SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Test 16 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A financial services company runs a critical application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. They need to ensure that in the event of a single AZ failure, the application remains available with no data loss. The application uses EBS volumes for persistent storage. What should a solutions architect recommend?

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

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon EFS instead of EBS volumes.. Amazon EFS is a regional, fully managed file system that automatically replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, providing high availability and durability. This ensures no data loss during a single AZ failure. Option A is incorrect because periodic snapshots introduce a recovery point objective (RPO) that may result in data loss. Option C is incorrect because EBS volumes are tied to a single AZ and cannot be attached to instances in another AZ. Option D is incorrect because EBS multi-attach volumes only allow attachment within the same AZ, not across different AZs, thus cannot provide cross-AZ high availability.

Answer

Take periodic EBS snapshots and restore in another AZ.

Answer

Use an EBS volume in one AZ and attach it to instances in another AZ.

Answer

Use an EBS multi-attach volume with a cluster-aware file system.

Question 2

A company is migrating a monolithic application to a microservices architecture on AWS. They want to improve deployment frequency and reduce risk. Which TWO strategies should they adopt?

Accepted Answer

Implement blue/green deployments.. Correct answers are B and C. Blue/green deployments (B) reduce risk by allowing instant rollback and minimizing downtime during production releases. CI/CD pipelines with automated testing (C) increase deployment frequency by automating build, test, and deployment steps, enabling rapid and reliable releases. Option A is incorrect because deploying all microservices from a single codebase increases coupling and blast radius. Option D is incorrect because manual approval gates slow down frequency. Option E is incorrect because feature branches with manual merge approvals introduce delays and integration complexity.

Answer

Deploy all microservices from a single codebase.

Answer

Require manual approval for each production deployment.

Answer

Use feature branches with manual merge approvals.

Question 3

A company runs a stateful web application on EC2 instances with EBS volumes. They want to improve resilience by distributing the workload across multiple Availability Zones. Which THREE steps should they take?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon EFS for shared storage across AZs.. Correct answers are A, C, and D. Option A ensures data is available in multiple AZs. Option C distributes instances for high availability. Option D handles traffic distribution and health checks. Option B is wrong because EBS volumes cannot be attached cross-AZ. Option E is wrong because Read Replicas are for RDS, not EBS.

Answer

Attach the same EBS volume to instances in different AZs.

Answer

Configure EBS Read Replicas in another AZ.

Question 4

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. They need to ensure that updates to a stack do not cause downtime for a critical database. Which TWO strategies should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use an UpdatePolicy attribute for rolling updates.. Correct answers are B and E. Option B: Using an UpdatePolicy attribute allows you to control how updates are applied, such as rolling updates across instances, which minimizes downtime. Option E: Setting a DeletionPolicy of Retain on the database resource ensures that the database is not deleted during stack updates or deletions, preventing accidental data loss and downtime. Option A is incorrect because creating a new stack would require data migration, which can cause downtime. Option C is incorrect because disabling rollback does not prevent downtime; it can leave the stack in a failed state. Option D is incorrect because a service role controls permissions, not update behavior.

Answer

Create a new stack and migrate data.

Answer

Disable rollback on stack update failures.

Answer

Use a service role for CloudFormation.

Question 5

A company runs a containerized application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They want to improve the security of their container images without slowing down the CI/CD pipeline. Which THREE measures should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS CodePipeline with approval gates for security checks.. AWS CodePipeline with approval gates allows you to introduce manual or automated approval steps that can enforce security checks (e.g., vulnerability scan results, policy compliance) before a container image is promoted to production. This ensures that security validation occurs without blocking the entire CI/CD pipeline—only the deployment stage is gated, preserving pipeline speed for earlier stages like build and test.

Answer

Require manual vulnerability scanning before each deployment.

Answer

Encrypt all container images using AWS KMS.

Question 6

A company runs a customer-facing web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application stores session data in an RDS MySQL database. Recently, they have been experiencing increased latency and occasional timeouts during peak hours. The operations team has observed that the RDS instance's CPU utilization is consistently above 80%, and the number of database connections is near the maximum allowed. The application code is not easily modifiable in the short term. The company needs a solution that reduces the load on the database with minimal changes to the application. What should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Implement an Amazon ElastiCache cluster and modify the application to cache frequent queries.. Implementing an in-memory cache like Amazon ElastiCache can offload frequent read queries from the database, reducing CPU utilization and the number of connections. This can be achieved with minimal code changes if the application uses caching libraries or can be configured to use a caching layer for session data or frequently accessed data. Option A is incorrect: increasing the RDS instance size might temporarily alleviate CPU pressure but does not reduce the number of connections and is not a scalable solution; it also requires downtime for resizing. Option B is incorrect: creating an RDS read replica offloads read traffic but does not reduce write load or the connection count on the primary instance; session data typically involves both reads and writes, so a read replica would not significantly help with the primary's CPU or connection limit. Option D is incorrect: migrating to Amazon Aurora Multi-AZ provides better performance and high availability, but the migration process is not minimal and does not directly reduce the load on the database; it also does not address the connection limit issue.

