SAP-C02 Hard Questions — 25 Difficult Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a monolithic application to a microservices architecture on AWS. The application uses a relational database with complex queries. The company wants to reduce operational overhead and achieve high availability. Which database strategy should the company adopt for the microservices?

Accepted Answer

Use a separate Amazon RDS instance for each microservice. Option B is correct because a microservices architecture requires database isolation to ensure loose coupling, independent scaling, and fault isolation. Using a separate Amazon RDS instance for each microservice allows each team to manage its own schema, optimize queries independently, and avoid a single point of failure, which aligns with the goal of reducing operational overhead and achieving high availability.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS Proxy with a single database

Answer

Use Amazon DynamoDB for all microservices

Answer

Use a single Amazon RDS instance shared across all microservices

Question 2

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 3

A company has a centralized logging account that receives VPC Flow Logs from all accounts in the organization. The logs are stored in an S3 bucket. A security analyst needs to query the logs to identify traffic to a specific IP address. The analyst has been granted read-only access to the S3 bucket. However, the analyst cannot access the logs. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

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

Answer

The S3 bucket has a lifecycle policy that deletes logs after a short period.

Answer

The S3 bucket has a bucket policy that requires the analyst to assume a role in the logging account.

Answer

The S3 bucket is encrypted with an AWS KMS key, and the analyst does not have permissions to decrypt.

Question 4

A multinational company is implementing AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts across business units. The security team requires that all IAM users in member accounts must use a specific password policy and must have MFA enabled. Which combination of actions should the company take to enforce these requirements?

Accepted Answer

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.. Option C is correct because 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.

Answer

Use an SCP to enforce a specific password policy and require MFA across all accounts.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to automatically set the password policy and enable MFA for all users.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor password policy changes and MFA status, and trigger an automatic remediation.

Question 5

A company has multiple AWS accounts managed via AWS Organizations. The security team wants to restrict the use of specific instance types across all accounts. Which TWO methods can be used to enforce this restriction?

Accepted Answer

Create an SCP that denies the ec2:RunInstances action for specific instance types.. Option A is correct because Service Control Policies (SCPs) in AWS Organizations allow you to centrally restrict permissions across all accounts in the organization. By creating an SCP that denies the ec2:RunInstances action with a condition key like ec2:InstanceType matching specific prohibited instance types, you can enforce this restriction at the organization, OU, or account level, preventing any user or role from launching those instance types regardless of their IAM permissions.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor launches of prohibited instance types and automatically terminate them.

Answer

Use Service Quotas to restrict the number of instances of specific types.

Answer

Create an IAM policy in each account that denies the specified instance types.

Question 6

A company has a management account in AWS Organizations and several member accounts. The security team wants to ensure that any IAM user created in any member account must have a password policy that enforces a minimum length of 14 characters. The team wants a preventive control that is enforced automatically. Which approach should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use an SCP to deny the iam:UpdateAccountPasswordPolicy action and deploy a password policy using CloudFormation StackSets.. Option B is correct because an SCP can deny the iam:UpdateAccountPasswordPolicy action, preventing member accounts from altering the password policy, while CloudFormation StackSets can deploy a compliant password policy across all member accounts automatically. This combination provides a preventive control that enforces the minimum 14-character requirement without relying on user action or reactive detection.

Answer

Use AWS Service Catalog to provide a password policy product and require account owners to launch it.

Answer

Use an SCP to deny the iam:CreateUser action unless the request includes a condition that the password policy meets the requirement.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to detect accounts without the required password policy and auto-remediate with a Lambda function.

Question 7

A financial services company is designing a multi-account strategy using AWS Control Tower. The company has strict data residency requirements: customer data must remain in the country of origin. The company operates in three countries: US, UK, and Germany. Each country has a set of accounts for production, development, and testing. The company needs to ensure that IAM roles in UK accounts cannot access resources in German accounts, and vice versa. Which architecture should be used?

