Practice SOA-C02 Cost and Performance Optimization questions with full explanations on every answer.
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A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
2A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application reads data from an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. During peak hours, the database CPU utilization is consistently high, and the application experiences increased latency. The SysOps administrator observes that 90% of database queries are read-only. Which combination of actions will both improve performance and optimize costs?
3A company stores large volumes of log data in Amazon S3. The logs are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then occasionally for the next 60 days, and after 90 days they are rarely accessed but must be retained for 7 years for compliance. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize storage costs while ensuring data is available when needed. Which S3 lifecycle policy configuration should be applied?
4A company runs a read-heavy database workload on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a primary instance and two read replicas. The SysOps administrator observes that the read replicas frequently experience high replica lag during peak hours, causing stale reads for the application. The administrator needs to reduce replica lag while optimizing costs. The workload is predictable, with spikes during business hours and low traffic at night. Which combination of actions should the administrator take?
5A company runs a mix of Amazon EC2 instances and AWS Fargate tasks that are used for both production and development workloads. The usage is steady and predictable. The SysOps administrator wants to maximize cost savings across both compute services without having to manage specific instances or sizes. Which purchasing option should the administrator recommend?
6A company uses Amazon S3 to serve large files to users. The files are accessed frequently for the first 30 days after upload, then access drops significantly. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize storage costs while ensuring low-latency access for frequently accessed files and automatic optimization for changing access patterns. Which S3 storage class configuration should be used?
7A SysOps administrator manages a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances. The administrator needs to identify underutilized instances and receive recommendations for instance type changes to reduce costs. Which AWS service should be used to provide these rightsizing recommendations?
8A company stores video files in Amazon S3. The files are accessed frequently for the first week, then weekly for the next month, and then rarely after that. The files must be retained for 5 years and any access must be served within minutes. The SysOps administrator needs to minimize storage costs while meeting these requirements. Which lifecycle policy configuration is the most cost-effective?
9A company runs an e-commerce application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Auto Scaling group. The application has a predictable baseline load from 8 AM to 8 PM daily and low load overnight. The SysOps administrator wants to optimize costs while ensuring sufficient capacity for the baseline load. Which purchasing option and scaling strategy should the administrator use?
10A company stores application log files in an Amazon S3 bucket. The logs are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then rarely accessed but must be retrievable within 12 hours. After 1 year, the logs must be archived for compliance with a retention period of 5 years, during which retrievals are expected to be extremely rare (one or two per year) and retrieval time of 12 hours is acceptable. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize storage costs. Which S3 lifecycle policy configuration should be used?
11A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application uses Amazon EBS volumes (gp2) for data storage. The SysOps administrator notices that the storage costs are high, and the application's IOPS requirements are consistently below 3000. The administrator wants to reduce storage costs without affecting performance. Which action should the administrator take?
12A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 instances every night. The job takes exactly 1 hour to complete and is time-sensitive. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs while ensuring the job can be interrupted and resumed if needed. Which EC2 purchasing option is most cost-effective?
13A company runs a production Amazon DynamoDB table with provisioned capacity of 1000 write capacity units (WCU). The table experiences unpredictable spikes up to 2000 WCU, causing throttling. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize cost while handling the spikes. Which solution should be used?
14A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
15A company runs a web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application has predictable traffic patterns with high traffic during business hours and low traffic at night. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce compute costs while ensuring the application remains responsive during peak hours. The administrator has already implemented Auto Scaling based on CPU utilization. Which additional action should the administrator take to optimize costs?
16An application runs on c5.xlarge EC2 instances 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in us-east-1. The workload is stable and will not change instance type for at least 12 months. The team wants to reduce compute costs by 30 to 40 percent compared to On-Demand pricing. Which purchasing option achieves this with the lowest financial risk?
17A media company stores millions of video files in S3. Some files are accessed heavily after upload (when new) and rarely afterward; others are accessed unpredictably across months. The team cannot predict which files will be accessed and when. They want to minimize storage costs without risking retrieval latency penalties or per-object retrieval fees. Which storage class is appropriate?
