanager:MyDatabaseSecret:SecretString:password}}'

DBInstanceClass: db.t2.micro

AllocatedStorage: 20

AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Dynamic References

This is the most operationally efficient solution that meets the requirements, as it will allow the company to monitor the number of times that the web server returns an HTTP 404 response in real-time. The other solutions (creating a CloudWatch Logs subscription filter, an AWS Lambda function, or a script) will require additional steps and resources to monitor the number of times that the web server returns an HTTP 404 response.

A metric filter allows you to search for specific terms, phrases, or values in your log events, and then to create a metric based on the number of occurrences of those search terms. This allows you to create a CloudWatch Metric that can be used to create alarms and dashboards, which can be used to monitor the number of HTTP 404 responses returned by the web server.

Using the interface endpoint, applications in your on-premises data center can easily query S3 buckets over AWS Direct Connect or Site-to-Site VPN.

The most operationally efficient and secure method to share an object from a private Amazon S3 bucket with users who do not have an AWS account is by generating a presigned URL. This URL grants temporary access to the object and can be limited by time, ensuring that users can only access the S3 object during a specified window. This does not require managing network configurations or sharing credentials, making it a secure and simple solution. Option D is therefore the correct answer. Reference to this method can be found in the AWS S3 documentation on presigned URLs Amazon S3 Presigned URLs.

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.

Encrypt the snapshot copies by using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS). This solution will allow the company to automatically create encrypted snapshots of the EBS volumes and copy them to different AWS Regions with minimal effort.

Using AWS Systems Manager to schedule a maintenance window for restarting EC2 instances outside business hours provides a straightforward and automated approach.

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Window: Allows for daily scheduling, ensuring that restarts occur consistently outside of business hours.

AWS-RestartEC2Instance Runbook: This runbook can be assigned to the maintenance window, automating the reboot process and minimizing manual intervention.

Reduced Disruption: The scheduled restart ensures the application remains operational during business hours.

To monitor and receive notifications when a KMS key deletion is scheduled, you can implement the following steps:

Create an Amazon EventBridge Rule:AWS KMS emits events to EventBridge when a key deletion is scheduled. You can create an EventBridge rule that listens for these specific events. This rule can then trigger actions, such as sending notifications or initiating automated workflows.

Create an Amazon SNS Topic:Amazon SNS is a fully managed messaging service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. By configuring the EventBridge rule to send events to an SNS topic, you can ensure that notifications are sent to the appropriate recipients, such as the security team.

By combining these two services, you can effectively monitor for scheduled deletions of KMS keys and notify the relevant stakeholders without altering the developers' IAM permissions.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The application on a general-purpose EC2 instance experiences performance issues during I/O intensive tasks.

High VolumeQueueLength indicates a bottleneck in I/O operations.

Analyze the Requirements:

Improve disk I/O performance to handle intensive read/write operations.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Modify the instance type to be storage optimized.

This could help but may not be necessary if increasing IOPS on the EBS volume resolves the issue.

Option B: Deselect Auto-Enable Volume I/O.

This option is not relevant to addressing high VolumeQueueLength.

Option C: Modify the volume properties to increase the IOPS.

Increasing IOPS directly addresses the I/O performance bottleneck.

Option D: Enable enhanced networking.

Enhanced networking improves network performance but not disk I/O performance.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Increasing the IOPS of the EBS volume directly addresses the high VolumeQueueLength and improves I/O performance.

Amazon EBS Volume Types

Optimizing EBS Performance

Modifying the volume properties to increase the IOPS ensures that the application can handle intensive read/write operations more effectively.

"Network Load Balancer is optimized to handle sudden and volatile traffic patterns while using a single static IP address per Availability Zone."

For an application that must scale to millions of requests per second and requires a single static IP address for each Availability Zone, a Network Load Balancer (NLB) is the most suitable option. NLBs are designed for high-performance, low-latency networking, and they support static IP addresses for each Availability Zone, making it ideal for volatile traffic patterns. Option D is the correct choice. AWS provides extensive documentation on NLB capabilities and configurations that suit these requirements AWS Network Load Balancer.

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

VPC peering allows two VPCs to communicate with each other securely. By configuring VPC peering between the two VPCs, the SysOps administrator will be able to give the EC2 instance in VPC1 the ability to connect to the database in VPC2. Once the VPC peering is configured, the EC2 instance will be able to communicate with the database using the private IP address of the DB instance in the private subnet.

Configuring Security Groups:

Security groups act as virtual firewalls for your instances to control inbound and outbound traffic.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2.

Select "Security Groups" from the left-hand menu.

Find and select the security group associated with your EC2 instances.

Choose the "Inbound rules" tab and click "Edit inbound rules."

Add a rule to allow traffic from the security group associated with the NLB.

Type: Custom TCP (or the specific port your application uses)

Source: Select "Custom" and enter the ID of the NLB's security group.

