SOA-C02 Practice Exam 62 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A SysOps administrator is optimizing costs for an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. The database is used for a reporting application that runs only during business hours (9 AM to 5 PM). Which TWO actions should the administrator take to reduce costs? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Stop the database instance during non-business hours.. Correct options: B and C. Option B is correct because using a Multi-AZ deployment is not necessary if the database can be stopped during off-hours; a Single-AZ deployment reduces costs. Option C is correct because stopping the instance during off-hours saves compute costs. Option A is wrong because Reserved Instances require a 1 or 3-year commitment and may not be cost-effective if the database is only used part-time; also, the question asks for cost reduction, not commitment. Option D is wrong because increasing instance size increases cost. Option E is wrong because increasing provisioned IOPS increases cost.

Answer

Move to a larger instance type to handle peaks.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS for better performance.

Answer

Purchase a Reserved Instance for the database instance.

Question 2

A SysOps administrator wants to reduce the cost of storing infrequently accessed data in Amazon S3. The data must be retained for 10 years for compliance. Which TWO actions should the administrator take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use S3 Glacier Deep Archive as the destination for the lifecycle transition.. Correct options: B and D. Option B is correct because S3 Lifecycle policies can transition objects to lower-cost storage classes over time. Option D is correct because S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the cheapest storage class for long-term archival. Option A is wrong because S3 Standard is expensive for infrequent access. Option C is wrong because S3 Intelligent-Tiering has a monitoring cost and is best for unknown access patterns. Option E is wrong because enabling versioning increases storage costs due to multiple versions.

Answer

Store the data in S3 Standard.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning to protect against accidental deletion.

Answer

Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering to automatically optimize costs.

Question 3

A company hosts a static website on Amazon S3 with public read access. The website content is updated weekly. The SysOps administrator notices that the monthly S3 costs are higher than expected. The website receives about 10,000 requests per day, and each object is small (average 50 KB). The administrator wants to reduce costs without affecting the user experience. The website does not require HTTPS or custom domain at this time. Which action should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Place an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the S3 bucket.. Option A is correct because placing a CloudFront distribution in front of the S3 bucket can reduce costs by serving requests from edge caches, which reduces the number of GET requests to S3. Additionally, CloudFront offers a free tier for data transfer. Option B is wrong because enabling versioning increases storage costs. Option C is wrong because transitioning to S3 Glacier Standard (which doesn't exist; Glacier Flexible Retrieval) would increase retrieval costs and latency, and is not suitable for a website. Option D is wrong because encryption adds overhead but does not reduce costs.

Answer

Enable default encryption for the S3 bucket.

Answer

Transition the objects to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning to prevent accidental deletions.

Question 4

A company runs a mix of Amazon EC2 instances and AWS Fargate tasks that are used for both production and development workloads. The usage is steady and predictable. The SysOps administrator wants to maximize cost savings across both compute services without having to manage specific instances or sizes. Which purchasing option should the administrator recommend?

Accepted Answer

Purchase Compute Savings Plans for a 1-year or 3-year term with a commitment that covers the expected compute spend.. Compute Savings Plans offer the most flexibility, automatically applying to EC2 instances (regardless of instance family, size, or region) and Fargate tasks. Since the company has a mix of both services and wants to maximize savings without managing specific instances or sizes, a 1-year or 3-term Compute Savings Plan with a commitment matching expected spend provides up to 66% savings while covering all compute usage. This aligns with the steady and predictable workload described.

Answer

Purchase EC2 Instance Savings Plans for the most commonly used instance family and region.

Answer

Purchase Standard Reserved Instances for the EC2 instances and convert Fargate tasks to use Spot Instances.

Answer

Use On-Demand instances for both EC2 and Fargate because the administrator does not want to make a commitment.

Question 5

A company runs a CPU-intensive batch processing job daily on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The job requires high compute performance but uses minimal memory. The instance is typically idle for the rest of the day. The SysOps administrator needs to minimize costs while ensuring the job completes within a 1-hour window. Which purchasing option and instance family should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instance with a compute-optimized (C-family) instance. A Spot Instance with a compute-optimized (C-family) instance is the correct choice because the batch job is fault-tolerant (can be interrupted and resumed), runs for only 1 hour daily, and requires high CPU performance with minimal memory. Spot Instances offer significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand) and are ideal for flexible, stateless workloads. The C-family provides the highest compute-to-memory ratio, matching the job's CPU-intensive profile.

