DOP-C02 Monitoring and Logging Practice Test 13 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A media company runs a video transcoding pipeline on AWS. The pipeline uses AWS Step Functions to orchestrate multiple Lambda functions that transcode video files stored in Amazon S3. The company wants to implement a monitoring solution to track the progress of each workflow execution, including which step is currently running, the duration of each step, and any errors. The solution should provide near real-time visibility and allow the team to troubleshoot failed executions quickly. Which solution meets these requirements?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon EventBridge to capture Step Functions execution status changes and build a custom dashboard in CloudWatch.. Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) can capture Step Functions execution state changes (e.g., step started, succeeded, failed). These events can be used to build a custom dashboard in CloudWatch, providing near real-time visibility into workflow progress, step durations, and errors. Option A is incorrect because creating custom metrics from Lambda functions requires additional instrumentation and does not provide workflow-level context easily. Option C is incorrect because CloudWatch Logs Insights queries are not near real-time; they require searching through logs, and the solution needs real-time visibility. Option D is incorrect because AWS X-Ray provides distributed tracing for individual requests, but it does not offer high-level workflow step tracking with durations and errors aggregated across executions in near real-time.

Answer

Create custom CloudWatch metrics from Lambda functions for each step, and build a CloudWatch dashboard.

Answer

Configure each Lambda function to write logs to CloudWatch Logs with the execution ID, and use CloudWatch Logs Insights to query and visualize.

Answer

Enable AWS X-Ray tracing on the Step Functions and Lambda functions to get a service map and trace details.

Question 2

A company is using Amazon CloudWatch Logs to store application logs. The DevOps team wants to set up real-time monitoring for specific error patterns and trigger remediation actions. Which TWO services can process the log events in real time and invoke an AWS Lambda function for remediation? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Stream log events to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and configure a Lambda function to process the stream.. Option A is correct because CloudWatch Logs subscription filters can stream log events in real time to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, and a Lambda function can be configured with the Kinesis stream as an event source to process records and invoke remediation logic. Option B is correct because a CloudWatch Logs subscription filter can deliver matching log events directly to AWS Lambda in real time, which is the native pattern for real-time log processing and automated remediation. Option C is not correct because EventBridge rules match on CloudWatch Logs API events such as CreateLogGroup or PutRetentionPolicy, not on the contents of individual log events, so it cannot process error patterns in real time. Option D is not correct because CloudWatch Logs does not natively send log events to Amazon SQS, and polling SQS is not a real-time push-based processing pattern. Option E is not correct because CloudWatch Logs does not publish log events directly to Amazon SNS, and even if it did, SNS-to-Lambda is not a supported real-time log event processing path for this scenario.

Answer

Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that matches on CloudWatch Logs log group events.

Answer

Configure the log group to send log events to an Amazon SQS queue, and have the Lambda function poll the queue.

Answer

Publish log events to an Amazon SNS topic and subscribe the Lambda function.

Question 3

A company is using Amazon CloudWatch to monitor its production environment. The operations team receives alerts for the same underlying issue from multiple alarms, causing alert fatigue. The team wants to reduce noise and consolidate alerts into actionable notifications. Which TWO steps should the team take? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the CloudWatch alarms to publish to an SNS topic, and use SNS subscription filter policies to route only critical notifications.. You can configure CloudWatch alarms to publish to an SNS topic and use SNS subscription filter policies to route only critical notifications, thereby reducing noise. Option C is correct because CloudWatch composite alarms allow you to combine multiple alarms into a single alarm that triggers only when specific conditions (e.g., AND/OR logic) are met, consolidating alerts for the same underlying issue. Option B is incorrect because CloudWatch Evidently is used for running experiments and feature flags, not for alert consolidation. Option D is incorrect because CloudWatch Logs Insights is a tool for querying log data, not for combining alarms. Option E is incorrect because AWS Config rules are designed to evaluate resource compliance, not to suppress alarms.

Answer

Use CloudWatch Evidently to run experiments and filter out false alarms.

Answer

Use CloudWatch Logs Insights to query logs and create alarms based on the query results.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to automatically suppress alarms that are not compliant.

Question 4

A company is using a centralized logging solution with Amazon OpenSearch Service. The DevOps team notices that logs from some EC2 instances are missing. The CloudWatch agent is installed and configured on all instances. What should the team do to troubleshoot the issue?

Accepted Answer

Check the CloudWatch agent log file located at /var/log/amazon/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.log.. The CloudWatch agent writes detailed operational logs to /var/log/amazon/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.log. This file contains errors, warnings, and debug messages that can reveal why logs from specific EC2 instances are not being delivered to Amazon OpenSearch Service. Checking this log is the first and most direct troubleshooting step because it captures agent-level issues such as configuration errors, network connectivity failures, or permission problems.