This setup ensures that the EC2 instances accept traffic only from the NLB, enhancing security with minimal operational overhead.

AWS Security Groups

This is a classic decoupling scenario — SQS is used to buffer requests between frontend (producer) and backend (consumer) to handle sudden traffic spikes.

From SQS documentation:

SQS is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications.

This approach ensures messages are not lost and the backend can process at its own pace.

As load increases and database connections scale, RDS Proxy helps:

Pool and share database connections

Improve application scalability

Reduce database resource contention

From the Amazon RDS Proxy Documentation:

RDS Proxy manages thousands of concurrent database connections and reduces connection overhead.

It is particularly useful for Aurora Multi-AZ clusters under high load.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A: Increasing IOPS addresses disk throughput, not connection handling.

C: Monitoring does not solve connection issues.

D: Performance Insights provides visibility, not connection pooling.

The rejected traffic in the flow logs is due to the network ACL associated with the subnet not allowing outbound traffic for the ephemeral port range.

Network ACLs:

Network ACLs act as a firewall for controlling traffic in and out of one or more subnets.

By default, NACLs allow all inbound and outbound traffic, but custom NACLs require specific rules to allow traffic.

Ephemeral Ports:

Ephemeral ports are temporary ports used for client-side communication. The default range is 1024-65535.

Ensure that the network ACL allows outbound traffic on these ports.

Steps to Resolve:

Check the network ACL rules for the associated subnet.

Add outbound rules to allow traffic from the ephemeral port range (1024-65535).

Amazon VPC Network ACLs

The most efficient way to enable DNS resolution between the VPC and the on-premises environment is by configuring a Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint.

Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint: This enables the VPC to forward DNS queries to the on-premises DNS server, which can resolve internal hostnames.

Minimal Maintenance: This solution is scalable and requires minimal ongoing maintenance compared to manual entries or creating and managing a large number of DNS entries manually.

When using Amazon S3 Object Lock configured in governance mode, deleting objects before their retention period ends requires specific permissions. To bypass these governance restrictions, the administrator must:

C: Assume a role that has the s3:BypassGovernanceRetention permission. This permission allows the role to override the governance mode restrictions.

D: Include the x-amz-bypass-governance-retention:true header in the delete request. This header is necessary to programmatically bypass the governance retention settings when making a delete request via the AWS CLI or SDK. These steps enable the deletion of objects under governance mode retention without waiting for the retention period to expire, addressing the need to remove unintended data uploads effectively. For further details, refer to the AWS documentation on S3 Object Lock Amazon S3 Object Lock.

To enable AWS Config in all accounts and all regions within an AWS Organization, the most operationally efficient method is to use AWS CloudFormation StackSets. This allows you to deploy CloudFormation stacks across multiple AWS accounts and regions from a single CloudFormation template.

Create CloudFormation Template:

The template should include the necessary resources to enable AWS Config, such as the AWS::Config::ConfigurationRecorder, AWS::Config::DeliveryChannel, and AWS::Config::ConfigurationAggregator resources.

Create StackSet:

Open the AWS CloudFormation console at AWS CloudFormation Console.

Choose Create StackSet and upload your CloudFormation template.

Configure StackSet:

Specify the AWS accounts and regions where you want to deploy the stacks.

Set the deployment options, including the execution role and administrator role.

Deploy Stack Instances:

Deploy the stack instances to all specified accounts and regions. This will automatically enable AWS Config in each account and region.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets

Managing AWS Config Across Multiple Accounts

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:

{

"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.

When running CloudWatch Synthetics canaries in a private VPC, they require access to:

CloudWatch API (for canary configuration and control) – via interface endpoint

Amazon S3 (to store canary artifacts and logs) – via gateway endpoint

VPC DNS for name resolution – both DNS resolution and hostnames must be enabled

From CloudWatch Synthetics VPC setup documentation:

If your VPC has no internet access, you must configure VPC endpoints and VPC DNS settings for canaries to run successfully.

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.

Updating the AWS Account Name

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

Create an Amazon S3 Bucket with Server-Side Encryption:

Open the S3 console and create a new bucket.

In the bucket properties, enable default server-side encryption using AES-256.

Configure CloudFront to Use the S3 Bucket as a Log Destination:

Open the CloudFront console.

Select the CloudFront distribution and configure the logging settings.

Specify the S3 bucket as the log destination.

Server-Side Encryption:

Ensure that the S3 bucket is configured to use server-side encryption with AES-256 by default, ensuring that all logs stored are encrypted at rest.

Amazon S3 Server-Side Encryption

CloudFront Access Logs

When you have EC2 instances requiring low-latency, high-throughput communication, the best placement strategy is to use a cluster placement group.

From the AWS EC2 Placement Group Guide:

A cluster placement group is a logical grouping of instances within a single AZ.