Answer

On-Demand Instance with a general-purpose (T-family) instance

Answer

Reserved Instance (1-year, all upfront) with a compute-optimized (C-family) instance

Answer

On-Demand Instance with a memory-optimized (R-family) instance

Question 6

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances. The application's traffic pattern is unpredictable, often spiking to 3x normal load for short periods. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that the application can handle spikes without performance degradation while minimizing costs. Which combination of purchasing options and scaling strategies should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Use a mix of Reserved Instances for baseline and On-Demand for spikes, with a target tracking scaling policy.. Option C is correct because it combines Reserved Instances for the predictable baseline load, which reduces costs through a significant discount, with On-Demand Instances to handle unpredictable spikes. The target tracking scaling policy automatically adjusts capacity based on a target metric (e.g., average CPU utilization), ensuring performance is maintained during spikes without manual intervention or over-provisioning.

Answer

Use all Spot Instances with a simple scaling policy.

Answer

Use all On-Demand Instances with a scheduled scaling policy.

Answer

Use only Reserved Instances with a manual scaling policy.

Question 7

A company runs a large number of EC2 instances across multiple accounts and regions. The finance team needs to track costs per project and department. Each EC2 instance must be tagged with a ProjectID and Department tag. A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all newly launched EC2 instances are tagged automatically before they can be used, and that existing untagged instances are retroactively tagged. The tags must be propagated to cost reports in AWS Cost Explorer. Which combination of steps will achieve this with the least operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Config with auto-remediation to tag new instances, and activate the tags as cost allocation tags. For existing instances, run the Tag Editor with a CSV import.. Option A is correct because AWS Config with auto-remediation can automatically tag newly launched EC2 instances using a custom Lambda function or SSM document triggered by a Config rule (e.g., 'required-tags'), ensuring compliance before instances are used. Activating the tags as cost allocation tags in AWS Cost Explorer allows the tags to appear in cost reports. For existing untagged instances, the Tag Editor with a CSV import provides a bulk, low-overhead method to retroactively apply tags across accounts and regions.

Answer

Create an AWS Lambda function that tags instances at launch via CloudTrail events, and use AWS Budgets to enforce tagging.

Answer

Use AWS Cost Categories to automatically group costs based on resource tags.

Answer

Ensure all AMIs used have tags that propagate to instances, and enable cost allocation tags.

Question 8

A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 instances every night. The job takes exactly 1 hour to complete and is time-sensitive. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs while ensuring the job can be interrupted and resumed if needed. Which EC2 purchasing option is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances are the most cost-effective option because the batch job is fault-tolerant (can be interrupted and resumed) and runs for exactly 1 hour nightly. Spot Instances offer up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand, and with the ability to handle interruptions via checkpointing, they meet the requirement for cost minimization while supporting resumption.

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Reserved Instances (Standard 1-year)

Answer

Dedicated Hosts

Question 9

A company runs a mix of Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon RDS databases, and AWS Lambda functions for production workloads. The workloads are steady-state and predictable. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs while maintaining flexibility to change instance families and regions. Which pricing model should be recommended?

Accepted Answer

Compute Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility because they automatically apply to EC2 instances, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate usage across any instance family, size, or region, as long as the compute spend stays within the committed hourly amount. This matches the requirement to reduce costs on steady-state workloads while retaining the ability to change instance families and regions, unlike EC2 Instance Savings Plans which are limited to a specific instance family in a region.

Answer

EC2 Instance Savings Plans

Answer

Standard Reserved Instances

Answer

Spot Instances

Question 10

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application reads data from an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. During peak hours, the database CPU utilization is consistently high, and the application experiences increased latency. The SysOps administrator observes that 90% of database queries are read-only. Which combination of actions will both improve performance and optimize costs?

