SOA-C02 Practice Exam 64 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company uses an Amazon DynamoDB table with provisioned capacity. The average write usage is 500 write capacity units (WCU) but regularly spikes to 2,000 WCU during business hours. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs without affecting performance during the spikes. Which solution should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Enable DynamoDB auto scaling. DynamoDB auto scaling allows the table to automatically adjust its provisioned write capacity between a minimum and maximum range based on actual traffic. By setting the minimum WCU to cover the average usage (500) and the maximum to handle the spikes (2,000), the administrator pays only for the baseline capacity most of the time, while the service scales up during spikes without manual intervention or over-provisioning.

Answer

Switch to DynamoDB on-demand capacity mode

Answer

Purchase reserved capacity for 2,000 WCU

Answer

Use DynamoDB Time to Live (TTL) to delete old items

Question 2

A SysOps administrator manages a web application running on Amazon EC2 instances that run 24/7 for the next 12 months. The workload is steady and predictable. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the highest cost savings for this use case?

Accepted Answer

Standard Reserved Instances. Standard Reserved Instances provide the highest cost savings for a steady, predictable 24/7 workload over a 12-month period because they offer a significant discount (up to 72% compared to On-Demand) in exchange for a commitment to a specific instance family, region, and term length. Since the workload runs continuously without interruption, the upfront payment or partial upfront payment for a 1-year term maximizes savings without the risk of interruption or the need for flexibility.

Answer

Spot Instances

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Savings Plans (Compute)

Question 3

A SysOps administrator wants to identify underutilized Amazon EC2 instances that could be downsized to reduce costs. The administrator needs a tool that provides recommendations based on historical utilization data. Which AWS service should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Compute Optimizer. AWS Compute Optimizer is the correct service because it analyzes historical utilization metrics (CPU, memory, network, and storage) for EC2 instances and generates specific downsizing recommendations to reduce cost without sacrificing performance. It uses machine learning to identify underutilized resources and provides actionable guidance, making it the ideal tool for this use case.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Budgets

Question 4

A SysOps administrator notices that some Amazon S3 objects have not been accessed for over 90 days and need to be retained for compliance purposes. The administrator wants to reduce storage costs by moving these objects to the lowest-cost storage class. Which action should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Create an S3 lifecycle rule to transition objects older than 90 days to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.. Option B is correct because S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost storage class in Amazon S3, designed for long-term retention of data that is accessed infrequently. An S3 lifecycle rule can automatically transition objects older than 90 days to this class, reducing costs without manual intervention. This meets the compliance requirement to retain the objects while optimizing storage expenditure.

Answer

Manually move the objects to S3 One Zone-IA.

Answer

Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and create a lifecycle rule to delete old versions.

Question 5

A SysOps administrator wants to identify Amazon EC2 instances that are underutilized to reduce costs. The administrator needs recommendations for rightsizing instances based on historical CPU and memory usage. Which AWS service provides these recommendations?

Accepted Answer

AWS Compute Optimizer. AWS Compute Optimizer is the correct service because it analyzes historical utilization metrics (CPU, memory, I/O, and network throughput) from Amazon CloudWatch and generates rightsizing recommendations for EC2 instances. It uses machine learning to identify underutilized instances and suggests instance types that better match workload requirements, directly addressing the need to reduce costs through rightsizing.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 6

An application runs on c5.xlarge EC2 instances 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in us-east-1. The workload is stable and will not change instance type for at least 12 months. The team wants to reduce compute costs by 30 to 40 percent compared to On-Demand pricing. Which purchasing option achieves this with the lowest financial risk?

Accepted Answer

Purchase a 1-year Standard Reserved Instance for c5.xlarge in us-east-1 with All Upfront or Partial Upfront payment. A 1-year Standard Reserved Instance (RI) with All Upfront or Partial Upfront payment offers a 30-40% discount over On-Demand pricing for a stable, always-on workload. This option provides the lowest financial risk because it commits to a fixed instance type and region for only one year, matching the workload's stable nature without the flexibility premium of Convertible RIs or the interruption risk of Spot Instances.

Answer

Use Spot Instances with an interruption tolerance of 5 minutes for the workload

Answer

Enable EC2 Auto Scaling with a target tracking policy to scale down to zero instances during off-peak hours

Answer

Purchase a 3-year Convertible Reserved Instance to maximize the discount percentage

Question 7

A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 instances that runs every night for 2 hours. The job can be interrupted and resumed without any issue. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should be used?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances are the correct choice because the workload is fault-tolerant (can be interrupted and resumed) and runs for only 2 hours nightly. Spot Instances offer significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand) but can be reclaimed by AWS with a 2-minute warning, which is acceptable here since the job can resume without issue. This aligns with the goal of minimizing compute costs for a non-critical, interruptible batch process.

