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    Exam: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

    Total Questions: 414
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    A DevOps engineer is planning to deploy a Ruby-based application to production. The application needs to interact with an Amazon RDS for MySQL database and should have automatic scaling and high availability. The stored data in the database is critical and should persist regardless of the state of the application stack.
    The DevOps engineer needs to set up an automated deployment strategy for the application with automatic rollbacks.

    The solution also must alert the application team when a deployment fails.
    Which combination of steps will meet these requirements? (Choose three.)

    A. Deploy the application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Deploy an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance as part of the Elastic Beanstalk configuration.
    B. Deploy the application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Deploy a separate Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance outside of Elastic Beanstalk.
    C. Configure a notification email address that alerts the application team in the AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    configuration.
    D. Configure an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) rule to monitor AWS Health events. Use an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic as a target to alert the application team.
    E. Use the immutable deployment method to deploy new application versions.
    F. Use the rolling deployment method to deploy new application versions.
    Answer: BCE ✅ Explanation ✅ B. Deploy the application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Deploy a separate Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance outside of Elastic Beanstalk. -Why: Deploying the RDS instance outside of the Elastic Beanstalk environment ensures database persistence, even if the Elastic Beanstalk environment is deleted or re-provisioned. This separation protects critical data and aligns with best practices. ✅ D. Configure an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) rule to monitor AWS Health events. Use an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic as a target to alert the application team. -Why: This allows automatic alerting to the application team in the event of deployment failure or other -AWS Health-related events. Using EventBridge + SNS provides a robust and scalable alerting mechanism. ✅ E. Use the immutable deployment method to deploy new application versions. -Why: Immutable deployments reduce the risk of downtime by provisioning a new set of instances for the new version. If deployment fails, AWS can automatically roll back to the previous version, making this method ideal for production environments requiring high availability and rollback support. ❌ Why the other options are not ideal: A. Deploying RDS as part of Elastic Beanstalk config: Not recommended because deleting the environment could delete the RDS instance and cause data loss. C. Configure a notification email in Elastic Beanstalk config: While possible, Elastic Beanstalk does not natively support this as a built-in feature for deployment failure. A better approach is using EventBridge + SNS (option D). F. Rolling deployments: Can cause issues during deployment if a bad version is introduced; rollback is not automatic, and it can cause downtime if not handled correctly.

    A company has a legacy application running on AWS. The application can only run on one Amazon EC2 instance at a time. Application metadata is stored in Amazon S3 and must be retrieved if the instance is restarted. The instance should be automatically restarted or relaunched if performance degrades.
    Which solution will satisfy these requirements?

    A. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to monitor the EC2 instance. When the StatusCheckFailed system alarm is triggered, use the recover action to stop and start the instance. Use a trigger in Amazon S3 to push the metadata to the instance when it is back up and running.

    B. Use the auto healing feature in AWS OpsWorks to stop and start the EC2 instance. Use a lifecycle event in OpsWorks to pull the data from Amazon S3 and update it on the instance.

    C. Use the Auto Recovery feature in Amazon EC2 to automatically stop and start the EC2 instance in case of a failure. Use a trigger in Amazon S3 to push the metadata to the instance when it is back up and running.

    D. Use AWS CloudFormation to create an EC2 instance that includes the user-data property for the EC2
    resource. Add a command in user-data to retrieve the application metadata from Amazon S3.
    Answer: C ✅ Explanation ✅ C. Use the Auto Recovery feature in Amazon EC2 to automatically stop and start the EC2 instance in case of a failure. Use a trigger in Amazon S3 to push the metadata to the instance when it is back up and running. 🔍 Here's why C is correct: ❗ Requirements: Only one EC2 instance should be running. -It should automatically restart or relaunch if there's performance degradation. -On restart, the instance must retrieve metadata from Amazon S3. ✅ Why Option C fits: Auto Recovery in EC2 monitors the instance using CloudWatch alarms (based on StatusCheckFailed) and will automatically recover the instance (relaunch it on new hardware if needed). -Once restarted, you can use an S3 event trigger or a script in user-data to retrieve metadata from Amazon S3. -It ensures availability and data consistency without launching multiple instances (which is key for legacy apps limited to one instance). ❌ Why the other options are not ideal: A. CloudWatch alarm with recover action + S3 trigger: While partially correct, EC2 recover actions only support certain types of hardware failures and do not stop/start instances for software-level performance issues. Also, S3 cannot directly “push” data to EC2. This approach lacks the automation of pulling metadata unless paired with custom solutions. B. AWS OpsWorks: Overkill for a single-instance legacy application. OpsWorks is better suited for more complex, multi-instance configurations using Chef or Puppet. Adds unnecessary complexity. D. CloudFormation with user-data script: CloudFormation is for provisioning. It does not monitor or auto-recover instances. This option only helps at initial launch, not for ongoing recovery or restarts. ✅ Final Answer: C. Use the Auto Recovery feature in Amazon EC2 to automatically stop and start the EC2 instance in case of a failure. Use a trigger in Amazon S3 to push the metadata to the instance when it is back up and running.