18The finance team was surprised by a $12,000 spike in EC2 costs last month caused by a runaway Auto Scaling group. They want to receive an email alert within hours whenever any AWS service cost behaves unexpectedly, without manually setting fixed dollar thresholds for each service. Which AWS cost management feature provides this?
19Drag and drop the steps to configure a VPC peering connection between two VPCs into the correct order.
20A company is using Amazon S3 to store historical data. The data is accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then accessed infrequently for the next 90 days, and after 120 days it is rarely accessed but must be retained for 7 years for compliance. Which S3 lifecycle policy provides the LOWEST cost while meeting these requirements?
21A company uses Amazon S3 for static website hosting. The website serves thousands of users globally, and the company wants to reduce latency and lower data transfer costs. Which solution should the SysOps administrator implement?
22A company wants to receive alerts when its AWS costs exceed a certain threshold. Which AWS service should be used?
23A SysOps administrator notices that the monthly bill for Amazon S3 has increased significantly. The company uses S3 for storing application logs and user uploads. The logs are accessed rarely but must be retained for 3 years. User uploads are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then rarely after. Which S3 lifecycle policy will optimize storage costs?
24A SysOps administrator needs to reduce data transfer costs for a web application hosted on EC2 instances in a VPC. The application serves content to users over the internet. Which TWO actions will help reduce data transfer costs? (Choose TWO.)
25A SysOps administrator is investigating a cost increase in a production AWS account. They notice that an EC2 instance with a Reservation has been running continuously for months. The instance type is m5.large in us-east-1. The administrator sees that the instance is using a Standard Reserved Instance (RI) that was purchased 6 months ago for a 1-year term. However, the current utilization shows that the instance is only used for 4 hours per day. What should the administrator do to optimize costs without affecting availability?
26A company has an S3 bucket policy as shown. A developer tries to upload an object using the AWS CLI without the --no-verify-ssl flag. What will happen?
27A company runs a batch processing job every night that takes 2 hours on a single m5.xlarge EC2 instance. The job is fault-tolerant and can be interrupted. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs. Which solution is MOST cost-effective?
28A SysOps administrator notices that an S3 bucket's storage costs have increased significantly. The bucket stores log files and is configured with S3 Standard storage class. Most logs are accessed only once after 30 days. Which action will reduce costs without affecting data retrieval?
29An administrator runs the above command to list EC2 instances. The company wants to optimize costs. Which instance should the administrator consider terminating first?
30A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting slow application performance. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. Amazon CloudWatch metrics show that the average CPU utilization across the instances is below 20%, but the application is still slow. What is the MOST likely cause of the performance issue?
31A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application is deployed in a single AWS region. The company wants to improve performance for users in other regions and reduce the load on the origin servers. The SysOps administrator decides to use Amazon CloudFront. After implementing CloudFront, the administrator notices that the cache hit ratio is very low (around 10%) for the dynamic API responses that are served by the application. These API responses are personalized per user and change frequently. The administrator wants to improve performance for these dynamic requests while still using CloudFront. The application uses cookies for session management and the API responses depend on the user's session. The administrator must ensure that users receive the correct personalized content. Which configuration should the administrator use?
32A company wants to reduce costs for a production Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance that is running 24/7 but only heavily used during business hours (9 AM to 5 PM). Which TWO actions would be MOST effective in optimizing costs without significantly impacting performance during peak hours?
33A SysOps team manages a fleet of EC2 instances used for batch processing. The workload runs daily, taking approximately 6 hours. The instances are launched via an Auto Scaling group using On-Demand instances from a custom AMI. The team has noticed that while the instances are running, the CPU utilization is moderate, but the memory usage is high. After the batch completes, the instances are terminated. The team wants to reduce costs without changing the architecture. Which solution would be MOST cost-effective?
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The Courseiva SOA-C02 question bank contains 33 questions in the Cost and Performance Optimization domain, covering the 12% of the exam attributed to this domain in the official Amazon Web Services blueprint. Click any question to see the full explanation and answer breakdown.
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