SOA-C02 Practice Test 2 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A company requires that all Amazon S3 buckets in its AWS account must be encrypted using AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The SysOps administrator needs to detect any bucket that does not have KMS encryption enabled and automatically remediate it by enabling encryption. Which AWS service should be used to implement this automated compliance enforcement?

Accepted Answer

AWS Config. AWS Config is the correct service because it can continuously monitor S3 bucket configurations against a desired encryption state using managed rules like 's3-bucket-server-side-encryption-enabled' or custom Lambda rules. When a non-compliant bucket is detected, AWS Config can trigger an automatic remediation action via Systems Manager Automation to enable SSE-KMS encryption, enforcing compliance without manual intervention.

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AWS CloudTrail

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Amazon GuardDuty

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AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 2

A company manages multiple AWS accounts using AWS Organizations. The security team wants to restrict the use of Amazon EC2 instance types to only those that are approved for production workloads (e.g., m5.large, m5.xlarge). The policy should be applied to all member accounts in the organization, and it should prevent any non-approved instance type from being launched. The SysOps administrator should implement this with minimal operational overhead. Which solution should be used?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS Organizations Service Control Policy (SCP) that denies ec2:RunInstances if the instance type is not in the approved list.. Option B is correct because AWS Organizations Service Control Policies (SCPs) can centrally enforce restrictions across all member accounts without requiring per-account configuration. By creating an SCP that denies ec2:RunInstances when the instance type is not in the approved list, the security team can prevent non-approved EC2 instance types from being launched with minimal operational overhead, as SCPs are applied at the organization, OU, or account level and do not require managing IAM policies in each account.

Answer

Create an IAM policy in each member account that denies ec2:RunInstances unless the instance type is in the approved list.

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Use AWS Config with the managed rule 'ec2-instance-type-check' and an automatic remediation action that terminates non-compliant instances.

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Use Amazon EventBridge to detect RunInstances API calls and invoke a Lambda function that terminates unapproved instances.

Question 3

A company runs a multi-tier application that uses an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The SysOps administrator needs to monitor the database for performance anomalies, such as sudden spikes in connections or query latencies. The administrator wants to receive alerts when metrics deviate from their expected baseline. The solution must automatically adjust to changes in normal behavior over time, such as seasonal patterns. Which AWS service or feature should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Configure Amazon CloudWatch Anomaly Detection on the relevant RDS metrics (e.g., DatabaseConnections, ReadLatency, WriteLatency) and set an alarm to notify when the metric breaches the anomaly band.. Amazon CloudWatch Anomaly Detection uses machine learning to continuously analyze metric patterns and establish a dynamic baseline that adapts to seasonal trends and gradual changes in normal behavior. By applying anomaly detection to RDS metrics like DatabaseConnections, ReadLatency, and WriteLatency, the administrator can set an alarm that triggers when a metric deviates outside the calculated anomaly band, automatically adjusting to evolving traffic patterns without manual threshold updates.

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Use Amazon RDS Performance Insights to analyze database load and set CloudWatch alarms on the DBLoad metric with static thresholds.

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Enable Amazon CloudWatch Metrics Explorer to create a dashboard that visualizes the metrics and manually review for anomalies.

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Use AWS X-Ray to trace database queries and set alarms on trace segment durations.

Question 4

A company runs a critical MySQL database on an Amazon RDS DB instance in a single Availability Zone. The SysOps administrator needs to implement a disaster recovery solution with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour, while minimizing costs. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Enable cross-Region automated backups to another Region. Option C is correct because cross-Region automated backups replicate transaction logs to another AWS Region with a typical lag of a few minutes, enabling point-in-time recovery (PITR) that can meet an RPO of 5 minutes. When a disaster occurs, you can restore the automated backup to a new DB instance in the destination Region, and the RTO depends on the restore time, which can be under 1 hour for a properly sized instance. This solution minimizes costs by avoiding the continuous compute and storage overhead of a standby replica or read replica.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ deployment with a synchronous standby replica in another Availability Zone

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Create a cross-Region read replica and promote it to a standalone DB instance during a disaster

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Take daily automated snapshots and copy them to another Region manually

Question 5

A company runs a critical database on an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that the database can survive a single Availability Zone failure with minimal downtime. Which configuration should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Enable Multi-AZ deployment.. Multi-AZ deployment for Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. If the primary AZ fails, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, typically within 60–120 seconds, minimizing downtime without manual intervention. This meets the requirement for surviving a single AZ failure with minimal downtime.

Answer

Enable automatic backups.

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Deploy a read replica in a different AZ.

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Take a manual snapshot and copy it to another AZ.