    A DevOps engineer at a company is supporting an AWS environment in which all users use AWS IAM identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On). The company wants to immediately disable credentials of any new IAM user and wants the security team to receive a notification.

    Which combination of steps should the DevOps engineer take to meet these requirements? (Choose three.)

    A. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that reacts to an IAM CreateUser API call in AWS CloudTrail.
    B. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that reacts to an IAM GetLoginProfile API call in AWS CloudTrail.
    C. Create an AWS Lambda function that is a target of the EventBridge rule. Configure the Lambda function to disable any access keys and delete the login profiles that are associated with the IAM user.
    D. Create an AWS Lambda function that is a target of the EventBridge rule. Configure the Lambda function to delete the login profiles that are associated with the IAM user.
    E. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic that is a target of the EventBridge rule. Subscribe the security team’s group email address to the topic.
    F. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue that is a target of the Lambda function. Subscribe the security team's group email address to the queue.
    Answer: ACE

    You are doing a load testing exercise on your application hosted on AWS. While testing your Amazon RDS MySQL DB instance, you notice that when you hit 100% CPU utilization on it, your application becomes non- responsive. Your application is read-heavy.

    What are methods to scale your data tier to meet the application's needs? (Choose three.)

    A. Add Amazon RDS DB read replicas, and have your application direct read queries to them.
    B. Add your Amazon RDS DB instance to an Auto Scaling group and configure your CloudWatch metric based on CPU utilization.
    C. Use an Amazon SQS queue to throttle data going to the Amazon RDS DB instance.
    D. Use ElastiCache in front of your Amazon RDS DB to cache common queries.
    E. Shard your data set among multiple Amazon RDS DB instances.
    F. Enable Multi-AZ for your Amazon RDS DB instance.
    Answer: ADE

    You are creating an application which stores extremely sensitive financial information. All information in the
    system must be encrypted at rest and in transit.
    Which of these is a violation of this policy?
    A. ELB SSL termination.
    B. ELB Using Proxy Protocol v1.
    C. CloudFront Viewer Protocol Policy set to HTTPS redirection.
    D. Telling S3 to use AES256 on the server-side.
    Answer: A

    A solutions architect is designing a solution where users will be directed to a backup static error page if the primary website is unavailable. The primary website's DNS records are hosted in Amazon Route 53 where their domain is pointing to an Application Load Balancer (ALB).

    Which configuration should the solutions architect use to meet the company's needs while minimizing changes and infrastructure overhead?

    A. Point a Route 53 alias record to an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the ALB as one of its origins. Then, create custom error pages for the distribution.
    B. Set up a Route 53 active-passive failover configuration. Direct traffic to a static error page hosted within an Amazon S3 bucket when Route 53 health checks determine that the ALB endpoint is unhealthy.
    C. Update the Route 53 record to use a latency-based routing policy. Add the backup static error page hosted within an Amazon S3 bucket to the record so the traffic is sent to the most responsive endpoints.
    D. Set up a Route 53 active-active configuration with the ALB and an Amazon EC2 instance hosting a static error page as endpoints. Route 53 will only send requests to the instance if the health checks fail for the ALB.
    Correct Answer: B

    A solutions architect is designing a high performance computing (HPC) workload on Amazon EC2. The EC2 instances need to communicate to each other frequently and require network performance with low latency and high throughput.

    Which EC2 configuration meets these requirements?

    A. Launch the EC2 instances in a cluster placement group in one Availability Zone.
    B. Launch the EC2 instances in a spread placement group in one Availability Zone.
    C. Launch the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group in two Regions and peer the VPCs.
    D. Launch the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group spanning multiple Availability Zones.
    Answer: A

    A company is migrating from an on-premises infrastructure to the AWS Cloud. One of the company's applications stores files on a Windows file server farm that uses Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) to keep data in sync. A solutions architect needs to replace the file server farm.

    Which service should the solutions architect use?

    A. Amazon EFS
    B. Amazon FSx
    C. Amazon S3
    D. AWS Storage Gateway
    Answer: B

    A company has a legacy application that processes data in two parts. The second part of the process takes longer than the first, so the company has decided to rewrite the application as two microservices running on Amazon ECS that can scale independently.

    How should a solutions architect integrate the microservices?

    A. Implement code in microservice 1 to send data to an Amazon S3 bucket. Use S3 event notifications to invoke microservice 2.
    B. Implement code in microservice 1 to publish data to an Amazon SNS topic. Implement code in microservice 2 to subscribe to this topic.
    C. Implement code in microservice 1 to send data to Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. Implement code in microservice 2 to read from Kinesis Data Firehose.
    D. Implement code in microservice 1 to send data to an Amazon SQS queue. Implement code in microservice 2 to process messages from the queue.
    Answer: D

    A company runs a multi-tier web application that hosts news content. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The instances run in an EC2 Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones and use an Amazon Aurora database. A solutions architect needs to make the application more resilient to periodic increases in request rates.

    Which architecture should the solutions architect implement? (Choose two.)

    A. Add AWS Shield.
    B. Add Aurora Replica.
    C. Add AWS Direct Connect.
    D. Add AWS Global Accelerator.
    E. Add an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the Application Load Balancer.
    Answer: BE
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