This strategy enables workloads to achieve low-latency network performance needed for tightly coupled node-to-node communication.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

B: Elastic IPs are used for static public IP addressing — they do not affect intra-cluster latency.

C: Jumbo frames require support from all hardware/network layers and are not guaranteed to lower latency.

D: Spread placement groups distribute instances across different hardware, which increases latency.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets Overview:

StackSets allows for deployment of CloudFormation stacks across multiple AWS accounts and Regions.

A stack instance in the "OUTDATED" status indicates that the stack template or parameters differ between the StackSet and the stack instance.

Why the Stack Instance Fails:

The "OUTDATED" status occurs when the stack operation (creation or update) was not successfully completed in a specific Region.

In this case, the most likely reason is that the stack has not yet been deployed in the specified Region.

Steps to Resolve:

Check the deployment status in the CloudFormation StackSets Console.

Identify the Region where the stack is in the "OUTDATED" status.

Retry the stack deployment for that Region by running a stack set update or stack instance operation.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: Local template changes do not impact CloudFormation unless submitted to AWS. This is unrelated to StackSets.

B: While creating a global resource might fail, it would result in an error status (e.g., "FAILED"), not "OUTDATED."

D: Using an old API version would cause errors in the API request, not affect the stack instance status.

AWS Compute Optimizer Overview:

AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes the configuration and utilization of AWS resources, including EBS volumes, to provide cost-optimization recommendations.

Steps to Use AWS Compute Optimizer for EBS Volumes:

Enable Compute Optimizer:

Open the Compute Optimizer Console.

Enable the service for your account.

Allow Metrics Collection:

Allow sufficient time (up to 12 hours) for Compute Optimizer to gather metrics on your EBS volumes.

Review Recommendations:

Go to the Compute Optimizer dashboard.

Navigate to the EBS volume recommendations.

Review the findings for underutilized or overprovisioned volumes.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: Manually reviewing EC2 monitoring graphs is less efficient and prone to errors compared to Compute Optimizer.

B: Changing instance types to EBS-optimized without assessing performance is unnecessary and unrelated to cost optimization.

D: Installing the fio tool and benchmarking is a time-intensive, manual process that does not align with operational efficiency.

"A certificate is eligible for automatic renewal subject to the following considerations: ELIGIBLE if associated with another AWS service, such as Elastic Load Balancing or CloudFront. ELIGIBLE if exported since being issued or last renewed. ELIGIBLE if it is a private certificate issued by calling the ACM RequestCertificate API and then exported or associated with another AWS service. ELIGIBLE if it is a private certificate issued through the management console and then exported or associated with another AWS service."

AWS Config can continuously monitor and record your AWS resource configurations. It provides AWS Config rules that automatically check the configuration of AWS resources and notify you of compliance and non-compliance.

Steps:

Enable AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console.

Follow the steps to set up AWS Config if it is not already enabled.

Add AWS Managed Rules:

In the AWS Config console, choose "Rules".

Add the s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited managed rule.

Configure the rule to check all S3 buckets.

Set Up SNS Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic.

Subscribe your email or other communication channels to the SNS topic.

In AWS Config, configure the rule to send notifications to the SNS topic whenever there is a compliance change.

This approach ensures operational efficiency as AWS Config will automatically monitor S3 buckets and notify you through SNS if any bucket becomes publicly accessible.

CloudTrail Log File Integrity Validation:

AWS CloudTrail provides a feature for log file integrity validation to ensure logs have not been modified or deleted.

Steps to Enable and Validate:

Enable Log File Integrity Validation:

Go to the CloudTrail Console.

Select or create a trail.

In the trail settings, enable Log file validation.

Use the AWS CLI for Validation:

Use the following CLI command:

aws cloudtrail validate-logs --trail-name

This command validates the digest files generated by CloudTrail against the log files.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

B: Using the AWS CloudTrail Processing Library is unnecessary for validation.

C: CloudTrail Insights is designed to identify unusual activity, not monitor log modifications.

D: Amazon CloudWatch Logs cannot directly monitor CloudTrail logs for integrity.

Objective:

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

Using Service Control Policies (SCPs):

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

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

Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Open the AWS Organizations console.

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

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "ec2:RunInstances",

"Resource": "*",

"Condition": {

"StringNotEquals": {

"aws:RequestedRegion": [

"us-east-1",

"us-west-2"

]

}

}

}

]

}

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

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

AWS References:

Service Control Policies (SCPs):SCP Best Practices

Restricting EC2 Regions with SCP:SCP Examples

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

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

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

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

To change an EC2 instance type (e.g., from t3.large to c5.large):

You must stop the instance, change the instance type, then start it again.

From EC2 instance resize documentation:

Changing the instance type requires stopping and starting the instance, unless you're using Elastic Beanstalk or Auto Scaling groups with launch templates.

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.

Amazon Route 53 Weighted Routing

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:

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:

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: