SOA-C02 Practice Test 28 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An application running on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group uses an SQS queue for decoupling. The application experiences increased latency when the queue has a high number of messages. The SysOps Administrator needs to maintain responsiveness. Which solution is the most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Configure a CloudWatch alarm on the queue depth to trigger Auto Scaling policies.. Option D is correct because using CloudWatch alarms on the queue depth to trigger Auto Scaling policies automatically scales out when needed and scales in when not, balancing cost and responsiveness. Option A is wrong because it may be cost-inefficient. Option B is wrong because it does not change the number of consumers. Option C is wrong because increasing batch size may help but does not scale capacity.

Answer

Increase the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group.

Answer

Use a larger instance type for the EC2 instances.

Answer

Increase the visibility timeout of the SQS queue.

Question 2

A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a production RDS for MySQL database. The database is currently single-AZ. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour, and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 15 minutes. Which steps should the SysOps administrator take to meet these requirements? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Take manual DB snapshots every hour.. Options A, C, and E are correct. Enabling automated backups provides point-in-time recovery with an RPO of 5 minutes (within 1 hour requirement). Multi-AZ provides automatic failover with RTO typically under 1 minute (within 15 minutes). Taking regular manual snapshots complements automated backups for long-term retention. Option B is wrong because read replicas are for read scaling, not failover. Option D is wrong because disabling automated backups increases RPO.

Answer

Disable automated backups to reduce performance impact.

Answer

Create a read replica in a different Availability Zone.

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator deployed the CloudFormation template. Which statement is true about data protection?

Accepted Answer

Deleted objects become noncurrent versions and are retained for 30 days.. Option D is correct because the bucket policy only denies the DeleteBucket action, not DeleteObject. Users can still delete objects. Versioning is enabled, so deleted objects become noncurrent versions and are retained for 30 days. Option A is wrong because the bucket can be deleted by the account root user if not explicitly denied. Option B is wrong because the bucket policy does not block object deletion. Option C is wrong because versioning is enabled, so deleted objects become noncurrent versions, not permanently deleted immediately.

Answer

Deleted objects are immediately and permanently removed.

Answer

The bucket cannot be deleted by anyone.

Answer

Objects cannot be deleted from the bucket.

Question 4

A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for its primary AWS region. The application runs on EC2 instances with an RDS database. The RPO is 15 minutes and RTO is 2 hours. Which TWO actions should the SysOps Administrator take to meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure RDS cross-region replication to a second region.. Option A is correct because RDS cross-region replication can achieve RPO of seconds to minutes. Option D is correct because using CloudFormation with a template stored in S3 allows quick provisioning of resources in the DR region, meeting RTO. Option B is wrong because AMIs are region-specific; they must be copied to the DR region. Option C is wrong because it does not meet RPO. Option E is wrong because manual snapshots cannot achieve 15-minute RPO.

Answer

Create AMIs of the EC2 instances and share them with the DR region.

Answer

Take manual RDS snapshots every 15 minutes and copy them to the DR region.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to copy backups to a second region daily.

Question 5

A company is using AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. They want to ensure that if a stack update fails, the stack automatically rolls back to the last known good state. Which two steps should the company take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Set the 'Rollback on failure' option to 'Yes' in the stack update options.. Option B and Option D are correct. Enabling rollback on failure (B) ensures automatic rollback if an update fails. Using a change set (D) allows reviewing changes before applying, reducing the risk of failure. Option A is wrong because deletion protection prevents accidental deletion, not rollback. Option C is wrong because SNS notifications do not trigger rollback. Option E is wrong because stack policies only protect resources from updates, not rollback.

Answer

Define a stack policy that prevents updates to critical resources.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the stack.

Answer

Configure an Amazon SNS topic to send notifications when the stack update fails.

Question 6

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. They want to ensure that if a stack update fails, the stack automatically rolls back to the last known good state. Which CloudFormation stack policy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use the default 'Rollback on failure' setting.. Option A is correct because the 'Rollback on failure' setting (default behavior) causes CloudFormation to roll back failed stack updates. Option B is wrong because DisableRollback would leave the stack in a failed state. Option C is wrong because it is not a valid stack policy. Option D is wrong because it prevents stack updates, not rollback.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the stack.

Answer

Use a stack policy that prevents specific resources from being updated.

Answer

Set 'DisableRollback' to false.

Question 7

A company uses Amazon S3 to store critical data. They need to protect against accidental deletion of objects. Which feature should the SysOps Administrator enable?

Accepted Answer

Enable versioning on the bucket.. Option C is correct because S3 Versioning allows you to recover from accidental deletions by preserving previous versions. Option A is wrong because MFA Delete adds an extra layer but is not sufficient alone. Option B is wrong because cross-region replication does not prevent deletion. Option D is wrong because lifecycle policies automate transitions, not protection.

Answer

Create a lifecycle policy to transition objects to Glacier.

Answer

Configure cross-region replication.

Answer

Enable MFA Delete on the bucket.

Question 8

A company runs a stateful web application on a single EC2 instance. The SysOps Administrator wants to improve fault tolerance. Which design should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Place instances in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones, use an Application Load Balancer, and store session state in ElastiCache.. Option A is correct because a Multi-AZ deployment with an ALB and Auto Scaling group distributes traffic across instances in multiple AZs, and using ElastiCache for session state provides fault tolerance. Option B is wrong because it still has a single point of failure. Option C is wrong because it lacks load balancing and auto scaling. Option D is wrong because it uses instance store for session state, which is ephemeral.

Answer

Create a Multi-AZ RDS instance and attach it to the existing EC2 instance.

Answer

Add a second EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone and use a Network Load Balancer.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a launch configuration that stores session data on instance store.