Accepted Answer

Implement a read replica for the RDS instance and modify the application to route read queries to the read replica. Option B is correct because implementing a read replica offloads read-heavy (90%) queries from the primary RDS instance, reducing CPU utilization and latency. Modifying the application to route read queries to the replica distributes the workload, improving performance while avoiding costly vertical scaling. This optimizes costs by using a smaller primary instance and paying only for the replica's resources.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ for the RDS instance and scale up the instance size

Answer

Enable Amazon RDS Performance Insights and increase the storage allocation

Answer

Implement Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached in front of the database and migrate read-heavy queries to cache

Question 11

A company runs a batch processing job every Saturday for 3 hours. The job can be interrupted and resumed at any point. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances are ideal for fault-tolerant, interruptible workloads like batch processing that can be resumed. They offer significant cost savings (up to 90% compared to On-Demand) because they use spare EC2 capacity, which can be reclaimed by AWS with a 2-minute interruption notice. Since the job runs only 3 hours weekly and can be interrupted and resumed, Spot Instances minimize compute costs effectively.

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Reserved Instances

Answer

Dedicated Hosts

Question 12

A company has an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores historical data. The table is accessed infrequently but when queried requires consistent single-digit millisecond latency. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize storage costs while maintaining the required performance. Which DynamoDB table class should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

DynamoDB Standard-IA (Infrequent Access). DynamoDB Standard-IA (Infrequent Access) is designed for tables that are accessed less than once per month, offering lower storage costs than DynamoDB Standard while maintaining the same single-digit millisecond latency for queries. Since the table stores historical data with infrequent access but requires consistent performance, Standard-IA minimizes storage costs without sacrificing latency.

Answer

DynamoDB Standard

Answer

DynamoDB On-Demand

Answer

DynamoDB Provisioned

Question 13

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application experiences steady traffic during business hours and very low traffic overnight. The SysOps administrator wants to optimize costs by using a mix of On-Demand and Spot Instances. The administrator also requires that the total capacity never falls below the baseline level needed during business hours, even if Spot Instances are reclaimed. Which combination of Auto Scaling features should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use a mixed instances policy and set the 'On-Demand Base' capacity to the minimum number of instances required during business hours, and 'On-Demand percentage above base' to 0% so that any additional capacity is Spot.. Option A is correct because a mixed instances policy allows the Auto Scaling group to use both On-Demand and Spot Instances. By setting the 'On-Demand Base' capacity to the minimum number of instances required during business hours, you guarantee that baseline capacity is always fulfilled by On-Demand Instances, which are not subject to interruption. Setting 'On-Demand percentage above base' to 0% ensures that any additional capacity beyond the base is fulfilled by Spot Instances, optimizing cost while maintaining the required capacity floor.

Answer

Use a launch template that specifies a Spot Instance type and set the total capacity to the desired level, relying on capacity rebalance to replace interrupted Spot Instances.

Answer

Purchase Compute Savings Plans to cover the entire Auto Scaling group, and use only Spot Instances for all capacity.

Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group with a launch template that sets the instance market to 'spot' and use a scaling policy that always maintains the minimum capacity.

Question 14

A company runs a production Amazon DynamoDB table with provisioned capacity of 1000 write capacity units (WCU). The table experiences unpredictable spikes up to 2000 WCU, causing throttling. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize cost while handling the spikes. Which solution should be used?

Accepted Answer

Switch to on-demand capacity mode.. Switching to on-demand capacity mode eliminates throttling during unpredictable spikes by automatically scaling write capacity up to the required 2000 WCU without any manual intervention or pre-provisioning. This minimizes cost because you pay only for the actual reads and writes consumed, avoiding the fixed cost of over-provisioning for peak capacity that may be rarely used.

Answer

Increase provisioned WCU to 2000 to cover the peak.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB Auto Scaling with minimum 1000, maximum 2000 WCU.

Answer

Use a DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) cache.

Question 15

A company runs a stateless web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application usage is consistent throughout the day and is expected to grow steadily over the next year. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs while ensuring capacity is available. Which purchasing option should the administrator use for the EC2 instances?

Accepted Answer

Reserved Instances (Standard, 1-year or 3-year). The application has a steady, predictable usage pattern and is expected to grow steadily, making Reserved Instances (Standard) the most cost-effective option. By committing to a 1-year or 3-year term, the administrator can receive a significant discount (up to 72% compared to On-Demand) while ensuring capacity is always available. This aligns with the requirement to minimize compute costs without sacrificing availability for a stateless, load-balanced workload.

