SOA-C02 Practice Test 30 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is deploying a microservices application on AWS using Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type. The SysOps administrator needs to automate the deployment process so that when a new Docker image is pushed to Amazon ECR, the ECS service is updated with the new image. Which THREE AWS services should be used together to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

AWS CodePipeline. The correct combination to automate deployment when a new Docker image is pushed to Amazon ECR is AWS CodePipeline, Amazon ECR, and Amazon ECS. CodePipeline orchestrates the CI/CD pipeline triggered by an ECR push event. ECR stores the Docker images. ECS with Fargate runs the containers and updates the service with the new image. Option A (CloudFormation) is for infrastructure provisioning, not continuous deployment. Option E (Systems Manager) is for management and operations, not CI/CD.

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS Systems Manager

Question 2

Match each AWS database service to its type.

Accepted Answer

Amazon RDS: Relational database. The correct matches are: Amazon RDS with relational database, Amazon DynamoDB with NoSQL key-value and document database, Amazon Redshift with data warehouse, and Amazon ElastiCache with in-memory cache. Common confusions include mistaking RDS for NoSQL or Redshift for caching.

Answer

Amazon RDS: NoSQL key-value and document database

Answer

Amazon Redshift: In-memory cache

Question 3

A company is using AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy a web application. The application experiences high traffic during peak hours. The SysOps administrator wants to automatically scale the environment based on CPU utilization. Which configuration change is required?

Accepted Answer

Configure a scaling trigger based on a CloudWatch alarm for CPU utilization.. AWS Elastic Beanstalk integrates with Amazon CloudWatch and Auto Scaling to allow you to define a scaling trigger based on a CloudWatch alarm for CPU utilization. When the alarm threshold is breached, the Auto Scaling group automatically adds or removes EC2 instances, enabling the environment to handle high traffic during peak hours without manual intervention.

Answer

Manually add EC2 instances to the Auto Scaling group.

Answer

Modify the instance type to a larger size.

Answer

Increase the number of load balancers.

Question 4

A company wants to optimize costs for its Amazon EC2 instances. Which TWO strategies are effective for reducing costs?

Accepted Answer

Use Spot Instances for fault-tolerant workloads.. Using Spot Instances for fault-tolerant workloads can reduce costs significantly (up to 90%). Rightsizing instances ensures you are not paying for unused capacity. Dedicated Hosts increase costs. Increasing provisioned IOPS increases costs. Using EBS General Purpose SSD (gp3) is cost-effective but not a primary cost reduction strategy.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS for EBS volumes.

Answer

Use EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes instead of gp3.

Answer

Use Dedicated Hosts to meet compliance requirements.

Question 5

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor the performance of an EC2 instance?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. Amazon CloudWatch is the primary service for monitoring EC2 performance metrics like CPU utilization, network, and disk I/O. AWS Systems Manager can also collect performance data through Inventory and Run Command, providing operational insights. AWS CloudTrail logs API activity for auditing, not performance. AWS Trusted Advisor offers cost and security recommendations. AWS Config tracks configuration changes, not performance metrics.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Config

Question 6

A company wants to reduce costs for its Amazon S3 storage. Which TWO strategies are effective?

Accepted Answer

Use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after a period.. S3 Lifecycle policies transition objects to lower-cost storage classes. S3 Object Tagging helps organize data but does not directly reduce costs. S3 Transfer Acceleration increases costs. S3 Replication increases costs. S3 Intelligent-Tiering can be cost-effective for unknown access patterns.

Answer

Enable S3 Object Tagging to categorize data.

Answer

Enable S3 Replication to another region for disaster recovery.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration for faster uploads.

Question 7

Multiple microservices each write structured JSON logs to separate CloudWatch log groups. The operations team needs to find all ERROR-level log entries across all log groups for the past 24 hours and count errors by service name. Which approach achieves this with the least operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Run a CloudWatch Logs Insights query selecting all relevant log groups, filter where level = 'ERROR', and use stats count(*) by service. CloudWatch Logs Insights natively supports querying multiple log groups in a single query. By specifying all relevant log groups in the query scope, filtering for `level = 'ERROR'` using the `filter` command, and using `stats count(*) by service`, the operations team can directly aggregate error counts per service without any data movement, additional infrastructure, or manual scripting. This approach has the least operational overhead because it leverages existing CloudWatch capabilities with no setup or maintenance.

