SOA-C02 Practice Test 19 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a stateful web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application uses a sticky session (session affinity) feature of the Application Load Balancer. During a scale-in event, some users lose their session data. What should the SysOps administrator do to prevent session data loss?

Accepted Answer

Store session state in an external data store such as Amazon ElastiCache.. Option C is correct because storing session data externally (e.g., ElastiCache or DynamoDB) decouples it from the instance, so scale-in does not affect sessions. Option A is wrong because increasing cooldown delays scale-in but does not prevent data loss. Option B is wrong because disabling sticky sessions breaks the application's requirement. Option D is wrong because terminating instances with pending sessions still loses data; the problem is the data is on the instance.

Answer

Disable sticky sessions and use a round-robin routing algorithm.

Answer

Use a lifecycle hook to back up session data before termination.

Answer

Increase the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period to delay termination.

Question 2

Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator creates a CloudFormation stack with the template shown. After 30 days, what happens to noncurrent versions of objects in the bucket?

Accepted Answer

They are permanently deleted.. Option A is correct because the lifecycle rule deletes noncurrent versions after 30 days. Option B is wrong because they are deleted, not archived. Option C is wrong because they are deleted, not transitioned. Option D is wrong because they are deleted after 30 days, not immediately.

Answer

They are moved to Amazon S3 Glacier.

Answer

They become the current version.

Answer

They are moved to Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access.

Question 3

A company is designing a highly available architecture for a web application. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. Which TWO steps should the company take to ensure the architecture is resilient to an Availability Zone failure? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to launch instances in at least two Availability Zones.. Options A and C are correct. Option A ensures the ALB can route traffic to targets in other AZs. Option C ensures EC2 instances are distributed across AZs. Option B is wrong because a single instance type does not improve availability. Option D is wrong because increasing min size in one AZ does not protect against AZ failure. Option E is wrong because CloudWatch alarms do not provide AZ redundancy.

Answer

Set the Auto Scaling group's desired capacity to a high number.

Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm that triggers if the ALB has elevated 5xx errors.

Answer

Use a single EC2 instance type for all instances.

Question 4

A company wants to create a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for its RDS for PostgreSQL database. The primary database is in us-east-1. The company needs a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 1 hour. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a cross-region Read Replica in us-west-2 and promote it during a disaster.. Option B is correct because a cross-region Read Replica can be promoted to a primary in another region, achieving low RPO (seconds) and low RTO (minutes). Option A is wrong because snapshots have higher RPO and RTO. Option C is wrong because DMS is for migration, not DR. Option D is wrong because single-region Multi-AZ does not protect against region failure.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ in us-east-1 and create a standby in a different Availability Zone.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate to an EC2 instance.

Answer

Take daily automated snapshots and copy them to us-west-2.

Question 5

A company is running a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. They want to ensure that if an entire Availability Zone fails, the application remains available. Which configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to launch instances in multiple Availability Zones.. Option B is correct because deploying EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) ensures that if one AZ fails, traffic can be routed to healthy instances in other AZs. Option A is wrong because an Auto Scaling group with a single AZ does not protect against AZ failure. Option C is wrong because a larger instance type improves performance but not availability. Option D is wrong because read replicas are for databases, not EC2 instances.

Answer

Use an RDS Multi-AZ deployment for the application.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instances.

Question 6

A company wants to ensure that its EC2 instances receive patches automatically to maintain security compliance. Which AWS service can be used to automate patch management?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. Option D is correct because AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates patching of managed instances. Option A is wrong because CloudWatch is for monitoring. Option B is wrong because Config is for compliance auditing. Option C is wrong because CloudTrail is for API logging.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 7

A company runs a stateless web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The company wants to improve the application's availability and fault tolerance. Which TWO actions should the SysOps administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Configure Auto Scaling to maintain a minimum number of instances.. Options B and C are correct. Multi-AZ deployment ensures availability if one AZ fails, and Auto Scaling maintains desired capacity. Option A is wrong because larger instances do not improve fault tolerance. Option D is wrong because CloudFront is for content delivery, not compute fault tolerance. Option E is wrong because stopping termination protection does not improve availability.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudFront as an origin for the ALB.

Answer

Disable termination protection on EC2 instances.

Answer

Use larger EC2 instance types.

Question 8

A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an S3 bucket can recover from accidental deletions by users. The bucket stores versioned objects. What additional configuration should be enabled to prevent permanent deletion?

Accepted Answer

Enable MFA Delete on the bucket.. Option C is correct because MFA Delete requires multi-factor authentication to delete versions, preventing accidental permanent deletion. Option A is wrong because lifecycle policies do not protect against deletion. Option B is wrong because encryption does not prevent deletion. Option D is wrong because bucket policies can allow/deny but not require MFA for deletion of versions without additional configuration.

Answer

Enable S3 Server-Side Encryption.