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Spot Instances

Answer

Dedicated Hosts

Question 16

A company runs a development Amazon EC2 instance that is only used during business hours (9 AM to 5 PM). The SysOps administrator wants to reduce compute costs. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Schedule the instance to automatically stop during off-hours and start before business hours. Option C is correct because the instance is only needed during business hours (9 AM to 5 PM), so automatically stopping it during off-hours and starting it before business hours eliminates compute charges for idle time. Stopped instances incur no EC2 instance running costs (only storage and EBS volume costs), directly reducing the compute bill. AWS Instance Scheduler or a simple cron-based Lambda function can enforce this schedule reliably.

Answer

Use On-Demand instances

Answer

Use a Reserved Instance

Answer

Use a Spot instance

Question 17

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances that are part of an Auto Scaling group. The application's traffic is predictable with regular peaks during business hours and low traffic at night. The SysOps administrator wants to optimize costs while ensuring that performance meets demand. The administrator also needs to minimize manual intervention. Which scaling policy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Scheduled scaling. Scheduled scaling is the correct choice because the traffic pattern is predictable with regular peaks during business hours and low traffic at night. This policy allows the administrator to define specific times to increase or decrease the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group, matching capacity to demand without manual intervention and optimizing costs by reducing instances during off-peak hours.

Answer

Target tracking scaling

Answer

Simple scaling

Answer

Manual scaling

Question 18

A company runs a web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application has predictable traffic patterns with high traffic during business hours and low traffic at night. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce compute costs while ensuring the application remains responsive during peak hours. The administrator has already implemented Auto Scaling based on CPU utilization. Which additional action should the administrator take to optimize costs?

Accepted Answer

Purchase Reserved Instances for the baseline capacity and use Spot Instances for the additional capacity during peak hours. Option B is correct because it combines Reserved Instances for predictable baseline capacity (lower cost per hour) with Spot Instances for elastic peak demand, leveraging Auto Scaling to handle variable traffic. This hybrid approach reduces compute costs compared to using On-Demand instances for all capacity, while maintaining responsiveness during peak hours.

Answer

Use On-Demand instances only

Answer

Increase the minimum number of instances in the Auto Scaling group

Answer

Use Dedicated Hosts to reduce licensing costs

Question 19

A company stores video files in Amazon S3. The files are accessed frequently for the first week, then weekly for the next month, and then rarely after that. The files must be retained for 5 years and any access must be served within minutes. The SysOps administrator needs to minimize storage costs while meeting these requirements. Which lifecycle policy configuration is the most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Transition to S3 Standard-IA after 7 days, then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 30 days.. Option C is correct because it transitions to S3 Standard-IA after 7 days (matching the frequent first-week access), then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 30 days (matching the weekly access for the next month). Glacier Instant Retrieval provides millisecond retrieval for rarely accessed data, meeting the 'within minutes' requirement while minimizing costs compared to Standard-IA or Intelligent-Tiering.

Answer

Transition to S3 Standard-IA after 7 days, then to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 30 days.

Answer

Transition to S3 One Zone-IA after 7 days, then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days.

Answer

Transition to S3 Intelligent-Tiering after 7 days.

Question 20

A company runs an e-commerce application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Auto Scaling group. The application has a predictable baseline load from 8 AM to 8 PM daily and low load overnight. The SysOps administrator wants to optimize costs while ensuring sufficient capacity for the baseline load. Which purchasing option and scaling strategy should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Use Reserved Instances for the predicted baseline and On-Demand for any unexpected spikes.. Option B is correct because Reserved Instances provide a significant discount (up to 72%) over On-Demand for predictable, steady-state workloads like the 8 AM to 8 PM baseline. On-Demand instances then cover any unexpected spikes without requiring upfront commitment, ensuring cost optimization while maintaining capacity for the predictable load.

Answer

Use On-Demand instances for the baseline and Spot Instances for any additional capacity.

Answer

Use Dedicated Hosts for all instances to maximize cost savings.

Answer

Use Spot Instances for all instances to minimize costs.