Answer

Check the CloudWatch agent status using the CloudWatch agent status command.

Answer

Configure a Lambda function to poll the CloudWatch agent for logs.

Answer

Verify that the EC2 instances have an SQS queue configured for log delivery.

Question 5

A company is running a critical application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application generates custom metrics that are published to CloudWatch using the PutMetricData API. Recently, the metrics have been delayed by up to 5 minutes. The DevOps team needs to reduce the latency. What should the team do?

Accepted Answer

Set the StorageResolution parameter to 1 when calling PutMetricData.. Setting the StorageResolution parameter to 1 when calling PutMetricData enables high-resolution metrics with a 1-second granularity. This reduces the latency of metric ingestion and retrieval because CloudWatch processes high-resolution metrics more quickly than standard 60-second resolution metrics, addressing the 5-minute delay.

Answer

Install the CloudWatch agent on the Fargate tasks to collect metrics.

Answer

Publish the metrics as structured logs to CloudWatch Logs and use metric filters.

Answer

Increase the frequency of PutMetricData calls to every 5 seconds.

Question 6

A DevOps engineer needs to set up an alert for when the CPU utilization of an EC2 instance exceeds 90% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which CloudWatch features should be used?

Accepted Answer

CloudWatch alarm on the CPUUtilization metric with a period of 5 minutes and threshold of 90.. CloudWatch alarms can be configured on the `CPUUtilization` metric (a standard EC2 metric emitted every 5 minutes by default) with a threshold of 90 and an evaluation period of 1 (since the period is set to 5 minutes, one evaluation period covers the 5 consecutive minutes). This directly meets the requirement without additional setup.

Answer

CloudWatch Logs with a metric filter on CPU utilization logs.

Answer

CloudTrail to monitor EC2 instance CPU usage.

Answer

Amazon S3 server access logs to check CPU utilization.

Question 7

A DevOps team needs to monitor failed API calls in their AWS account. They want to receive notifications when specific IAM actions, such as DeleteBucket, fail. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail and Amazon EventBridge.. AWS CloudTrail captures API calls, and Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) can be used to create rules that match specific failed API calls (e.g., DeleteBucket) and trigger notifications. Option B is incorrect because AWS Config rules monitor resource configuration compliance, not API call failures. Option C is incorrect because S3 server access logs log requests made to an S3 bucket, not IAM API calls. Option D is incorrect because CloudWatch Logs and metric filters are used to monitor log data, but they are not the primary service for capturing API calls; CloudTrail is needed for that.

Answer

AWS Config rules.

Answer

Amazon S3 server access logs.

Answer

CloudWatch Logs and metric filters.

Question 8

A company wants to visualize the performance of their application running on EC2. They need to create a dashboard that shows CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards.. Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards is the correct choice because it is the native AWS service for visualizing operational metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O. CloudWatch collects these metrics from EC2 instances (with the CloudWatch agent required for memory and disk metrics at the OS level) and allows you to create customizable, shareable dashboards. It supports cross-account, cross-region views and integrates with alarms and logs, making it the standard tool for performance monitoring. The other services do not provide metric visualization for EC2 performance.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail.

Answer

AWS Systems Manager.

Answer

Amazon QuickSight.

Question 9

A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL and needs to monitor the number of slow queries. They have enabled slow query logs. How can they effectively monitor and alert on the number of slow queries per minute?

Accepted Answer

Publish slow query logs to CloudWatch Logs, create a metric filter, and set an alarm.. Slow query logs from RDS MySQL can be published to CloudWatch Logs. Once the logs are in CloudWatch Logs, you can create a metric filter to count the number of slow queries per minute and set a CloudWatch alarm on that metric to alert when the count exceeds a threshold. Option A is incorrect because RDS Events provide notifications about instance events (e.g., failover, maintenance), not slow query metrics. Option B is incorrect because Enhanced Monitoring provides OS-level metrics (e.g., CPU, memory) but not slow query log data. Option C is incorrect because CloudTrail records API calls made to AWS services, not SQL queries executed within RDS.

Answer

Use RDS Events to send slow query metrics to CloudWatch.

Answer

Enable RDS Enhanced Monitoring and publish metrics to CloudWatch.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor SQL queries.

Question 10

A DevOps engineer is setting up centralized logging for multiple AWS accounts. They need to collect VPC Flow Logs, CloudTrail logs, and application logs into a single Amazon S3 bucket. What is the most efficient approach?

