SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores session data in an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster. The operations team reports that after scaling events, users lose their sessions. Which TWO actions should the Solutions Architect take to resolve this issue?

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

Accepted Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the Application Load Balancer.. Options B and C are correct. Sticky sessions (session affinity) ensure that requests from a user are sent to the same EC2 instance, preventing session loss when the Auto Scaling group adds or removes instances. However, if the instance is terminated, the session data stored in ElastiCache for Redis persists because it is external to the instance. Option A is incorrect because a Network Load Balancer does not support sticky sessions at the application layer and would not solve the problem. Option D is unnecessary as DynamoDB is not required for session persistence. Option E is incorrect because replication in ElastiCache handles failover, not session loss during scaling events.

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer instead of an Application Load Balancer.

Answer

Store session data in Amazon DynamoDB.

Answer

Enable replication in the ElastiCache cluster to handle failover.

Question 2

A company runs a containerized microservices application on Amazon ECS using Fargate. The application includes a service that processes messages from an Amazon SQS queue. The service is CPU-bound and takes longer to process messages as the queue depth increases. The team wants to automatically scale the number of tasks based on the queue depth. Which solution is MOST effective?

Accepted Answer

Configure ECS Service Auto Scaling with a target tracking scaling policy based on the SQS queue's ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible metric.. ECS Service Auto Scaling can use a target tracking scaling policy with the SQS ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible metric to scale the number of tasks based on queue depth. Option A is wrong because using a Lambda function to poll the SQS queue and invoke a new ECS task for each message is inefficient; Lambda is not designed for long-running CPU-bound tasks, and invoking tasks per message adds overhead and complexity. Option C is wrong because increasing CPU allocation is a vertical scaling approach that does not automatically adjust based on queue depth; it may not address scaling needs and can lead to overprovisioning. Option D is wrong because a CloudWatch alarm based on CPU utilization may react slowly to changes in queue depth, as CPU utilization may not immediately reflect the processing backlog.

Answer

Use an AWS Lambda function to poll the SQS queue and invoke a new task for each message.

Answer

Increase the CPU allocation for the task definition to process messages faster.

Answer

Use a CloudWatch alarm based on CPU utilization to trigger an Auto Scaling action.

Question 3

A startup runs a containerized microservices application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic. The application consists of 10 services, each with its own ECS service. Recently, the startup launched a marketing campaign and traffic increased 10x. The application started returning HTTP 503 errors. The ECS service metrics show that the number of running tasks is at the maximum desired count for each service. The ALB target group health checks are failing intermittently. The startup needs to handle the increased traffic and prevent 503 errors. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Increase the desired count and maximum number of tasks for each ECS service.. Increasing the desired count and maximum tasks allows the service to scale out to handle more traffic. Option B: Increasing task CPU/memory may help but tasks are already at max count, so scaling out is needed. Option C: Decreasing the health check interval may cause premature task termination. Option D: Adding more ALBs does not address the capacity issue.

Answer

Increase the CPU and memory limits for each task definition.

Answer

Decrease the health check interval to detect failures faster.

Answer

Add additional Application Load Balancers and split traffic across them.

Question 4

A company is running a web application on AWS using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in front of an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The application experiences periodic traffic spikes that cause increased latency. The company wants to implement a solution to automatically adjust capacity in anticipation of traffic changes. What should a solutions architect do?

Accepted Answer

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.

Answer

Configure a simple scaling policy based on CPU utilization.

Answer

Configure a scheduled scaling policy to add instances during known peak hours.

Answer

Configure a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization.

Question 5

A company has a monolithic application running on a single Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The application is experiencing performance issues due to heavy read traffic. The company wants to implement a solution that offloads read traffic with minimal application changes. What should a solutions architect do?

Accepted Answer

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.

Answer

Migrate the application to use Amazon DynamoDB with global tables.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ with a standby instance for read traffic.

Answer

Implement Amazon ElastiCache in front of the database to cache read queries.

Question 6

A company is using AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. The security team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets created by CloudFormation must be encrypted at rest. What should a solutions architect do to enforce this requirement?

Accepted Answer

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.

Answer

Enable default encryption on each bucket using SSE-S3.

Answer

Require that all buckets use AWS KMS managed keys for encryption.

Answer

Use a CloudFormation stack policy to prevent modification of bucket encryption settings.

Question 7

A company runs a containerized application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application needs to securely access an Amazon S3 bucket. The company wants to follow the principle of least privilege. What should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

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.

Answer

Attach an IAM role to the underlying EC2 instance.

Answer

Assign an IAM role to the ECS service using the ECS service-linked role.

Answer

Store AWS credentials in the container environment variables.

Question 8

A company has an AWS Lambda function that processes messages from an Amazon SQS queue. The function is invoked with a batch size of 10. Some messages are failing repeatedly, causing the function to retry them up to the maximum retry count and then they are sent to a dead-letter queue (DLQ). The company wants to improve the resilience of the application by handling partial batch failures more efficiently. What should a solutions architect do?

Accepted Answer

Implement reportBatchItemFailures in the Lambda function and enable partial batch response for the SQS event source mapping.. Implementing reportBatchItemFailures in the Lambda function and enabling partial batch response for the SQS event source mapping allows the function to signal which specific messages within a batch failed. This prevents the entire batch from being retried or sent to the DLQ, and only the failed messages are retried individually, improving resilience and efficiency.

