SOA-C02 Practice Test 23 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an issue where an Application Load Balancer (ALB) is returning 503 errors to clients. The target group has healthy EC2 instances. Which THREE possible causes should the administrator investigate? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

The security group for the load balancer is blocking traffic.. Options A, B, and D are correct. An ALB returns 503 if no healthy targets are registered, if the load balancer is at capacity, or if there is a misconfigured security group blocking traffic. Option C is wrong because an unhealthy target group would show unhealthy instances. Option E is wrong because a missing subnet would prevent the ALB from being created or functioning, but the ALB is already working.

Answer

The load balancer is not attached to a subnet.

Answer

The target group health check is misconfigured.

Question 2

A company runs a stateless web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. To improve reliability during a traffic spike, which THREE actions should the SysOps administrator take? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Configure a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization.. Options A, C, and D are correct. Using multiple Availability Zones ensures high availability. A target tracking scaling policy adjusts capacity based on load. An Application Load Balancer distributes traffic and performs health checks. Option B is wrong because a larger instance size does not improve elasticity. Option E is wrong because detailed monitoring is not required for scaling, though it helps.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring for EC2 instances.

Answer

Use a larger instance type to handle more traffic per instance.

Question 3

A company runs a critical web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) across three Availability Zones. The application stores session data in memory on the EC2 instances. During a deployment, a new version of the application is released by terminating and replacing instances. Users report that they are unexpectedly logged out during the deployment. What should a SysOps administrator do to improve the reliability of the application during deployments?

Accepted Answer

Use an ElastiCache cluster to store session state externally.. Using an ElastiCache cluster for session state decouples session data from EC2 instances, so instance replacements do not cause session loss. Option A is wrong because sticky sessions still lose sessions when instances are terminated. Option C is wrong because RDS is not designed for transient session data. Option D is wrong because it reduces reliability by removing AZs.

Answer

Reduce the deployment to a single Availability Zone to minimize instance churn.

Answer

Store session data in an RDS Multi-AZ database.

Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB.

Question 4

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that if a stack update fails, the stack is automatically rolled back to the last known good state. Which THREE steps should the administrator take? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the stack to use a service role with permissions to perform rollback actions.. CloudFormation stack policies protect critical resources from accidental updates. Rollback triggers monitor stack metrics and initiate rollback if a threshold is breached. IAM permissions are necessary to allow CloudFormation to perform rollback. Manual snapshots and SNS notifications do not automate rollback.

Answer

Create a manual snapshot of the database before each update.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the stack.

Question 5

Match each AWS support plan to its key feature.

Question 6

Match each AWS compute service to its use case.

Question 7

Match each AWS database service to its type.

Question 8

Match each AWS cost management tool to its purpose.

Question 9

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a multi-tier application. The stack includes an RDS DB instance with automated backups enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that the database can be recovered to any point within the last 35 days with minimal data loss. What should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Set the backup retention period to 35 days.. RDS automated backups support point-in-time recovery (PITR) within the backup retention period, which can be set up to 35 days. Option A is wrong because manual snapshots are not automatically continuous. Option C is wrong because Multi-AZ provides high availability, not granular recovery. Option D is wrong because the default backup retention is 1 day, not 35.

Answer

Create a manual snapshot daily and retain 35 snapshots.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ on the RDS instance.

Answer

Configure AWS Backup with a 35-day backup plan.

Question 10

A company runs a production workload on a fleet of EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group (ASG). The ASG spans three Availability Zones. To avoid regional failure, the company wants to replicate the infrastructure in a second AWS Region and be able to fail over within 30 minutes. The application state is stored in an RDS MySQL database. What is the MOST cost-effective and reliable solution?

Accepted Answer

Create a cross-Region read replica of the RDS database. In the secondary Region, deploy a duplicate ASG and ALB. In a disaster, promote the read replica to a standalone instance and update Route 53 DNS.. RDS cross-Region read replicas can be promoted to a standalone instance in the secondary Region during failover, providing a recovery point objective (RPO) of seconds. Option A is wrong because snapshot restore takes longer than 30 minutes. Option C is wrong because synchronous replication is not possible cross-Region. Option D is wrong because it does not address the database replication.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer with cross-Region load balancing to distribute traffic to both Regions.

Answer

Use RDS Multi-AZ in both Regions and configure synchronous replication between them.

Answer

Take daily snapshots of the RDS database and copy them to the secondary Region. In the event of a failure, restore the latest snapshot.

Question 11

A SysOps administrator receives an alert that an EC2 instance in an Auto Scaling group is unhealthy. The instance fails the EC2 status check. What is the BEST course of action to restore availability automatically?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to use EC2 status checks for health checks and set the health check grace period appropriately.. Auto Scaling groups can automatically replace unhealthy instances based on EC2 status checks. Option A is wrong because manually rebooting does not scale. Option C is wrong because CloudWatch alarms can trigger actions but the ASG health check is the direct mechanism. Option D is wrong because replacing the underlying host is not necessary and not automatic.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager to replace the underlying host.

Answer

Manually reboot the instance from the EC2 console.

Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm that triggers an SNS notification to the administrator.

Question 12

A SysOps administrator is configuring an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ deployment. What is the primary benefit of using Multi-AZ?

Accepted Answer

Automatic failover to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.. Option B is correct: Multi-AZ provides automatic failover to a standby in a different AZ, improving availability. Option A is incorrect because Multi-AZ does not increase write performance; writes are synchronous to standby. Option C is incorrect because Multi-AZ does not create read replicas (that's a separate feature). Option D is incorrect because Multi-AZ does not provide cross-Region replication without additional configuration.

Answer

Improved read performance by distributing queries across multiple instances.

Answer

Synchronous replication across AWS Regions.

Answer

Automatic creation of read replicas for disaster recovery.

Question 13

A company stores critical data in an S3 bucket. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that the data is durable and can be recovered if an entire AWS Region becomes unavailable. What is the MOST cost-effective solution?

Accepted Answer

Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication to a bucket in another Region.. S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) automatically replicates objects to a bucket in a different Region, providing protection against regional outages. Option A is wrong because versioning alone does not protect against regional failure. Option C is wrong because it is not automated. Option D is wrong because S3 standard offers 99.999999999% durability but only within a Region.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to manually copy the bucket to another Region.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket.

Answer

Use S3 Standard storage class.

Question 14

A company runs a web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application is behind an Application Load Balancer. The company wants to ensure that the application can handle a sudden spike in traffic without downtime. What should the SysOps administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Configure a target tracking scaling policy based on average CPU utilization.. Dynamic scaling policies adjust capacity based on demand. Option A is wrong because manual scaling is not automated. Option C is wrong because scheduled scaling is for predictable patterns. Option D is wrong because it reduces availability.

Answer

Use a scheduled scaling policy to add instances during business hours.

Answer

Reduce the number of Availability Zones to lower latency.

Answer

Manually increase the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group when traffic increases.

Question 15

A company uses Amazon S3 to store critical data. The SysOps administrator needs to protect against accidental deletion of objects. Which combination of actions should the administrator take? (Choose the best answer.)

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and MFA Delete on the bucket.. Option B is correct: Enable S3 Versioning to preserve deleted objects and MFA Delete to require additional authentication for permanent deletions. Option A is incorrect because bucket policies do not prevent deletion by authorized users. Option C is incorrect because replication does not protect against deletion; it copies objects to another bucket. Option D is incorrect because lifecycle policies can delete objects automatically, increasing risk.

Answer

Apply a bucket policy that denies s3:DeleteObject for all principals.

Answer

Set a lifecycle policy to expire objects after 30 days.

Answer

Configure cross-Region replication to a different bucket.