SOA-C02 Practice Test 40 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is using AWS CodePipeline with a multi-branch strategy. They have a pipeline that deploys to a development environment. They want to create a new pipeline for a production environment that only deploys when code is merged to the 'main' branch. What is the most efficient way to set up the production pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Create a new pipeline using a CloudFormation template that defines the pipeline with the main branch as the source.. Option C is correct because using a CloudFormation template to create the pipeline allows for infrastructure as code and easy replication. Option A is wrong because cloning the pipeline manually is error-prone. Option B is wrong because this is not a feature of CodeCommit. Option D is wrong because a single pipeline with multiple stages would deploy to both environments on every push to main, which may not be desired.

Answer

Clone the existing pipeline and modify the source stage to use the main branch.

Answer

Use CodeCommit triggers to start the pipeline only on pushes to main.

Answer

Modify the existing pipeline to include both development and production stages, with the production stage only running on manual approval.

Question 2

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a stack that includes an Amazon RDS DB instance with automated backups enabled. The stack is deleted and then recreated. The administrator wants to restore data from the backup of the original DB instance. How can this be achieved?

Accepted Answer

Data cannot be restored because automated backups are deleted when the DB instance is deleted.. Option D is correct because automated backups are deleted when the DB instance is deleted; however, final snapshots can be taken before deletion. Since the stack was deleted without a final snapshot, the data is lost. Option A is wrong because snapshots from automated backups are deleted with the instance. Option B is wrong because RDS does not have a recycle bin. Option C is wrong because automated backups are deleted.

Answer

Restore from the latest automated backup stored in S3.

Answer

Restore from the automated backup snapshot that is retained after deletion.

Answer

Use the RDS recycle bin to recover the deleted DB instance.

Question 3

A company has a production AWS CloudFormation stack that creates an Amazon EC2 instance with an AWS Systems Manager Association to install software. The stack creation succeeds, but the association does not apply to the instance. The instance is in a private subnet with a VPC endpoint for Systems Manager. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The SSM Agent is not installed or is not running on the EC2 instance.. The association is created at stack creation, but if the instance does not have the SSM Agent installed and running, the association will not apply. Option A is correct. Option B is wrong because the VPC endpoint is configured. Option C is wrong because the instance profile is not directly related to the association application. Option D is wrong because the Systems Manager automation document is not needed for state manager associations.

Answer

The VPC endpoint for Systems Manager is not in the same subnet as the instance.

Answer

The instance does not have an IAM instance profile that allows Systems Manager actions.

Answer

The association uses an Automation document that requires a different type of instance.

Question 4

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. The administrator needs to update a stack that includes an Amazon RDS DB instance. The update requires replacing the DB instance with a new one. What is the most efficient way to achieve this with minimal downtime?

Accepted Answer

Use CloudFormation's UpdateReplace policy by modifying a property that requires replacement, such as DBInstanceClass, and take a snapshot before update.. Option C is correct. Using CloudFormation's UpdateReplace policy with a snapshot creation and then updating the stack with a new DB instance, then updating DNS to point to the new instance, minimizes downtime. Option A would cause downtime during creation. Option B (DeletionPolicy Retain) would not create a new instance. Option D (custom resource) is overly complex.

Answer

Modify the stack template to change the DB instance identifier and update the stack.

Answer

Use a custom resource to create a new DB instance and delete the old one.

Answer

Delete the stack and create a new one with the updated DB instance.

Question 5

A SysOps administrator is using AWS CodePipeline to automate the build and deploy process for a Java application. The build stage uses AWS CodeBuild, and the deploy stage uses AWS CodeDeploy to deploy to an Auto Scaling group. The deployment fails intermittently with a 'Timeout' error. What should the administrator check first?

Accepted Answer

The health check grace period on the load balancer.. Option A is correct. The most common cause of timeout in CodeDeploy is the health check grace period on the load balancer being too short. Increasing the grace period allows the new instances to pass health checks. Option B (buildspec) is for CodeBuild, not deployment. Option C (S3 bucket) would cause a different error. Option D (instance profile) would cause permission errors.

Answer

The IAM instance profile for the EC2 instances.

Answer

The buildspec.yml file for syntax errors.

Answer

The S3 bucket permissions for CodePipeline artifacts.

Question 6

A SysOps administrator is creating an Auto Scaling group using a launch template. The administrator wants to ensure that instances are automatically registered with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) target group. Which TWO steps are required? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the instance security group to allow traffic from the ALB.. Option B is correct because the target group ARN must be specified in the Auto Scaling group to enable automatic registration. Option D is correct because the security group must allow traffic from the ALB to the instance. Option A is wrong because health checks are configured on the target group, not the Auto Scaling group. Option C is wrong because the launch template does not attach to target groups. Option E is wrong because the ALB does not need a security group for health checks.

Answer

Configure health checks on the Auto Scaling group to use ELB.

Answer

Create a security group for the ALB and attach it to the Auto Scaling group.

Answer

Include the target group ARN in the launch template.

Question 7

A company uses AWS CodePipeline to automate deployments. The pipeline has a source stage that pulls code from an Amazon S3 bucket. The company wants to automatically trigger the pipeline when a new object is uploaded to the S3 bucket. How should this be configured?

Accepted Answer

Configure a CloudWatch Events rule that matches S3 object creation events and triggers the pipeline.. Option C is correct because S3 can send events to CloudWatch Events (EventBridge) or directly to CodePipeline via a CloudWatch Events rule. Option A is wrong because SQS is not needed. Option B is wrong because SNS is not needed. Option D is wrong because Lambda is not required.

Answer

Use an AWS Lambda function to poll the S3 bucket and start the pipeline.

Answer

Configure the S3 bucket to send events to an Amazon SNS topic that triggers the pipeline.

Answer

Configure the S3 bucket to send events to an Amazon SQS queue that triggers the pipeline.

Question 8

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.. Option C is correct because in OpsWorks, cookbooks are automatically updated only during the Setup or Configure lifecycle events. To force an update on existing instances, the administrator must run the 'Update Cookbooks' stack command or trigger a Configure lifecycle event. Option A is incorrect because the S3 permissions appear correct. Option B is incorrect because the cookbook version is not automatically downloaded when a new version is published; an update must be triggered. Option D is incorrect because the Chef client runs automatically, but it does not fetch new cookbooks unless told to do so.

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 9

A DevOps engineer is designing a CI/CD pipeline for a microservices application hosted on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The team wants to deploy updates to the services without downtime. The current pipeline builds a Docker image, pushes it to Amazon ECR, and updates the ECS service using AWS CodeDeploy with a blue/green deployment. However, during the deployment, the new tasks fail to start due to an incorrect environment variable. The engineer wants to validate the task definition before the actual deployment. What should the engineer do?

Accepted Answer

Configure CodeDeploy to use a validation hook with an AWS Lambda function that tests the new task definition before shifting traffic.. Option B is correct because CodeDeploy allows specifying a Lambda function as a validation hook. The function can run integration tests against the new tasks before traffic is shifted, preventing the deployment from proceeding if validation fails. Option A is incorrect because ECS Service Auto Scaling adjusts the number of tasks based on load, not validation. Option C is incorrect because 'docker run' locally does not guarantee the same behavior in ECS Fargate. Option D is incorrect because CloudWatch Synthetics can monitor endpoints but cannot be used as a pre-deployment validation gate in the pipeline.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics canaries to monitor the health of the new tasks after deployment.

Answer

Run the Docker container locally using 'docker run' with the same environment variables to verify the configuration.

Answer

Use Amazon ECS Service Auto Scaling to gradually increase the number of tasks and monitor CPU utilization.

Question 10

A company is deploying a new web application using AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The application requires a custom Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with specific software pre-installed. The SysOps administrator creates a custom AMI and configures Elastic Beanstalk to use it. However, during deployment, the instances fail to pass the health check. The health check endpoint is a simple 'index.html' file. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The custom AMI does not have a web server installed and configured to serve the application.. Option B is correct because Elastic Beanstalk expects the web server (e.g., Apache, Nginx) to be installed and configured to serve the application. If the custom AMI does not have a web server installed, the health check endpoint will not respond. Option A is incorrect because the health check is based on HTTP response, not instance status checks. Option C is incorrect because Elastic Beanstalk does not require a specific AMI ID; it uses the one provided. Option D is incorrect because the environment URL is created regardless of the AMI.

Answer

The Elastic Beanstalk environment was created before the custom AMI was registered.

Answer

The custom AMI is not registered with the same account that owns the Elastic Beanstalk environment.