Answer

Move the messages to a DLQ immediately after the first failure.

Answer

Decrease the batch size to 1 so that each invocation processes a single message.

Answer

Increase the batch size to 100 to process more messages per invocation.

Question 9

A company is using AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets across the organization are encrypted at rest. Which TWO steps should the security team take to enforce this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS Config rule that checks for S3 bucket default encryption and auto-remediates using SSM Automation.. AWS Config can be configured with a managed rule (e.g., s3-bucket-server-side-encryption-enabled) to detect buckets without default encryption, and an automatic remediation action using AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Automation can enforce encryption by applying the bucket's default encryption settings. Option B is correct because a service control policy (SCP) that denies s3:PutObject unless the x-amz-server-side-encryption header is present ensures that any object uploaded to S3 must include encryption headers, effectively enforcing encryption at the API level across all accounts in the organization.

Answer

Use Amazon GuardDuty to monitor S3 data access patterns.

Answer

Create an IAM role with permissions to encrypt S3 buckets and assign it to all users.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail to log all S3 API calls.

Question 10

A company is running a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The application needs to process a large batch job that runs once per month and takes 2 hours. The company wants to optimize costs while ensuring the batch job has sufficient capacity. Which THREE steps should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Create a scheduled scaling policy that increases the desired capacity before the batch job starts.. A scheduled scaling policy allows you to increase the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group before the batch job starts, ensuring sufficient resources are available exactly when needed. This proactive approach avoids the latency of dynamic scaling and optimizes cost by not maintaining extra capacity outside the batch window.

Answer

Use On-Demand Instances only for the batch job to ensure availability.

Answer

Purchase Reserved Instances for the batch job capacity.

Question 11

A company runs a critical application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in a production AWS account. Recently, the application has experienced intermittent timeouts. The operations team notices that the CPU utilization of the instances spikes to 100% for a few minutes during the timeouts. The Auto Scaling group is configured with a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization at 70%. What should a solutions architect do to improve the application's availability and reduce timeouts?

Accepted Answer

Add a step scaling policy to scale out by 2 instances when CPU exceeds 80% for 1 minute.. Adding a step scaling policy that triggers at 80% CPU for 1 minute provides a faster, more aggressive scale-out response than the existing target tracking policy alone. This helps preempt the CPU spikes that reach 100% and cause timeouts, improving application availability by adding capacity before performance degrades.

Answer

Increase the ALB idle timeout to 120 seconds.

Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.

Answer

Reduce the target tracking scaling threshold to 50% average CPU.

Question 12

A company is running a stateful web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an ALB. The application stores session data locally on the instance. The company notices that users are frequently logged out and lose session data during scaling events. What is the MOST operationally efficient way to preserve session state?

Accepted Answer

Migrate session data to ElastiCache for Redis and modify the application to use it.. Migrating session state to ElastiCache for Redis provides a centralized, external, and highly available session store that persists independently of EC2 instance lifecycles. This ensures that when instances are terminated or added during Auto Scaling events, session data remains intact and accessible from any instance, eliminating user logouts and data loss. It is operationally efficient as it requires minimal application code changes and leverages a fully managed, in-memory data store optimized for low-latency access.

Answer

Create a custom AMI that pre-populates session data from Amazon S3.

Answer

Increase the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period to 600 seconds.

Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB.

Question 13

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. The operations team wants to automatically roll back a stack update if it fails, and receive a notification. What should be configured to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Enable rollback on failure in the CloudFormation stack and configure an SNS notification topic.. CloudFormation natively supports automatic rollback on stack update failure via the 'Rollback on failure' setting. By configuring an SNS notification topic on the stack, the operations team receives alerts when a rollback occurs, meeting both requirements without additional custom logic.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor the UpdateStack API call and trigger a rollback via a Lambda function.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to detect stack failure and revert changes.

Answer

Create a custom resource in the CloudFormation template that performs rollback.

Question 14

A company is running a containerized microservices application on Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type. The application experiences increased latency during peak hours. Upon investigation, the CPU utilization of the tasks reaches 90%. The ECS service is configured with a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU at 70%. However, scaling is not keeping up with demand. What should a solutions architect do to improve the responsiveness of the scaling?

Accepted Answer

Add a step scaling policy that adds 4 tasks when CPU exceeds 80% for 1 minute.. Adding a step scaling policy provides a more aggressive and immediate scaling response when CPU exceeds 80% for 1 minute, which complements the existing target tracking policy. Target tracking scaling policies are reactive and may not scale quickly enough during rapid demand spikes, whereas step scaling can add a fixed number of tasks instantly when a breach occurs, reducing latency during peak hours.

Answer

Increase the task-level CPU limit to 2048 units.

Answer

Decrease the target tracking value to 50% average CPU.

Answer

Decrease the scale-in cooldown period to 60 seconds.

Question 15

A company has a legacy application that runs on a single EC2 instance. The application writes logs to a local file. The company wants to centralize log management without modifying the application code. Which solution is MOST operationally efficient?

Accepted Answer

Install and configure the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instance.. The Amazon CloudWatch agent can be installed on the EC2 instance without modifying application code. It reads the local log file and sends the logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs for centralized management, making it the most operationally efficient solution.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to capture log file changes.

Answer

Modify the application to write logs to stdout and use the awslogs driver.

Answer

Set up an Amazon S3 bucket and use an AWS Lambda function to periodically copy log files.