Accepted Answer

Create separate OUs for each country (US, UK, Germany) under Control Tower. Apply SCPs at each country OU that deny access to resources in other country OUs.. Option D is correct because AWS Control Tower allows you to create separate Organizational Units (OUs) for each country, and Service Control Policies (SCPs) can be applied at the OU level to explicitly deny access to resources in other country OUs. This enforces data residency by preventing IAM roles in UK accounts from accessing German resources, and vice versa, using a deny-all-cross-region or deny-all-cross-account approach scoped to the specific country OUs.

Answer

Create one OU per account type (Prod, Dev, Test) and use SCPs to restrict access to resources based on tags.

Answer

Create a single OU for all accounts and use IAM permissions boundaries to restrict access.

Answer

Use AWS Resource Access Manager to share resources only within the same country and use IAM policies to restrict cross-country access.

Question 8

A company is migrating a monolithic application to microservices on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application has variable traffic patterns, with high traffic during business hours and low traffic at night. They want to optimize costs while maintaining performance. Which scaling strategy should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Use target tracking scaling with a schedule to increase minimum capacity during business hours.. Option A is correct because 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.

Answer

Use step scaling policies based on memory utilization.

Answer

Use scheduled scaling to increase capacity during business hours.

Answer

Use simple scaling policies based on CPU utilization.

Question 9

A company is designing a serverless data processing pipeline using AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB. The pipeline must process incoming JSON records from an Amazon Kinesis Data Stream. Each record must be processed exactly once and in order. The company expects a throughput of up to 1,000 records per second. Which combination of services and configurations should the company use to meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Kinesis Data Stream with 10 shards.. Option C is correct because with a throughput of 1,000 records per second, a Kinesis Data Stream with 10 shards provides the necessary capacity (each shard supports up to 1,000 records/second for ingestion and 2 MB/s for reads). This shard count ensures the stream can handle the peak load without throttling, while maintaining the ordering guarantee within each shard.

Answer

Use DynamoDB Streams to trigger the Lambda function for each record.

Answer

Use an Amazon SQS FIFO queue as the event source for the Lambda function to maintain order.

Answer

Use AWS Step Functions to coordinate processing of records and ensure exactly-once delivery.

Question 10

A company is designing a new containerized application on Amazon EKS. The application must be able to access secrets (e.g., database credentials) securely. The company requires that secrets be automatically rotated and audited. Which THREE actions should the company take to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use IAM roles for service accounts (IRSA) to grant pods access to Secrets Manager. Option B is correct because IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) allows pods in Amazon EKS to assume an IAM role with fine-grained permissions, enabling secure access to AWS Secrets Manager without embedding long-term credentials. This approach integrates with AWS IAM to provide temporary credentials via OIDC federation, ensuring that only authorized pods can retrieve secrets.

Answer

Mount the Secrets Store CSI Driver volume directly to the pod without using ASCP

Answer

Store secrets in Kubernetes Secrets and use a ConfigMap to reference them

Question 11

A company wants to design a highly available, stateless web application using Amazon ECS with Fargate. They need to distribute traffic across multiple AWS Regions for low latency. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to direct traffic to an Application Load Balancer in each region.. Option B is correct because Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs users to the region with the lowest latency, and using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in each region provides regional traffic distribution and health checks for the stateless ECS Fargate tasks. This combination ensures high availability and low latency across multiple AWS Regions, as the ALB handles HTTP/HTTPS traffic and integrates with ECS service discovery.

Answer

Use a single Network Load Balancer in the primary region with cross-zone load balancing.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudFront with origins in each region.

Answer

Use AWS Global Accelerator with Network Load Balancers in each region.

Question 12

A company is deploying a microservices architecture on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They need to enable service-to-service communication with mutual TLS (mTLS) and service discovery. Which combination of services should they use? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). AWS App Mesh provides a service mesh that supports mTLS for encrypting and authenticating service-to-service communication within an ECS Fargate environment. AWS Cloud Map enables service discovery by allowing microservices to register and discover each other via DNS or API calls. AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) is used to provision and manage the X.509 certificates required for mTLS, which are integrated with App Mesh to enforce mutual authentication.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