Answer

The custom AMI does not have the latest patches, causing the instance to fail the EC2 status checks.

Question 11

An organization uses AWS CloudFormation to manage its infrastructure. The SysOps administrator is implementing a change management process that requires all stack updates to be reviewed and approved before execution. The administrator wants to use CloudFormation change sets to preview changes. Which THREE steps are necessary to implement this process? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Review the change set in the CloudFormation console.. Options A, C, and E are correct. To use change sets, you create a change set (A), which you can then review (C). After approval, you execute the change set (E). Option B is incorrect because you do not update the stack directly; you use change sets. Option D is incorrect because you should create a change set from the new template, not compare stacks directly.

Answer

Use the 'Detect Drift' feature to compare the stack with the new template.

Answer

Update the stack directly using the updated template.

Question 12

A SysOps administrator needs to deploy a web application across multiple AWS Regions for disaster recovery. The application uses Amazon RDS for MySQL and requires a secondary database in a different Region. What is the MOST cost-effective and automated solution to keep the databases synchronized?

Accepted Answer

Create a cross-Region read replica of the primary RDS instance in the secondary Region. Option C is correct because Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replicas automatically replicate data from the primary database to a secondary Region, providing a cost-effective solution without needing separate infrastructure. Option A is wrong because it requires manual scripting and is not fully automated. Option B is wrong because it uses RDS Multi-AZ, which is for high availability within a single Region, not cross-Region. Option D is wrong because it uses a custom replication solution that is not managed by AWS.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication

Answer

Set up a cron job on an EC2 instance to export the database and import it into the secondary Region

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ on the primary RDS instance and configure a read replica in the secondary Region

Question 13

A company uses AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate to manage its EC2 instances. The administrator needs to deploy a new cookbook to all instances in a stack. The cookbook is stored in an S3 bucket. What is the MOST efficient way to deploy the cookbook to the instances?

Accepted Answer

Configure the OpsWorks stack to use the S3 bucket as the custom cookbook source and run the 'Update Custom Cookbooks' stack command.. OpsWorks can automatically update cookbooks from a custom cookbook source (e.g., S3) by configuring the stack to use that source. Option A is correct. Option B is wrong because manual upload is inefficient. Option C is wrong because the stack settings can automatically retrieve the cookbook without a separate lifecycle event. Option D is wrong because Chef Server is not used in OpsWorks Chef Automate; it uses Chef Automate server.

Answer

Upload the cookbook to the Chef Server and have the instances pull from there.

Answer

SSH into each instance and manually download the cookbook from S3.

Answer

Configure a lifecycle event in the OpsWorks layer to run a script that downloads the cookbook from S3.

Question 14

A company is using AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy a web application. The application experiences high traffic during business hours and low traffic at night. The administrator wants to minimize costs while ensuring performance. Which THREE actions should the administrator take? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Enable enhanced health reporting and monitoring for the environment.. Options A, C, and E are correct. Configuring the Auto Scaling group with a scheduled scaling policy to increase capacity during business hours and decrease at night optimizes cost. Enabling enhanced health reporting provides better insights. Setting up CloudWatch alarms to trigger scaling based on response time ensures performance during unexpected spikes. Option B (launch template) is not needed for scaling. Option D (multiple environments) may increase costs.

Answer

Use a launch template to define instance configuration.

Answer

Deploy the application in multiple Elastic Beanstalk environments.

Question 15

An organization is using AWS CloudFormation to manage its infrastructure. The SysOps administrator wants to update a stack that includes an Amazon RDS DB instance. The update requires changing the DB instance class. However, the administrator wants to minimize downtime. What should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Enable Multi-AZ on the DB instance (if not already enabled) before performing the stack update.. Option C is correct because changing the DB instance class may require a replacement, which causes downtime. Using a Multi-AZ deployment allows the update to be applied to the standby first, then fail over, minimizing downtime. Option A is incorrect because modifying the DB instance class directly with ApplyImmediately may cause a brief outage. Option B is incorrect because creating a read replica does not help with updating the instance class. Option D is incorrect because CloudFormation does not automatically create a standby for single-AZ deployments.

Answer

Use CloudFormation's 'DeletionPolicy' attribute to retain the database during updates.

Answer

Update the stack directly with 'ApplyImmediately' set to true.

Answer

Create a read replica, promote it, and then delete the original DB instance.