SAP-C02 Flashcards — Free AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 Study Cards

Use an SCP to deny changes to the password policy and to deny deactivation of MFA devices. Use AWS Config rules to detect non-compliant users.

SCPs can deny changes to the password policy and deny deactivation of MFA devices, preventing users from weakening security controls. AWS Config rules then detect non-compliant users (e.g., those without MFA or with a non-compliant password policy), allowing the security team to trigger remediation or alerts. SCPs alone cannot enforce a specific password policy or enable MFA; they only block actions, so Config rules are needed for detection and enforcement.

Use AWS Resource Access Manager to share the Transit Gateway with the application accounts.

AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) allows the centralized networking team to share the Transit Gateway with specific application accounts, enabling authorized VPCs to create attachments without exposing the resource to all accounts. This approach is secure because it uses resource-based policies to grant access only to designated accounts, and scalable because it avoids the administrative overhead of managing individual VPNs or VPC peering connections as the number of application VPCs grows.

Use the AWS CloudTrail setup provided by Control Tower, which automatically enables a trail for all accounts in the organization.

AWS Control Tower provides an integrated CloudTrail setup that automatically creates and manages a central trail for all accounts in the organization. This trail is deployed using AWS CloudFormation StackSets and delivers logs to a centralized S3 bucket, ensuring compliance without manual intervention or custom automation. This is the best approach because it is native, fully managed, and aligns with Control Tower's governance model.

The S3 bucket policy includes a condition that only allows access from the logging account's AWS service principals, not from individual IAM users.

The S3 bucket policy likely includes a condition that restricts access to only AWS service principals (e.g., the logging account's own services) rather than individual IAM users or roles from other accounts. Even with read-only access granted to the analyst's IAM user or role, the bucket policy's explicit deny for non-service principals overrides any allow, preventing the analyst from accessing the logs. This is a common cross-account access issue where bucket policies must explicitly allow principals from other accounts.

Amazon RDS for MySQL

Amazon RDS for MySQL is the correct choice because it provides a managed MySQL database service that minimizes operational overhead through automated backups, patching, and scaling. Each microservice can have its own RDS instance, enabling database-per-service isolation while offloading administrative tasks like replication and failover to AWS.

Configure the SQS queue as a Lambda event source with a reserved concurrency of 1000 for the Lambda function.

Configuring the SQS queue as a Lambda event source with a reserved concurrency of 1000 ensures that Lambda can scale up to 1000 concurrent executions to handle a sudden burst of messages. The SQS event source uses long polling and synchronously invokes Lambda, which processes messages in batches and automatically deletes them from the queue only upon successful completion, guaranteeing at-least-once processing. Reserved concurrency prevents throttling and ensures that the function has sufficient capacity to scale without losing messages.

Store the secrets in AWS Secrets Manager and reference them in the ECS task definition.

AWS Secrets Manager is the recommended service for storing sensitive configuration data like database connection strings because it provides built-in encryption at rest using AWS KMS, automatic secret rotation, and fine-grained access control. ECS task definitions can reference Secrets Manager secrets directly using the 'secrets' parameter, which injects the secret value into the container at runtime without exposing it in plaintext. This approach follows AWS best practices for managing secrets by avoiding hard-coded values and leveraging a dedicated secrets management service.

Create a new target group with the green instances. Modify the ALB listener rule to forward traffic to the new target group.

Blue/green deployment with an ALB is achieved by creating a new target group for the green instances and modifying the ALB listener rule to forward traffic to the new target group. This allows instant traffic shifting with zero downtime, as the ALB can route traffic between target groups without changing the DNS or creating a new ALB. The blue (old) target group remains available for instant rollback if needed.

Use target tracking scaling with a schedule to increase minimum capacity during business hours.

Combining target tracking scaling with a scheduled action allows the application to dynamically adjust capacity based on actual demand while ensuring a higher baseline during peak business hours. This hybrid approach optimizes costs by scaling down at night and maintains performance by preventing cold starts or lag during traffic spikes, which is ideal for variable patterns on ECS Fargate.

Configure a predictive scaling policy using historical traffic patterns.

Predictive scaling uses historical traffic patterns to forecast future demand and proactively adjust capacity before traffic spikes occur, which directly addresses the requirement to anticipate changes. This approach reduces latency by ensuring sufficient resources are available ahead of time, unlike reactive policies that only respond after utilization increases.

Create a read replica of the RDS instance and modify the application connection string to use the reader endpoint.

Creating a read replica of the RDS for MySQL DB instance and modifying the application connection string to use the reader endpoint offloads read traffic from the primary instance with minimal application changes. The reader endpoint automatically distributes connections across all read replicas, reducing the load on the primary instance without requiring code changes beyond updating the connection string.

Add an S3 bucket policy that denies s3:PutObject without the x-amz-server-side-encryption header.

An S3 bucket policy that denies s3:PutObject unless the request includes the x-amz-server-side-encryption header enforces encryption at rest for all objects uploaded to the bucket. This policy condition works regardless of how the bucket is created, including via CloudFormation, and ensures that any PutObject operation without the required encryption header is rejected, meeting the security team's requirement.

Define an IAM task role with S3 access policies and reference it in the ECS task definition.

An IAM task role is the recommended mechanism for granting least-privilege permissions to ECS tasks using the Fargate launch type. The task role is defined in the ECS task definition and assumed by the container runtime, allowing the application to securely access the S3 bucket without embedding credentials. This approach follows AWS best practices by scoping permissions to the specific task rather than the underlying infrastructure.

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) to Amazon EC2, and AWS DMS to Amazon RDS for SQL Server

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) enables lift-and-shift migration of the on-premises server to Amazon EC2 with minimal changes, while AWS DMS can migrate the Microsoft SQL Server database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server, a fully managed service that reduces operational overhead. This combination meets the requirement of minimal application changes and leverages AWS managed services for the database.

Use AWS Global Accelerator to gradually shift traffic, and use Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to centralize session state

AWS Global Accelerator allows you to gradually shift traffic from on-premises to AWS using endpoint weights, minimizing disruption during migration. Amazon ElastiCache for Redis provides a centralized, in-memory session store that preserves session state across the migration, ensuring low-latency access for users worldwide by leveraging Global Accelerator's anycast IP and AWS edge locations.

AWS App2Container (A2C)

AWS App2Container (A2C) is specifically designed to containerize existing .NET Framework applications running on Windows Server with minimal code changes. It analyzes the application, generates Docker images, and produces CloudFormation templates for deployment on Amazon ECS or EKS, directly meeting the requirement to modernize a .NET Framework 4.7 application to a containerized architecture without significant refactoring.