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Reserved Instances

Answer

Dedicated Hosts

Question 8

A media company stores millions of video files in S3. Some files are accessed heavily after upload (when new) and rarely afterward; others are accessed unpredictably across months. The team cannot predict which files will be accessed and when. They want to minimize storage costs without risking retrieval latency penalties or per-object retrieval fees. Which storage class is appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering so objects automatically move between Frequent and Infrequent Access tiers based on access patterns, with no retrieval fees. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the correct choice because it automatically moves objects between Frequent Access and Infrequent Access tiers based on changing access patterns, with no retrieval fees and no performance impact (millisecond latency). This matches the unpredictable access pattern described, as the service monitors access at the object level and adjusts storage tier without manual lifecycle rules or retrieval costs.

Answer

Use S3 Standard-IA and configure a lifecycle policy to move objects back to Standard after every access

Answer

Use S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval for all objects because it offers the lowest storage cost with millisecond retrieval

Answer

Use S3 Standard for all objects because it has no retrieval fees and provides the best availability

Question 9

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application uses Amazon EBS volumes (gp2) for data storage. The SysOps administrator notices that the storage costs are high, and the application's IOPS requirements are consistently below 3000. The administrator wants to reduce storage costs without affecting performance. Which action should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Convert the EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 volume type.. Option B is correct because gp3 volumes offer a baseline performance of 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput at a lower cost than gp2 volumes, making them ideal for workloads with IOPS requirements consistently below 3000. By converting from gp2 to gp3, the administrator can reduce storage costs without any performance impact, as gp3 provides the same or better baseline performance at a lower price per GB.

Answer

Modify the EBS volumes to use Provisioned IOPS (io1) volumes and set IOPS to 2000.

Answer

Implement an Amazon EBS snapshot lifecycle policy to delete old snapshots and reduce storage costs.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instances to improve throughput and reduce costs.

Question 10

A company wants to receive an alert when its AWS spending exceeds $5,000 in a month. The SysOps administrator needs to set up a proactive alert that monitors actual costs. Which AWS service should be used?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets. AWS Budgets is the correct service because it allows you to set a cost budget that proactively sends alerts when actual costs exceed a specified threshold (e.g., $5,000 per month). Unlike Cost Explorer, which is an analytical tool, Budgets provides real-time notifications via Amazon SNS when costs reach or are forecasted to exceed the budgeted amount, enabling proactive monitoring of actual spending.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 11

A company uses multiple AWS accounts and needs to generate a detailed cost and usage report that can be queried using Amazon Athena for custom analysis. Which AWS service should the administrator enable?

Accepted Answer

AWS Cost and Usage Reports. AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR) is the correct service because it generates detailed cost and usage data in CSV or Parquet format, which can be directly queried using Amazon Athena via integration with AWS Glue and Amazon QuickSight. This enables custom analysis and ad-hoc queries on the full billing dataset, unlike other services that provide pre-aggregated views or alerts.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Application Cost Profiler

Question 12

A company uses AWS CodePipeline to deploy a web application. The pipeline includes a stage that runs a database migration script. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure that if the migration script fails, the entire pipeline stops and the previous version of the application remains deployed. Which pipeline stage configuration should be used to achieve this behavior?

Accepted Answer

Configure the migration step as a sequential action and set the OnFailure to ABORT.. Option B is correct because setting the migration step as a sequential action with OnFailure set to ABORT ensures that if the migration script fails, the pipeline immediately stops and does not proceed to any subsequent stages. This prevents the deployment of a new application version that depends on a failed database migration, thereby keeping the previous version deployed.

Answer

Use a parallel action group for the migration step so other steps continue.

Answer

Configure the migration step as a sequential action and set the OnFailure to ROLLBACK.

Answer

Use a manual approval step after the migration to verify success.

Question 13

An EC2 Auto Scaling group runs a stateless web application with predictable daily peaks. Which two actions can reduce cost while preserving capacity during peak periods? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

Configure scheduled scaling actions for the known peak window.. Option A is correct because scheduled scaling allows you to proactively increase capacity before the predictable daily peak and reduce it afterward, ensuring you only pay for the resources needed during the peak window. This avoids over-provisioning for the entire day, directly reducing costs while maintaining performance during high-demand periods.

Answer

Run all instances as On-Demand at maximum peak size all day.

Answer

Disable health checks to avoid instance replacement.

Question 14

A company runs a batch processing job every night on Amazon EC2 instances. The job takes exactly 2 hours to complete and can be interrupted and resumed later. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs. Which purchasing option should be used?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances are the correct choice because the batch job is fault-tolerant (can be interrupted and resumed) and runs for a fixed 2-hour window nightly. Spot Instances offer up to 90% cost savings compared to On-Demand, and with the ability to handle interruptions via checkpointing, they minimize compute costs without requiring a long-term commitment.

