SOA-C02 Practice Test 22 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company uses Amazon Route 53 for DNS and has a domain registered with Route 53. The company wants to ensure that if the primary web server fails, traffic is automatically routed to a secondary server in a different region. The health check must consider both the server response and the application response time. Which routing policy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Failover routing policy. Option C is correct because failover routing with health checks directs traffic to the primary if healthy, otherwise to the secondary. Option A is incorrect because latency routing does not provide automatic failover based on health. Option B is incorrect because weighted routing distributes traffic regardless of health. Option D is incorrect because geolocation routing is based on the user's location, not health.

Answer

Weighted routing policy

Answer

Geolocation routing policy

Answer

Latency routing policy

Question 2

A SysOps administrator is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application that runs on EC2 instances. The application data is stored on EBS volumes. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 1 hour. Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Take EBS snapshots every 15 minutes and copy them to another Region using cross-region snapshot copy.. Option D is correct because EBS snapshots can be taken every 15 minutes (or via Data Lifecycle Manager) and restored quickly to new volumes in another region. Option A is wrong because cross-region replication of EC2 instances is more expensive and complex. Option B is wrong because AMIs do not capture data changes frequently enough. Option C is wrong because S3 is not suitable for live application data.

Answer

Use AWS CloudEndure to continuously replicate the EC2 instances to another Region.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to back up the application data to Amazon S3 every 15 minutes.

Answer

Take hourly AMIs of the instances and copy them to another Region.

Question 3

A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an EC2 instance automatically recovers from an underlying hardware failure. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm on the StatusCheckFailed metric and configure the recovery action.. Option B is correct because configuring the EC2 instance with a CloudWatch alarm based on StatusCheckFailed will trigger a recovery action that stops and starts the instance on new hardware. Option A is wrong because Auto Scaling groups manage instance counts but do not recover a specific instance. Option C is wrong because Elastic IP reassignment does not recover the instance. Option D is wrong because a second instance does not automatically recover the original.

Answer

Launch a second instance in a different Availability Zone.

Answer

Assign an Elastic IP address to the instance.

Answer

Place the instance in an Auto Scaling group with a min size of 1.

Question 4

Which TWO actions should a SysOps administrator take to ensure high availability of a web application running on EC2 instances? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling group with a health check to replace unhealthy instances.. Options B and D are correct. Deploying across multiple Availability Zones ensures that an AZ failure does not take down the entire application. Using an Auto Scaling group with a health check automatically replaces unhealthy instances. Option A is incorrect because a single AZ is a single point of failure. Option C is incorrect because a larger instance type does not provide high availability. Option E is incorrect because termination protection does not automatically replace instances; it only prevents accidental termination.

Answer

Enable termination protection on all EC2 instances.

Answer

Launch all EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone.

Answer

Use a larger instance type for all EC2 instances.

Question 5

A company runs a critical application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores state information locally on the instance. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that if an instance fails, the state is not lost. What should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Move the state data to an external data store such as ElastiCache or RDS.. Option B is correct because offloading state to ElastiCache or RDS makes the application stateless and resilient to instance failure. Option A is wrong because instance store is ephemeral and data is lost on failure. Option C is wrong because EBS volumes can be preserved but take time to attach, and the state may be outdated. Option D is wrong because SQS is for message queues, not general state storage.

Answer

Attach an EBS volume and set the 'DeleteOnTermination' flag to false.

Answer

Use instance store volumes for the state data.

Answer

Use Amazon SQS to store the state data.

Question 6

A company uses AWS Backup to back up its Amazon EFS file systems. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that backups are retained for 7 years to meet compliance requirements. What should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Create a backup plan with a lifecycle policy that retains backups for 7 years.. Option C is correct because AWS Backup lifecycle policies allow you to transition backups to cold storage after a specified period and define retention rules up to 100 years. Option A is wrong because increasing backup frequency does not affect retention duration. Option B is wrong because cross-region backup does not extend retention. Option D is wrong because manual deletion is not automated and does not enforce compliance.

Answer

Manually delete backups older than 7 years every month.

Answer

Increase the backup frequency to daily.

Answer

Configure cross-region backup to copy backups to another region.

Question 7

Which TWO steps should a SysOps administrator take to ensure data durability for an Amazon S3 bucket that stores critical documents? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning.. Options B and C are correct. S3 Versioning protects against accidental overwrites and deletions. Cross-region replication ensures data survives a regional disaster. Option A is incorrect because SSE-S3 provides encryption at rest, not durability. Option D is incorrect because MFA Delete adds security but does not directly improve durability. Option E is incorrect because transfer acceleration improves upload speed, not durability.

Answer

Enable default encryption with SSE-S3.

Answer

Use S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Answer

Enable MFA Delete.

Question 8

A company is designing a highly available architecture for a web application using AWS services. Which TWO actions should the SysOps administrator take to improve reliability? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with an Elastic Load Balancer.. Options A and C are correct. Deploying across multiple AZs ensures that the application can withstand an AZ failure. Using an Auto Scaling group with ELB allows automatic scaling and health checks. Option B is wrong because a single instance is a single point of failure. Option D is wrong because a single EBS volume in one AZ is not highly available. Option E is wrong because a single NAT gateway in one AZ is a single point of failure.