Question 9

A company runs a stateless web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The SysOps Administrator needs to ensure the application can withstand the loss of an entire Availability Zone. Which THREE steps should be taken? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to launch instances in at least two Availability Zones.. Option A is correct because deploying across multiple AZs ensures that if one AZ fails, the application still runs. Option C is correct because ALB can distribute traffic to healthy instances in any AZ. Option D is correct because Auto Scaling across AZs replaces failed instances in other AZs. Option B is wrong because it would distribute traffic to one AZ at a time. Option E is wrong because EC2 is not zone-specific.

Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.

Answer

Use an Elastic IP address for each EC2 instance.

Question 10

A company wants to ensure its SysOps Administrator can recover an EBS volume from a snapshot. Which TWO steps are required? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Specify the Availability Zone when creating the volume.. Option A is correct because you must have a snapshot to create a volume. Option D is correct because when creating a volume from a snapshot, you must specify the Availability Zone. Option B is wrong because snapshots are already encrypted at rest. Option C is wrong because instance store volumes cannot be created from snapshots. Option E is wrong because KMS keys are optional for encryption.

Answer

Configure a KMS key for the snapshot.

Answer

Attach the volume to an EC2 instance.

Answer

Enable encryption on the snapshot.

Question 11

A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in a single Availability Zone. The application stores session data in an RDS MySQL DB instance. To improve reliability, the company wants to deploy the application across multiple Availability Zones. Which combination of actions should the company take to achieve this? (Choose the correct course of action.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy EC2 instances in two Availability Zones and place them behind an Application Load Balancer. Enable Multi-AZ for the RDS MySQL DB instance.. Option B is correct because deploying EC2 instances in multiple AZs behind an ALB and using Multi-AZ RDS improves availability and fault tolerance. Option A is wrong because a Network Load Balancer is not required for HTTP traffic. Option C is wrong because RDS replication alone does not distribute application traffic. Option D is wrong because RDS Read Replicas are for read scaling, not failover.

Answer

Deploy EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone behind an Application Load Balancer. Enable Multi-AZ for the RDS MySQL DB instance.

Answer

Deploy EC2 instances in two Availability Zones and place them behind a Network Load Balancer. Keep RDS MySQL as a single-AZ deployment.

Answer

Deploy EC2 instances in two Availability Zones. Configure an RDS MySQL Read Replica in a second Availability Zone and route read traffic to it.

Question 12

A SysOps administrator is tasked with ensuring that an Amazon S3 bucket can withstand the loss of an entire AWS Region. The bucket stores critical data that must be accessible with minimal latency from multiple regions. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication to a bucket in another AWS Region. Use Amazon CloudFront with multiple origins pointing to both buckets.. Option C is correct because S3 Cross-Region Replication replicates objects to a bucket in another region, providing regional resilience, and using a CloudFront distribution with multiple origins can route requests to the nearest replica. Option A is wrong because versioning alone does not provide cross-region resilience. Option B is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration does not replicate data. Option D is wrong because MFA Delete does not provide geographic redundancy.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and configure a lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and MFA Delete on the bucket. Use S3 Object Lock to prevent object deletion.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and use a CloudFront distribution with the bucket as the origin.

Question 13

A company runs a stateful web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones. The application uses an Application Load Balancer for traffic distribution. Users report that their sessions are frequently lost during scale-in events. The SysOps administrator needs to minimize session loss without introducing significant latency. What should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB. Configure a lifecycle hook on the Auto Scaling group with a wait time equal to the ALB's connection draining timeout.. Option C is correct because using an ALB with sticky sessions (session affinity) and a connection draining timeout that matches the lifecycle hook's wait time ensures that in-flight requests complete before instance termination. Option A is wrong because scaling based on memory does not address session stickiness. Option B is wrong because a larger cooldown delay helps but does not ensure session persistence across instances. Option D is wrong because a Network Load Balancer does not support sticky sessions by cookie in the same way and is not ideal for HTTP traffic.

Answer

Replace the Application Load Balancer with a Network Load Balancer. Enable proxy protocol v2 to pass client IP addresses.

Answer

Increase the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period to 600 seconds. Configure the ALB to have a deregistration delay of 600 seconds.

Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to scale based on memory utilization instead of CPU. Set the cooldown period to 300 seconds.

Question 14

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy EC2 instances across multiple environments. The operations team notices that stack updates fail when parameter values change. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The parameter has the NoEcho property set to true, and the previous value is not provided.. Option B is correct because in CloudFormation, parameters with NoEcho set to true cannot be updated without specifying the previous value; the default behavior is to require the parameter to be provided again. Option A is wrong because stack policies protect resources from updates, not parameter changes. Option C is wrong because change sets allow updates, not prevent them. Option D is wrong because the condition function affects resource creation, not parameter updates.

Answer

The parameter uses the AWS::NoValue condition.

Answer

A change set is required but not generated.

Answer

A stack policy prevents parameter updates.

Question 15

A company runs a web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application uses an Amazon RDS Multi-AZ DB instance. The SysOps administrator notices that during a recent failover test, the application became unresponsive for several minutes. The administrator wants to improve the application's resilience during failover. Which three actions should the administrator take? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Application Load Balancer health checks to have a low threshold (e.g., 2 consecutive failures) and a short interval (e.g., 5 seconds).. Options A, B, and D are correct. Using an RDS proxy (A) manages connections and reduces failover time. Retry logic (B) allows the application to reconnect after failover. Health checks with low thresholds (D) help the load balancer quickly detect and route away from unhealthy instances. Option C is wrong because synchronous replication is already used in Multi-AZ; asynchronous replication would reduce durability. Option E is wrong because increasing instance size does not reduce failover time.

Answer

Change the RDS DB instance to use asynchronous replication instead of synchronous replication.

Answer

Increase the EC2 instance size to handle more connections during failover.