Question 6

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group that spans two Availability Zones. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that is deployed across the same Availability Zones. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure the application remains available if an entire Availability Zone fails. Which configuration is essential for this high availability?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group with at least one instance in each Availability Zone.. Option A is correct because for high availability across an Availability Zone (AZ) failure, the Auto Scaling group must have at least one healthy instance in each AZ. This ensures that if one AZ becomes unavailable, the ALB can route traffic to instances in the remaining AZ. Without this minimum distribution, a single AZ failure could leave the application with zero healthy targets if all instances were in the failed AZ.

Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Application Load Balancer.

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Use an Amazon Route 53 health check to route traffic away from a failed AZ.

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Attach an Elastic IP address to each instance in the Auto Scaling group to ensure IP persistence.

Question 7

A company has multiple VPCs in the same AWS Region that need to communicate with each other. The SysOps administrator wants to avoid the complexity of a full mesh of VPC peering connections. Which AWS service should the administrator use to connect all VPCs with a central hub?

Accepted Answer

AWS Transit Gateway. AWS Transit Gateway acts as a central hub that allows you to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks through a single gateway, eliminating the need for a full mesh of VPC peering connections. It uses a star topology where each VPC attaches to the Transit Gateway, and routing is managed via route tables, simplifying network management and scaling.

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AWS Direct Connect

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VPC peering

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AWS PrivateLink

Question 8

A company runs a critical stateful web application on Amazon EC2 instances in a single AWS region. The application stores user session data in an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster. The SysOps administrator must design a disaster recovery (DR) strategy that can survive a complete regional outage with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour. The application must be able to redirect users to the DR region with minimal manual effort. Which combination of actions meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a read replica of the ElastiCache Redis cluster in the DR region using the native cross-region replication feature. Use Route 53 with failover routing to point to the DR region ALB when the primary health check fails. Pre-configure EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group in the DR region.. Option B is correct because ElastiCache for Redis supports cross-region replication via a read replica in the DR region, which can keep session data synchronized with minimal lag, meeting the 15-minute RPO. Route 53 failover routing with health checks on the primary region's ALB automatically redirects traffic to the pre-configured DR region EC2 instances and ALB, achieving the 1-hour RTO with minimal manual effort. Pre-configuring the DR region with an Auto Scaling group ensures compute capacity is ready, while the read replica provides the required data availability.

Answer

Use Amazon Route 53 with weighted routing to distribute traffic between the two regions. Use a global DynamoDB table for session data, and launch EC2 instances in the DR region only when a failure is detected using AWS CloudFormation StackSets.

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Use an Amazon CloudFront distribution with multiple origins (primary and DR). Enable session stickiness at the CloudFront level. Use EC2 instances in both regions behind separate ALBs. No special data replication is needed because sessions are stored in Redis.

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Use EC2 instances with an Auto Scaling group in both regions. Schedule a Lambda function to take snapshots of the Redis cluster every 15 minutes and copy them to the DR region. Use Route 53 latency routing to direct users to the nearest region.

Question 9

A company has an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in the us-east-1 region. Users in Asia report high latency. The SysOps administrator wants to use AWS Global Accelerator to improve performance by directing traffic to the closest edge location. Which step is required to integrate Global Accelerator with the ALB?

Accepted Answer

Configure the ALB as an endpoint group in a Global Accelerator accelerator.. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route traffic to the closest edge location, then forwards it over the AWS backbone to the ALB endpoint. To integrate, you must configure the ALB as an endpoint in an endpoint group within the accelerator, which allows Global Accelerator to direct traffic to the ALB based on proximity and health. This reduces latency for users in Asia by minimizing internet hops.

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Create a CloudFront distribution and point it to the ALB as an origin.

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Set up a Route 53 geoproximity routing policy for the ALB.

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Use AWS WAF to allow traffic from Global Accelerator edge locations.

Question 10

A company runs an application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The ALB terminates SSL/TLS and forwards traffic to the instances over HTTP. The SysOps administrator needs to capture the original client IP address in the instance logs. How should the administrator configure this?

Accepted Answer

Enable the X-Forwarded-For header on the ALB.. When an Application Load Balancer terminates SSL/TLS and forwards traffic to EC2 instances over HTTP, the original client IP address is preserved by the ALB in the X-Forwarded-For header. By enabling this header on the ALB, the SysOps administrator ensures that the web server or application can log the true client IP, which is essential for analytics, security, and troubleshooting.

Answer

Enable stickiness on the ALB target group.

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Configure the ALB to use Proxy Protocol v2.

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Enable access logs on the ALB and store them in Amazon S3.