Answer

Use a single large EC2 instance to eliminate complexity.

Answer

Use a single NAT gateway for outbound traffic.

Answer

Store application data on a single EBS volume.

Question 9

A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The database is an RDS MySQL instance with Multi-AZ enabled. The application experiences intermittent 5xx errors that correlate with database failover events. What is the MOST likely cause and solution?

Accepted Answer

Enable DNS caching with a low TTL in the application and use the RDS instance endpoint with a retry mechanism.. Option D is correct because during a database failover, the DNS record for the RDS endpoint changes, and if the application caches the DNS resolution, it may try to connect to the old primary. Enabling TTL-aware caching forces the application to re-resolve DNS quickly. Option A is wrong because Multi-AZ already provides a standby; using a read replica does not address write failures. Option B is wrong because the issue is DNS caching, not missing read replicas. Option C is wrong because increasing connection pool size does not handle DNS changes.

Answer

Configure the application to use the RDS reader endpoint.

Answer

Use a read replica to offload read traffic and reduce failover impact.

Answer

Increase the database connection pool size to handle retries.

Question 10

A company wants to implement a disaster recovery solution for its on-premises database using AWS. The solution must have an RPO of less than 1 hour and an RTO of less than 4 hours. Which THREE steps should the SysOps administrator take? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Set up a cross-Region read replica for the RDS instance.. Options B, C, and E are correct. AWS DMS can replicate data continuously to RDS, meeting RPO. RDS with Multi-AZ provides automatic failover. An RDS read replica in another Region provides cross-region failover. Option A is wrong because S3 is not suitable for live database replication. Option D is wrong because EC2 with self-managed replication is more complex and may not meet RTO.

Answer

Launch an EC2 instance with the database software and configure replication.

Answer

Use AWS DataSync to sync the database files to Amazon S3.

Question 11

A company is designing a backup strategy for its Amazon S3 buckets. Which TWO methods can be used to protect against accidental deletion or overwriting of objects? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket.. Options A and D are correct. S3 Versioning retains all versions, allowing recovery from accidental deletion or overwrite. S3 Object Lock prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten for a specified period. Option B is wrong because MFA Delete requires multi-factor authentication for delete operations but does not prevent overwrites. Option C is wrong because default encryption does not protect against deletion. Option E is wrong because cross-region replication does not prevent deletion in the source bucket.

Answer

Enable MFA Delete on the bucket.

Answer

Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication.

Answer

Enable default encryption (SSE-S3) on the bucket.

Question 12

A company runs a stateless web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. The application experiences increased latency during peak hours. The SysOps administrator needs to improve the application's performance and reliability. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Increase the maximum instance count in the Auto Scaling group.. Option D is correct because adding more instances via a higher max size allows the ASG to scale out to handle increased load, improving performance and reliability. Option A is wrong because changing the scaling metric to memory utilization may not reflect the actual load. Option B is wrong because switching to a larger instance type is less elastic than scaling out. Option C is wrong because reducing the cooldown period could cause thrashing.

Answer

Use larger EC2 instance types instead of smaller ones.

Answer

Reduce the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period to scale out faster.

Answer

Change the scaling metric from CPU utilization to memory utilization.

Question 13

A company uses Amazon Route 53 for DNS resolution. The company wants to ensure that if a web server becomes unhealthy, traffic is automatically routed to a healthy server in another Availability Zone. Which routing policy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Failover routing policy. Option A is correct because failover routing policy directs traffic to a primary resource, and if it is unhealthy, to a secondary resource. Option B is wrong because weighted routing distributes traffic proportionally, not based on health. Option C is wrong because latency routing routes based on latency, not health. Option D is wrong because geolocation routes based on geographic location.

Answer

Latency routing policy

Answer

Weighted routing policy

Answer

Geolocation routing policy

Question 14

A company's S3 bucket contains critical data. The bucket policy accidentally allowed public write access, and a malicious actor uploaded several objects. The company needs to recover the bucket to a known good state as quickly as possible. What should the SysOps administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Use S3 Versioning to restore the bucket to a previous version.. Option B is correct because S3 Versioning, when enabled, retains all object versions, allowing restoration to a previous state by deleting the current version. Option A is wrong because S3 Object Lock prevents deletion but does not allow rollback to a prior version. Option C is wrong because MFA Delete does not help with restoring prior versions. Option D is wrong because S3 Cross-Region Replication does not provide version rollback capability.

Answer

Enable S3 Object Lock on the bucket to prevent further modifications.

Answer

Enable MFA Delete on the bucket to secure delete operations.

Answer

Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication to replicate data to another region.

Question 15

A company wants to protect its data in Amazon S3 from accidental deletion. Which TWO methods should the SysOps administrator use? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket.. Options A and C are correct. S3 Versioning preserves previous versions of objects, allowing recovery from accidental deletes. MFA Delete adds an extra layer of protection. Option B is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration is for upload speed. Option D is wrong because S3 cross-region replication does not prevent deletion; it replicates objects. Option E is wrong because S3 event notifications do not prevent deletion.

Answer

Set up cross-Region replication.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Answer

Configure S3 event notifications.