Accepted Answer

Use an S3 bucket in a centralized logging account with a bucket policy that grants write access from all other accounts.. It uses a centralized logging account with a single S3 bucket configured with a bucket policy that grants write access (s3:PutObject) to all other accounts. This approach avoids data duplication, eliminates the need for replication or intermediate compute resources, and is the most efficient and cost-effective method for aggregating logs from multiple accounts into a single destination.

Answer

Configure a Lambda function in each account to copy logs to a central S3 bucket.

Answer

Create an S3 bucket in each account and use S3 replication.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to stream logs from all accounts to a central S3 bucket.

Question 11

A company wants to receive real-time notifications when their Auto Scaling group launches or terminates EC2 instances. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon SNS notifications from the Auto Scaling group.. Auto Scaling groups natively support lifecycle hooks and notification configurations that publish events (EC2 Instance-launch, EC2 Instance-terminate, EC2 Instance-launch-lifecycle-action, etc.) directly to an Amazon SNS topic. This is the built-in, real-time mechanism designed specifically for launch/terminate notifications, requiring no polling or metric evaluation.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch alarm on the GroupTotalInstances metric.

Answer

AWS Config rules to detect changes in Auto Scaling groups.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail to monitor Auto Scaling API calls.

Question 12

A company is using Amazon CloudWatch Logs to store application logs. The DevOps team needs to search and analyze logs from multiple EC2 instances in real time. Which TWO services can be used to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service.. CloudWatch Logs can stream logs to Amazon OpenSearch Service for real-time search and analytics. Option E is correct because CloudWatch Logs Insights allows real-time querying of log groups directly within CloudWatch. Option B is incorrect: Amazon Athena is designed for querying data in S3, not for real-time log search from EC2 instances. Option C is incorrect: Amazon QuickSight is a business intelligence service for visualization, not real-time log search. Option D is incorrect: Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics is for analyzing streaming data, not directly searching CloudWatch Logs.

Answer

Amazon Athena.

Answer

Amazon QuickSight.

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics.

Question 13

A company runs a containerized application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They want to monitor the application logs and metrics. Which THREE steps should they take to collect and visualize this data? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudWatch Dashboard to display logs and metrics.. CloudWatch Dashboards can display both logs and metrics, allowing visualization of application data collected from ECS tasks. Option C is correct because the awslogs log driver sends container logs to CloudWatch Logs directly from the ECS task definition. Option E is correct because the CloudWatch agent can be deployed as a sidecar container to collect custom metrics and logs from the application. Option B is incorrect because AWS CloudFormation is used for infrastructure provisioning and management, not for monitoring resource metrics. Option D is incorrect because AWS X-Ray is designed for tracing and analyzing requests, not for collecting logs or application metrics.

Answer

Use AWS CloudFormation to monitor resource metrics.

Answer

Use AWS X-Ray to trace requests and collect logs.

Question 14

A DevOps engineer needs to monitor the health of a web application running on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Which TWO metrics from ALB should be monitored to detect application errors? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

HTTPCode_Target_5XX_Count.. (HTTPCode_Target_5XX_Count) is correct because it counts HTTP 5XX errors returned by the target (EC2 instances), indicating application errors. Option E (TargetResponseTime) is correct because elevated response times can indicate application performance issues or errors, and is a key metric for detecting application problems. Option A (RequestCount) is incorrect because it simply counts total requests, not errors. Option B (HTTPCode_ELB_5XX_Count) is incorrect because it counts 5XX errors generated by the ALB itself (e.g., due to configuration issues), not application errors. Option D (HealthyHostCount) is incorrect because it indicates the number of healthy targets, not application-level errors.

Answer

RequestCount.

Answer

HTTPCode_ELB_5XX_Count.

Answer

HealthyHostCount.

Question 15

A company is running a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application is experiencing intermittent errors. The DevOps engineer needs to identify if the errors are caused by the application or the underlying infrastructure. Which solution provides the MOST detailed visibility into the application's behavior?

Accepted Answer

Instrument the application with AWS X-Ray SDK and analyze traces. AWS X-Ray traces individual requests as they travel through the application, showing latency, errors, and downstream calls at each segment. This provides the granular, request-level visibility needed to determine whether errors originate in application code or in dependencies like databases or external services. CloudWatch metrics and VPC Flow Logs operate at a coarser level and cannot pinpoint application logic failures.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs and analyze traffic patterns

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail and monitor for API errors

Answer

Enable detailed CloudWatch metrics on the EC2 instances and ALB