Answer

Reserved Instances

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Dedicated Instances

Question 15

A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 instances. The application runs for 3 hours every night and can tolerate interruptions. The SysOps administrator needs to minimize compute costs. Which purchasing option should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances are ideal for this workload because the application is fault-tolerant (can tolerate interruptions) and runs on a fixed schedule (3 hours nightly). Spot Instances offer significant cost savings (up to 90% compared to On-Demand) by using spare EC2 capacity, and the batch processing can be designed to resume from checkpoints if interrupted.

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Answer

Reserved Instances

Answer

Dedicated Instances

Question 16

A company manages multiple AWS accounts under AWS Organizations. The SysOps administrator needs to deploy a baseline set of AWS Config rules and an Amazon SNS topic to each account in the organization. The deployment must be centrally managed from the management account and automatically applied to any new member account added in the future. Which solution should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS CloudFormation StackSet with the template containing the AWS Config rules and SNS topic. Configure the StackSet to deploy to the organization and enable automatic deployment to new accounts.. AWS CloudFormation StackSets can be deployed to an entire AWS Organizations organization or organizational units (OUs), and they support automatic deployment to new accounts added to the organization. By creating a StackSet with a template that defines the AWS Config rules and SNS topic, and enabling automatic deployment, the administrator ensures that every current and future member account receives the baseline configuration without manual intervention.

Answer

Use AWS Service Catalog to create a product that bundles the AWS Config rules and SNS topic. Grant each account access to launch the product.

Answer

Configure AWS Config conformance packs in the management account and use AWS Resource Access Manager to share them with member accounts.

Answer

Create an AWS Organizations Service Control Policy (SCP) that enforces the creation of AWS Config rules and SNS topics in every account.

Question 17

A company uses AWS CodeDeploy to deploy an application to an Auto Scaling group. The deployment strategy is set to CodeDeployDefault.HalfAtATime. The lifecycle hooks for the Auto Scaling group include a test hook that runs during instance launch. During a recent deployment, the deployment failed because the new instances failed the test hook and were not marked as healthy. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that failed instances are automatically terminated and replaced with new ones from the Auto Scaling group. Which configuration change should the administrator make?

Accepted Answer

Modify the Auto Scaling group's health check type to ELB. Option A is correct because setting the Auto Scaling group's health check type to ELB (Elastic Load Balancer) ensures that the Auto Scaling group uses the ELB's health check status to determine instance health. When the test lifecycle hook fails, the new instances are not marked as healthy by the ELB, causing the Auto Scaling group to automatically terminate and replace them. This aligns with the requirement to automatically replace failed instances, as the default EC2 health check only considers instance status (e.g., running vs. stopped) and does not reflect application-level health.

Answer

Modify the CodeDeploy deployment configuration to use an increased minimum healthy instance count

Answer

Modify the Auto Scaling group's health check grace period to a lower value

Answer

Modify the CodeDeploy deployment to ignore the lifecycle hook failure

Question 18

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. The SysOps administrator has a template that creates an Amazon EC2 instance and an Amazon RDS DB instance. The administrator needs to reuse the same template for development, test, and production environments, where the only differences are the EC2 instance type and the RDS DB instance class. Which CloudFormation feature should be used to define these environment-specific values?

Accepted Answer

Parameters. Parameters are the correct CloudFormation feature because they allow you to pass environment-specific values (such as EC2 instance type and RDS DB instance class) into the template at stack creation or update time. This enables reuse of the same template across development, test, and production environments without modifying the template itself, simply by providing different parameter values for each environment.

Answer

Nested stacks

Answer

Mappings

Answer

Conditions

Question 19

A SysOps administrator uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a three-tier application. The administrator has a single template that can be used for development, test, and production environments. The only differences between environments are the EC2 instance type and the RDS DB instance class. Which CloudFormation feature should the administrator use to define these environment-specific values without duplicating the template?

Accepted Answer

Parameters. Parameters allow you to input environment-specific values (e.g., EC2 instance type, RDS DB instance class) at stack creation or update time without modifying the template. This is the correct feature because the question explicitly requires defining values that differ per environment while reusing a single template.

Answer

Conditions

Answer

Mappings

Answer

Outputs

Question 20

A SysOps administrator is using AWS CloudFormation to deploy a stack that includes an Amazon EC2 instance and an Amazon RDS DB instance. The administrator needs to ensure that updates to the stack do not accidentally replace the RDS instance if the RDS configuration is changed in a way that would require replacement. Which CloudFormation attribute should be added to the RDS resource?

Accepted Answer

UpdateReplacePolicy with Retain. Option A is correct because the `UpdateReplacePolicy` attribute with `Retain` tells CloudFormation to preserve the existing RDS DB instance if a stack update would otherwise require its replacement. This prevents accidental deletion and recreation of the RDS instance when its configuration changes in a way that forces a new physical resource, such as modifying the DB engine version or storage type. The `UpdateReplacePolicy` is specifically designed for update scenarios, unlike `DeletionPolicy` which only applies during stack deletion.

Answer

DeletionPolicy with Retain

Answer

StackPolicy

Answer

CreationPolicy