Answer

Export each log group to S3 and run an Athena query joining all exported files

Answer

Subscribe all log groups to a Kinesis Data Firehose stream and query the aggregated data in OpenSearch

Answer

Use the AWS CLI to download and grep log events from each log group separately, then sum the results

Question 8

A SysOps administrator manages an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that distributes traffic to an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The administrator needs to receive a notification whenever the number of unhealthy targets in the ALB target group exceeds a threshold of 2 for at least 5 consecutive minutes. Which solution meets this requirement with the least operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm on the 'UnHealthyHostCount' metric for the ALB target group, with a threshold of 2 and an evaluation period of 5 minutes. Configure the alarm to send an Amazon SNS notification.. CloudWatch publishes UnHealthyHostCount for ALB target groups. To meet the requirement of >2 unhealthy targets for 5 consecutive minutes, the alarm must use a Period of 1 minute and an EvaluationPeriods value of 5. Setting the Period to 5 minutes would aggregate a 5-minute block and not verify each minute's count exceeded 2. Option A as written is imprecise and could lead to a configuration that does not meet the requirement. The correct implementation still uses an SNS notification on the CloudWatch alarm, so Option A remains the best choice if corrected to specify the appropriate Period and EvaluationPeriods.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail logging for the ALB and create a CloudWatch metric filter for 'UnHealthyHostCount' events. Then create an alarm on that metric to notify via SNS.

Answer

Use an AWS Config rule to evaluate the health of the ALB target group and trigger an SNS notification when non-compliant.

Answer

Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that triggers every minute to call the AWS CLI command describe-target-health and send a notification via Lambda if unhealthy count exceeds 2.

Question 9

A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the disk space utilization on a fleet of EC2 instances running Windows Server. Which TWO steps should the administrator take to collect and visualize this data? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Install the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance to collect disk space metrics.. The CloudWatch agent is required to collect custom metrics like disk space utilization from EC2 instances running Windows Server. Default EC2 monitoring only collects hypervisor-level metrics (CPU, network, disk I/O), not guest OS metrics such as disk space. Installing the CloudWatch agent and configuring it to collect disk space metrics is the correct step. Creating a CloudWatch dashboard then allows visualization of those collected metrics.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instances.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to log disk space changes.

Answer

Enable default EC2 monitoring to collect disk space metrics automatically.

Question 10

A SysOps administrator is reviewing AWS Cost Explorer and notices that data transfer costs from EC2 to the internet are high. The EC2 instances are in a VPC with a NAT Gateway in a public subnet. The route table for private subnets sends 0.0.0.0/0 traffic to the NAT Gateway. The application serves content to users over the internet. Which change will LEAST impact application performance while reducing costs?

Accepted Answer

Implement a VPC Gateway Endpoint for Amazon S3 to keep S3 traffic within AWS.. The high data transfer costs are from EC2 to internet for serving content to users. This traffic flows through the NAT Gateway to the internet. A VPC Gateway Endpoint for Amazon S3 only affects traffic between EC2 and S3, not internet traffic. Therefore C would not reduce the costs described. Options A would reduce costs but may impact performance; B is for IPv6 only; D is not a real service. Thus, none of the options correctly solves the problem. The question needs to be revised, perhaps offering a solution like CloudFront or public subnets with public IPs.

Answer

Replace the NAT Gateway with a smaller NAT Gateway to reduce hourly charges.

Answer

Use an egress-only Internet Gateway for the private subnets.

Answer

Purchase a Dedicated NAT Gateway in the same region to get lower data processing rates.