Answer

Increase the RDS instance size to a larger instance type.

Answer

Create an RDS read replica and offload read traffic to it.

Answer

Migrate the database to Amazon Aurora with Multi-AZ.

Question 7

A company uses AWS CodePipeline to deploy a static website to an S3 bucket. The pipeline includes a source stage from GitHub and a deploy stage that syncs the S3 bucket. Recently, the deployment has been failing intermittently with the error 'Access Denied' when the pipeline tries to write to the S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows the pipeline's service role to perform s3:PutObject. The service role has the following IAM policy attached: { 'Effect': 'Allow', 'Action': 's3:PutObject', 'Resource': 'arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*' }. What is the MOST likely cause of the failure?

Accepted Answer

The bucket has a bucket policy that denies the pipeline's service role.. The bucket policy can explicitly deny access even if the IAM role attached to the pipeline allows s3:PutObject. Since both policies are evaluated, an explicit deny in the bucket policy overrides any allow. Option A is incorrect because default encryption does not affect IAM permissions. Option B is incorrect because the pipeline uses the service role, not Git credentials; that would affect source stage authentication, not S3 write access. Option C is incorrect because S3 VPC endpoints are for private connectivity, not required for public S3 access via the internet, and an Access Denied error points to a permissions issue, not a network issue.

Answer

The S3 bucket has default encryption enabled.

Answer

The pipeline is in a VPC without an S3 VPC endpoint.

Answer

The pipeline's source stage is not configured with Git credentials.

Question 8

A company runs a batch processing application on a scheduled EC2 instance that starts every night. The instance processes a large number of files from an S3 bucket and writes results to another S3 bucket. The job takes approximately 6 hours to complete. Recently, the job has been failing after 4 hours with an error indicating that the instance's EBS root volume is full. The instance type is t3.medium with a 20 GB gp2 root volume. The application writes temporary files to the root volume. The company wants to fix this with minimal changes to the application and infrastructure. What should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Increase the size of the EBS root volume to 100 GB.. Increasing the root volume size provides more space for temporary files without requiring application changes. Option A is wrong because creating an additional EBS volume and mounting it would require application changes to write to a different path. Option B is wrong because instance store volumes are ephemeral and may not be available on t3 instances, and would also require application changes. Option D is wrong because compressing temporary files may not be sufficient and requires code changes.

Answer

Create an additional EBS volume and mount it to the instance.

Answer

Change the instance type to one with instance store volumes.

Answer

Modify the application to compress temporary files.

Question 9

A company runs a high-traffic web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application uses a Redis cluster for caching. Recently, they have noticed that the cache hit ratio has dropped significantly, causing increased load on the database. The operations team observed that the Redis cluster's CPU utilization is high and memory usage is near capacity. They need to improve the cache performance with minimal changes to the application code. What should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Upgrade the Redis cluster to a larger node type with more CPU and memory.. Upgrading to a larger node type provides more CPU and memory, directly addressing the high utilization and capacity issues without requiring application code changes. Option A is incorrect because migrating to MemoryDB for Redis does not solve the immediate capacity problem and introduces unnecessary complexity. Option C is incorrect because increasing TTL values may reduce cache churn but does not increase the available CPU or memory. Option D is incorrect because enabling encryption in transit adds overhead and does not resolve the capacity or performance issues.

Answer

Migrate from ElastiCache to Amazon MemoryDB for Redis.

Answer

Increase the TTL values for cached objects in the application.

Answer

Enable encryption in transit for the Redis cluster.

Question 10

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a stack that includes an Amazon RDS MySQL instance. The stack template defines the DBInstanceClass as db.t3.medium. After deployment, the database performance is insufficient for the workload. The company wants to change the instance class to db.r5.large without recreating the database. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Update the CloudFormation stack with the new instance class and apply the change.. You can update the CloudFormation stack with a new DBInstanceClass value, and CloudFormation will modify the RDS instance to the new class. RDS supports modifying the DB instance class without recreating the database, although a brief downtime may occur. Option A is wrong because creating a new stack and migrating data is unnecessary. Option B is wrong because AWS DMS is typically used for migrations, not for simple instance class changes; blue/green deployment is not required. Option C is wrong because deleting the stack would destroy the database.

Answer

Create a new stack with the new instance class and migrate the data.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service to perform a blue/green deployment.

Answer

Delete the stack and create a new one with the new instance class.

Question 11

A company runs a web application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The application experiences periodic traffic spikes that cause the environment to scale out. However, the scaling is slow, leading to increased latency during spikes. The operations team wants to improve the responsiveness of the Auto Scaling group. The application is stateless and runs on a single instance type. What should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Decrease the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period.. Decrease the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period. Decreasing the cooldown period allows the Auto Scaling group to launch new instances more quickly after a scaling activity, reducing the time it takes to respond to traffic spikes. This directly improves responsiveness. Option A is incorrect because using multiple instance types does not speed up scaling decisions. Option B (scheduled scaling) is proactive but does not help with unexpected spikes. Option D (larger instance type) addresses capacity per instance but not the speed of scaling out.

Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to use multiple instance types.

Answer

Use scheduled scaling to add capacity before expected spikes.

Answer

Change the instance type to a larger size.

Question 12

A company runs a production AWS environment with Amazon EC2 instances managed by Auto Scaling groups. The operations team notices that after a recent deployment, the application is returning higher error rates. Which TWO steps should the team take to enable a quick rollback and improve future deployments?

Accepted Answer

Implement canary deployments using AWS CodeDeploy to shift traffic gradually and monitor error rates.. Implement canary deployments using AWS CodeDeploy to shift traffic gradually and monitor error rates. This allows a gradual rollout, reducing blast radius, and enables quick rollback by stopping traffic to unhealthy instances. Option D: Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to perform a blue/green deployment, swapping the environment URL after testing. This provides a full rollback by swapping back to the old environment. Option A (lifecycle hooks) is for custom actions during instance lifecycle, not for rollback of deployments. Option C (CloudFormation change sets) allows previewing changes but does not automatically roll back on failure. Option E (CloudTrail) is for auditing API calls, not for deployment rollback.

Answer

Configure Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks to automatically terminate new instances if health checks fail.

Answer

Use AWS CloudFormation change sets to automatically roll back failed deployments.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail to track deployment API calls and automatically revert if errors exceed a threshold.

Question 13

A company has a serverless application using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB. The application experiences occasional timeouts during peak hours. After reviewing AWS X-Ray traces, the team finds that DynamoDB queries are slow. Which THREE actions should the team take to improve performance and continuously optimize the solution?

Accepted Answer

Optimize DynamoDB queries by using global secondary indexes and reducing the number of separate queries.. To improve performance and optimize the serverless application, the team should take the following actions: Optimize DynamoDB queries by using global secondary indexes and reducing the number of separate queries (Option A). This reduces query latency and the number of round trips. Configure DynamoDB auto scaling (Option B) to adjust read and write capacity based on demand, ensuring sufficient throughput during peak hours without over-provisioning. Enable Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for read-heavy workloads (Option E) to provide in-memory caching for DynamoDB, significantly reducing read latency. Using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis (Option C) is an external caching solution that adds operational complexity and is not directly optimized for DynamoDB integration; DAX is the recommended DynamoDB caching service. Implementing Lambda function warmers (Option D) addresses cold starts but does not improve DynamoDB query performance.

Answer

Use Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to cache DynamoDB query results.

Answer

Implement Lambda function warmers to keep containers initialized and reduce cold starts.

Question 14

A financial services company runs a critical trading application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in three Availability Zones. The application uses a MySQL-compatible Amazon RDS for MariaDB database with Multi-AZ deployment. Recently, the operations team noticed that during periods of heavy trading, the database CPU utilization spikes to 100%, causing query timeouts and application errors. The team has already reviewed slow query logs and enabled Performance Insights, but the issue persists. The application is read-heavy with frequent writes. The team needs to reduce database load with minimal changes to the application code. Which solution is the MOST effective and scalable?

Accepted Answer

Create read replicas of the RDS for MariaDB instance and configure the application to send read queries to the read replicas.. (RDS for MariaDB read replicas with read-only database connections) offloads read traffic without code changes, as read replicas can be used by modifying the connection string. Option A (Aurora) would require migration. Option B (ElastiCache) requires application code to cache data. Option C (DynamoDB Accelerator) is for DynamoDB, not MariaDB.

Answer

Migrate the database to Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition with Auto Scaling and enable performance insights.

Answer

Implement an in-memory caching layer using Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached and modify the application to check the cache first.

Answer

Replace the RDS database with Amazon DynamoDB and use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for caching.

Question 15

A media company delivers video content to a global audience using Amazon CloudFront, AWS Lambda@Edge, and Amazon S3. The origin is an S3 bucket that stores video files. Recently, users in Asia-Pacific report slow load times. The operations team checks CloudFront metrics and sees a high cache miss rate for content popular in that region. The team wants to improve performance for all users without significantly increasing costs. The application uses a single CloudFront distribution with a default cache behavior. The S3 bucket is in us-east-1. Which solution should the team implement?

Accepted Answer

Use Lambda@Edge to redirect requests to the nearest S3 bucket based on the viewer's location.. Using Lambda@Edge to redirect requests to the nearest S3 bucket based on viewer location reduces latency for global users by serving content from a regional S3 bucket. This approach improves performance for all users without significantly increasing costs, as it leverages existing Lambda@Edge and S3 infrastructure. Option D is incorrect because CloudFront origin groups are designed for failover, not geographic routing, and using geographic headers for origin selection is not a native feature.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the S3 bucket and update CloudFront to use the accelerated endpoint.

Answer

Create separate CloudFront distributions for each geographic region and use Route 53 latency-based routing.

Answer

Set up multiple origin groups in the existing CloudFront distribution with one S3 bucket per region, and configure cache behaviors based on geographic headers.