SOA-C02 Practice Test 7 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an Amazon RDS for MySQL instance that is experiencing high CPU utilization. The administrator wants to identify the specific queries consuming the most CPU. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Enable Performance Insights for the RDS instance and view the top SQL queries.. Performance Insights provides a built-in database load visualization and a dashboard that directly shows the top SQL queries consuming the most resources, including CPU. This is the most efficient method because it requires no additional configuration beyond enabling the feature and immediately surfaces the specific queries causing high CPU utilization.

Answer

Use CloudWatch metrics for RDS and create a dashboard for CPU utilization.

Answer

Enable Enhanced Monitoring for the RDS instance and view the CPU metrics.

Answer

Enable CloudWatch Logs for the RDS instance and filter for slow query logs.

Question 2

A SysOps administrator wants to be alerted when an EC2 instance's status check fails. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group. What is the BEST approach?

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm on the 'StatusCheckFailed' metric.. Option B is correct because the 'StatusCheckFailed' metric is automatically published by EC2 to CloudWatch, and a CloudWatch alarm on this metric can directly trigger an SNS notification or other action when the status check fails. This is the simplest and most reliable method for alerting on instance health, regardless of whether the instance is in an Auto Scaling group.

Answer

Use Amazon EventBridge to detect status check failures.

Answer

Enable CloudTrail to monitor EC2 instance status changes.

Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling lifecycle hook to send a notification.

Question 3

A SysOps administrator is setting up monitoring for an RDS MySQL database. The administrator needs to be notified when the database connection count exceeds 100. Which steps should be taken to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the CloudWatch alarm to send a notification to an SNS topic.. Option A is correct because Amazon CloudWatch alarms can send notifications to an Amazon SNS topic when the alarm state changes. This allows the SysOps administrator to receive alerts (e.g., via email, SMS, or HTTP) when the database connection count exceeds the threshold. Option B is correct because the 'DatabaseConnections' metric is a standard CloudWatch metric for RDS MySQL that tracks the number of current connections to the database instance. Creating an alarm on this metric with a threshold of 100 will trigger when the connection count exceeds that value.

Answer

Enable Enhanced Monitoring for RDS.

Answer

Enable CloudTrail to log RDS API calls.

Answer

Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that triggers on RDS events.

Question 4

A SysOps administrator wants to be alerted when the root user of the AWS account signs in. Which TWO services can be used together to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. Option B is correct because AWS CloudTrail logs all API calls, including root user sign-ins, as `RootLogin` events in the management events trail. Option D is correct because Amazon CloudWatch Events (now part of Amazon EventBridge) can be configured with a rule that matches these CloudTrail log events and triggers a notification action, such as sending an SNS alert, when the root user signs in.

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 5

A company needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to critical IAM policies. The SysOps administrator must receive notifications within minutes of any change. Which combination of AWS services should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to log IAM changes, and create a CloudWatch Events rule that triggers an SNS notification when specific API calls are made.. Option B is correct because CloudTrail logs API calls to IAM, and a CloudWatch Events rule (now EventBridge) can trigger an SNS notification for specific API calls. Option A is incorrect because AWS Config evaluates resource configurations but is not the best for real-time notifications. Option C is incorrect because CloudWatch Logs does not directly monitor API calls. Option D is incorrect because Lambda alone cannot monitor without a trigger.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to detect changes and send notifications via SNS.

Answer

Use CloudWatch Logs to monitor IAM activity and create a metric filter to trigger an alarm.

Answer

Use a Lambda function that periodically checks IAM policies and sends an SNS message if changes are detected.

Question 6

A company wants to monitor AWS API calls for suspicious activity. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Options B and C are correct. CloudTrail logs API calls, and CloudWatch Logs can ingest those logs and use metric filters to detect suspicious patterns. Option A (AWS Config) records resource changes, not API calls. Option D (VPC Flow Logs) captures network traffic. Option E (Amazon Inspector) is for security assessments.

Answer

VPC Flow Logs

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS Config

Question 7

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a stack that includes an EC2 instance and an S3 bucket. The SysOps administrator needs to monitor the stack for any changes to the S3 bucket's bucket policy. Which AWS service should be used?

Accepted Answer

AWS Config. Option C is correct because AWS Config can monitor changes to S3 bucket policies and trigger notifications. Option A is incorrect because CloudTrail logs API calls to change the policy, but does not monitor the policy itself. Option B is incorrect because CloudWatch is for performance metrics. Option D is incorrect because Trusted Advisor does not monitor bucket policies.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 8

An organization has a CloudWatch dashboard that displays metrics for multiple AWS services. The dashboard is shared with the operations team. Recently, some team members reported that the dashboard is not loading for them. Which action should the SysOps administrator take to troubleshoot the issue?

Accepted Answer

Confirm that the team members have the necessary IAM permissions for cloudwatch:GetDashboard.. The most likely cause of the dashboard not loading is that the team members lack the required IAM permission to retrieve the dashboard definition. CloudWatch dashboards are stored as JSON objects, and the `cloudwatch:GetDashboard` action is necessary to fetch and render that data in the console. Without this permission, the API call fails silently, resulting in a blank or non-loading dashboard.

Answer

Verify that the team members have subscribed to the metric streams.

Answer

Ensure the CloudWatch agent is installed on the instances displaying the dashboard.

Answer

Check that the dashboard is in the same region as the resources.

Question 9

A SysOps administrator is tasked with setting up a solution that automatically terminates EC2 instances that have been running for more than 24 hours. Which steps should the administrator take? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Tag each EC2 instance with its launch time (e.g., key: LaunchTime, value: timestamp).. Options A, B, and D are correct. Option A creates a Lambda function to terminate instances. Option B creates an EventBridge rule that triggers the Lambda function. Option D tags instances with a launch time for the function to evaluate. Option C is wrong because CloudWatch alarms are for metric thresholds, not time-based. Option E is wrong because Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks are for lifecycle actions, not time-based termination.

Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling group lifecycle hook to terminate instances after 24 hours.

Answer

Create a CloudWatch alarm on the InstanceAge metric and set it to trigger the Lambda function.

Question 10

A company has an EC2 instance that needs to access an S3 bucket. The instance is launched in a private subnet with no internet gateway. What is the most secure way to provide access to S3 without traversing the internet?

Accepted Answer

Create an S3 VPC gateway endpoint. To provide access to S3 from a private subnet without an internet gateway, you can use an S3 VPC endpoint (Gateway type). This allows instances in the VPC to access S3 privately using the AWS network. Option C is correct. Option A is wrong because a NAT gateway would route traffic through the internet, which is less secure and requires an internet gateway. Option B is wrong because an internet gateway is needed for a NAT instance. Option D is wrong because AWS Direct Connect does not eliminate the need for a VPC endpoint; it provides a dedicated connection but still requires routing through the internet unless a VPC endpoint is used.

Answer

Use a NAT gateway in a public subnet

Answer

Set up an AWS Direct Connect connection

Answer

Attach an internet gateway to the VPC and a public IP to the instance