Question 11

A company wants to reduce data transfer costs for traffic between EC2 instances in the same AWS Region. Which action should the SysOps administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Ensure instances communicate using private IP addresses within the same VPC. Traffic between EC2 instances in the same VPC using private IP addresses does not incur public internet data transfer costs. If the instances are in the same Availability Zone, the traffic is free; if they are in different Availability Zones, standard inter-AZ data transfer charges apply. Using private IPs is still the most cost-effective option compared to using public IPs (Elastic IPs) or routing through a NAT Gateway.

Answer

Use Elastic IP addresses for all instances

Answer

Place instances in public subnets and route traffic through a NAT Gateway

Answer

Use VPC endpoints to communicate between instances

Question 12

An organization is using AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate to manage configuration of EC2 instances. The administrator notices that a new cookbook version is not being applied to existing instances in a layer. The cookbook is stored in a private Amazon S3 bucket and the instances have an instance profile that allows read access. What is the MOST likely reason for this issue?

Accepted Answer

The 'Update Cookbooks' stack command needs to be run manually to apply the new cookbook version to existing instances.. In OpsWorks, cookbooks are not automatically applied to existing instances when a new version is published. To force an update on existing instances, the administrator must run the 'Update Cookbooks' stack command. Option A is incorrect because rebooting instances does not automatically download or apply new cookbook versions. Option B is incorrect because the instance profile already has read access to the S3 bucket as stated, so the bucket policy is not the issue. Option D is incorrect because the Chef client runs automatically, but it does not fetch new cookbooks unless told to do so via the Update Cookbooks command.

Answer

The cookbook version is not being automatically downloaded because the instances are not rebooted.

Answer

The S3 bucket policy does not grant the necessary permissions to the instance profile.

Answer

The Chef client on the instances is not configured to run automatically.

Question 13

A company has an EC2-based application that runs at inconsistent times. The workloads are fault-tolerant and can be interrupted. Which purchasing option provides the most cost savings?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances. Spot Instances offer the largest discount (up to 90%) for workloads that are fault-tolerant and can be interrupted. Reserved Instances (A) require a 1- or 3-year commitment and are best for steady-state workloads. On-Demand Instances (B) provide no discount. Dedicated Hosts (C) are expensive and designed for specific licensing or compliance requirements, not cost savings.

Answer

Reserved Instances

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Dedicated Hosts

Question 14

Match each AWS cost management tool to its purpose.

Accepted Answer

AWS Cost Explorer: Visualize, understand, and manage AWS costs and usage over time.. The correct matches: AWS Cost Explorer visualizes costs, AWS Budgets sets alerts, AWS Cost and Usage Report provides detailed data, and AWS Trusted Advisor offers cost optimization recommendations. Common confusions include swapping the purposes of Cost Explorer and Budgets, or Budgets with the Cost and Usage Report.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer: Set custom budgets to track cost and usage and get alerts.

Answer

AWS Budgets: Detailed data about AWS costs and usage in a CSV or Parquet file.

Question 15

An administrator attempts to deploy an application using AWS CodeDeploy. The deployment fails with 'Access Denied' when trying to download the revision from the S3 bucket 'example-bucket'. The IAM policy attached to the instance profile is shown in the exhibit. What is the cause of the failure?

Accepted Answer

The policy is missing the s3:GetObjectVersion action for the bucket. The deployment fails with 'Access Denied' when trying to download the revision from S3. The IAM policy attached to the instance profile must allow the s3:GetObject action to download objects. However, if the deployment uses a specific version of the revision (e.g., when using CodeDeploy with S3 versioning), the s3:GetObjectVersion action is also required. The exhibit shows the policy includes s3:GetObject but not s3:GetObjectVersion, causing the failure. Option B is correct because the missing s3:GetObjectVersion action is the cause. Option A is incorrect because s3:ListBucket is present in the policy. Option C is incorrect because the policy does include s3:GetObject. Option D is incorrect because the policy is attached to the correct instance profile.

Answer

The policy does not include s3:ListBucket

Answer

The policy grants s3:ListBucket but not s3:GetObject

Answer

The policy is attached to the wrong IAM role