Answer

Enable S3 Lifecycle rules to expire objects.

Answer

Configure a bucket policy to deny s3:DeleteObject.

Question 9

A company is using Amazon S3 to store critical data with versioning enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to implement a solution that automatically transitions objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 90 days and permanently deletes them after 7 years. Which S3 feature should be used?

Accepted Answer

S3 Lifecycle policies. Option C is correct because S3 Lifecycle policies can transition objects to different storage classes and expire (delete) objects after a specified number of days. Option A is wrong because S3 Object Lock is for write-once-read-many (WORM) protection. Option B is wrong because S3 Intelligent-Tiering moves data between access tiers but does not delete. Option D is wrong because S3 Replication replicates objects, not lifecycle management.

Answer

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication

Question 10

A company uses S3 to store critical data. They need to ensure that data can be recovered in the event of accidental deletion or overwriting by users. Which combination of actions should they take?

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and MFA Delete.. Option C is correct because enabling S3 Versioning allows recovery of previous versions, and enabling MFA Delete adds an extra layer of protection. Option A is wrong because S3 Cross-Region Replication does not prevent deletion. Option B is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration is for speed. Option D is wrong because logging does not prevent deletion.

Answer

Enable S3 Cross-Region Replication and S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Answer

Enable S3 Server Access Logging and S3 Object Lock.

Question 11

A SysOps administrator is planning for disaster recovery of an RDS MySQL database. The database is currently in a single AZ. Which TWO actions will improve recovery time and reduce data loss? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Enable automated backups with a retention period of 7 days.. Options B and D are correct. Multi-AZ provides a synchronous standby for failover, reducing RTO and RPO. Automated backups allow point-in-time recovery within seconds. Option A is wrong because read replicas are for read scaling, not failover. Option C is wrong because increasing storage does not improve recovery. Option E is wrong because Deletion Protection does not aid recovery.

Answer

Create a read replica in a different AWS Region.

Answer

Enable deletion protection on the RDS instance.

Answer

Increase the allocated storage to improve performance.

Question 12

A company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores data on an Amazon EBS volume. The SysOps administrator needs to implement a backup strategy that ensures data can be recovered in the event of an AZ failure. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure automated snapshots using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.. Options B and D are correct. Option B: Cross-region snapshot copy protects against AZ failure by storing data in another region. Option D: Automating snapshots with a lifecycle policy ensures regular backups. Option A is wrong because Multi-Attach EBS does not provide backup. Option C is wrong because increasing volume size does not provide backup. Option E is wrong because EBS encryption protects data at rest but not against failure.

Answer

Increase the EBS volume size to maximize I/O performance.

Answer

Enable EBS encryption using AWS KMS.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach to allow the volume to be attached to instances in another AZ.

Question 13

A SysOps administrator notices that an RDS instance's storage is nearly full. The instance uses General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage. The administrator needs to increase storage with minimal downtime. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Modify the RDS instance to increase the allocated storage size. Correct answer is D. Modifying the RDS instance to increase allocated storage can be done with minimal downtime (typically a few minutes). Option A is wrong because deleting old data is not a scalable solution. Option B is wrong because enabling storage auto-scaling is proactive but does not solve the immediate issue. Option C is wrong because converting to Provisioned IOPS is for performance, not capacity.

Answer

Enable storage auto-scaling

Answer

Delete old data to free up space

Answer

Convert the storage type to Provisioned IOPS

Question 14

A company runs a critical database on an EC2 instance with an EBS volume. The administrator wants to create a disaster recovery plan that can recover the database in a different AWS Region within 4 hours. The database size is 1 TB. What is the MOST efficient approach to meet the RTO?

Accepted Answer

Copy the AMI and underlying EBS snapshots to the DR region.. Option D is correct because copying the AMI and snapshot to another region allows launching an instance there. Option A is incorrect because sharing does not copy to another region. Option B is incorrect because EBS snapshots are regional, not global. Option C is incorrect because AWS Backup can copy to another region, but the process is similar to manual copy; however, the key is to have the AMI/snapshot available in the DR region.

Answer

Share the AMI with the target region.

Answer

Use EBS snapshots directly in the DR region.

Answer

Configure AWS Backup to copy backups to the DR region.

Question 15

An application running on EC2 instances stores session data in an attached EBS volume. The company wants to ensure session data is not lost if an instance fails. Which solution should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Move session storage to Amazon ElastiCache for Redis with replication.. Option C is correct because ElastiCache provides a highly available, in-memory data store outside the EC2 instance, preserving session data on instance failure. Option A is wrong because an EBS snapshot is not real-time. Option B is wrong because EBS Multi-Attach is for shared block storage, not session data. Option D is wrong because scaling up does not provide durability.

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach to attach the volume to multiple instances.

Answer

Take frequent EBS snapshots of the volume.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type with more memory.