Question 13

A company is designing a serverless event-driven architecture using AWS Lambda, Amazon SQS, and Amazon DynamoDB. The Lambda function processes messages from an SQS queue and writes to DynamoDB. The company expects unpredictable traffic spikes and must ensure that messages are not lost. Which configuration should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use an SQS queue as a Lambda event source with reserved concurrency on the Lambda function. Option A is correct because using an SQS queue as a Lambda event source with reserved concurrency ensures that messages are not lost during traffic spikes. SQS acts as a durable buffer, and reserved concurrency prevents the Lambda function from being throttled, which would otherwise cause messages to remain in the queue or be sent to a dead-letter queue. This combination guarantees that every message is processed without loss, even under unpredictable load.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for the Lambda function

Answer

Provisioned Concurrency on the Lambda function

Answer

Increase the SQS queue visibility timeout and retention period

Question 14

A solutions architect is designing a new serverless application using AWS Lambda to process orders from an API Gateway endpoint and store them in DynamoDB. The architect creates the IAM role shown in the exhibit. When testing, the Lambda function fails to write to DynamoDB with an AccessDeniedException. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The IAM role lacks a trust policy that allows Lambda to assume it.. The IAM role shown in the exhibit likely includes a permissions policy that grants DynamoDB write access, but it is missing a trust policy that allows the Lambda service (lambda.amazonaws.com) to assume the role. Without this trust relationship, Lambda cannot obtain temporary credentials to execute the function, resulting in an AccessDeniedException when attempting to write to DynamoDB.

Answer

The Lambda function does not have permission to create log groups.

Answer

The Lambda function is not in the same VPC as DynamoDB.

Answer

The DynamoDB table 'Orders' does not exist.

Question 15

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.. Option A is correct because 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 16

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.. Option A is correct because 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 17

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.

Question 18

A company is deploying a new application on AWS and wants to implement a least-privilege IAM policy for an EC2 instance that needs to read from an S3 bucket (my-bucket) and write logs to CloudWatch Logs. Which THREE statements should be included in the IAM policy? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

{"Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["s3:GetObject"], "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*"}. Option A is correct because the EC2 instance only needs to read objects from the S3 bucket, so the least-privilege action is s3:GetObject. The resource ARN 'arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*' correctly targets all objects within the bucket, which is required for reading objects. This adheres to the principle of granting only the necessary permissions.

Answer

{"Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["s3:*"], "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*"}

Answer

{"Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["logs:PutLogEvents"], "Resource": "*"}

Question 19

A company uses AWS CodePipeline to automate deployments of a microservices application to Amazon ECS. The pipeline builds a Docker image, pushes it to Amazon ECR, and updates the ECS service. Recently, deployments have failed because insufficient IAM permissions cause the pipeline to fail when updating the ECS service. The development team wants to implement least privilege permissions. Which IAM policy statement should be added to the CodePipeline service role to allow it to update the ECS service?

Accepted Answer

{"Effect":"Allow","Action":["ecs:UpdateService"],"Resource":"*"}. Option A is correct because the CodePipeline service role needs the ecs:UpdateService permission to trigger an ECS service update after a new Docker image is pushed to Amazon ECR. This action allows the pipeline to instruct ECS to redeploy the service using the updated task definition, which is the specific step that was failing due to insufficient permissions. The resource wildcard is acceptable here because the pipeline role is scoped by the pipeline's own trust policy and resource-based policies on the ECS service.

Answer

{"Effect":"Allow","Action":["ecr:PutImage"],"Resource":"*"}

Answer

{"Effect":"Allow","Action":["ecs:RunTask"],"Resource":"*"}

Answer

{"Effect":"Allow","Action":["ecs:RegisterTaskDefinition"],"Resource":"*"}

Question 20

An IAM policy is attached to a group. A user in the group tries to terminate an EC2 instance in us-east-1 using the AWS CLI. What will happen?

Accepted Answer

The user can describe instances but cannot terminate instances in any region.. The IAM policy attached to the group allows the user to describe instances (ec2:DescribeInstances) but explicitly denies the ability to terminate instances (ec2:TerminateInstances) in any region. Since the policy is attached to the group, the user inherits these permissions, so they can list instances but any attempt to terminate them will be denied by AWS IAM, regardless of the region specified.

Answer

The user cannot describe instances or terminate instances.

Answer

The user can terminate instances and describe instances.

Answer

The user can describe instances but cannot terminate any instances.