SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A SysOps administrator needs to create a custom Amazon CloudWatch metric to track the number of active user sessions from application logs. The administrator wants to publish this metric to CloudWatch and set an alarm when the count exceeds a threshold. Which solution should be used?

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

Accepted Answer

Use a CloudWatch Logs Metric Filter on the log group.. CloudWatch Logs Metric Filters allow you to define a filter pattern that matches specific log events (e.g., 'User session started') and convert them into a custom metric. The metric is automatically published to CloudWatch, where you can set an alarm on the count of matching log entries. This is the standard, cost-effective approach for extracting metrics from application logs without modifying the application code.

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Use CloudWatch Contributor Insights to extract the metric from logs.

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Use CloudWatch Synthetics Canary to simulate user sessions and publish metrics.

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Use CloudWatch Embedded Metric Format to have the application publish metrics directly.

Question 2

A SysOps administrator needs to receive an email notification when an IAM user's console login fails. Which AWS service should be used to set up this notification?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch can monitor AWS CloudTrail log events for IAM console login failures by creating a metric filter on the CloudTrail log group for the `ConsoleLogin` event with a `failure` status. When the filter matches, CloudWatch can trigger an alarm that sends an email notification via Amazon SNS. This is the correct service because CloudWatch is designed for monitoring and alerting on operational metrics and log patterns.

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AWS CloudTrail

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Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

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AWS Config

Question 3

A SysOps administrator needs to audit all API calls made in an AWS account for compliance and security analysis. The logs must be stored securely for at least one year. Which AWS service should the administrator enable?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail is the correct service because it records all API calls made in an AWS account, including the identity of the caller, the time of the call, the source IP address, and the request parameters. This audit log is essential for compliance and security analysis, and CloudTrail can be configured to store logs in an S3 bucket with lifecycle policies to retain them for at least one year.

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Amazon CloudWatch Logs

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AWS Config

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Amazon GuardDuty

Question 4

A SysOps administrator needs to monitor application logs in Amazon CloudWatch Logs for the occurrence of the string 'ERROR'. The administrator wants to create a custom metric that counts the number of 'ERROR' occurrences per 5-minute window and trigger an Amazon CloudWatch alarm when the count exceeds 10. Which action should the administrator take to create the custom metric?

Accepted Answer

Create a metric filter on the CloudWatch Logs log group that matches the term 'ERROR'.. Metric filters in CloudWatch Logs allow you to define a pattern (e.g., 'ERROR') that is evaluated against incoming log events. The filter counts occurrences and publishes a custom metric to CloudWatch, which can then be used to set an alarm with a period of 5 minutes and a threshold of 10.

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Create a CloudWatch Events rule that triggers on 'ERROR' and publishes a metric.

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Create a CloudWatch dashboard that displays the log group and set an alarm on the dashboard.

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Enable AWS CloudTrail on the log group and select the 'ERROR' pattern.

Question 5

An application logs user authentication attempts to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. The SysOps administrator needs to create a custom metric that counts the number of failed authentication attempts every 5 minutes and trigger an alarm when the count exceeds 5. Which combination of actions should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Create a metric filter on the log group for the string 'FAILED_AUTH', set the metric value to 1, then create an alarm on the resulting metric.. CloudWatch Logs metric filters allow you to extract a numeric value from log events and publish it as a custom metric. By creating a filter that matches the string 'FAILED_AUTH' and setting the metric value to 1, each failed attempt increments the metric. You can then set the metric's period to 5 minutes and create an alarm that triggers when the sum exceeds 5, meeting the requirement without modifying the application code.

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Use the PutMetricData API in the application to publish the number of failed attempts as a custom metric, then create an alarm.

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Use AWS CloudTrail to track authentication events and create a metric filter on the CloudTrail log group.

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Use Amazon Athena to query the logs every 5 minutes and publish results to a CloudWatch metric.

Question 6

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The SysOps administrator needs to centralize the monitoring of all API calls made in any account for security analysis. The solution must collect logs from all accounts, both existing and future, and deliver them to a centralized S3 bucket in the management account. Which AWS service should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail organization trail. AWS CloudTrail organization trails allow you to log all API calls across all accounts in an AWS Organization from a single management account. When you create an organization trail, it automatically applies to all existing and future accounts, delivering logs to a centralized S3 bucket in the management account without requiring per-account configuration.

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AWS Config aggregator

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Amazon CloudWatch Logs with cross-account subscription

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Amazon Detective

Question 7

A SysOps administrator needs to analyze application logs stored in Amazon CloudWatch Logs to find specific error patterns across multiple log groups. The administrator wants to run queries to filter and parse the logs. Which feature should the administrator use?

Accepted Answer

CloudWatch Logs Insights. CloudWatch Logs Insights is the correct feature because it enables you to interactively search and analyze log data stored in CloudWatch Logs using a purpose-built query language. It allows you to run queries across multiple log groups, filter, parse, and aggregate logs to identify specific error patterns, making it ideal for ad-hoc log analysis and troubleshooting.

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CloudWatch Logs subscriptions

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CloudWatch Metric Filters

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CloudWatch Contributor Insights

Question 8

A SysOps administrator manages multiple AWS accounts and wants to create a single Amazon CloudWatch dashboard that displays real-time metrics from all accounts in one view. The administrator needs to avoid managing separate dashboards for each account. Which solution should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Use CloudWatch cross-account observability by setting up a monitoring account and sharing metrics from source accounts.. CloudWatch cross-account observability allows you to designate a monitoring account that can view metrics, logs, and traces from multiple source accounts. This feature uses AWS Organizations or CloudWatch cross-account links to share observability data in real time, enabling a single dashboard that aggregates metrics from all accounts without needing separate dashboards.

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Export CloudWatch metrics to Amazon QuickSight and create a dashboard there.

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Use AWS Config aggregator to collect metrics and display in CloudWatch.

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Create a Lambda function that periodically pulls metrics from each account and publishes to a central account's CloudWatch.

Question 9

A SysOps administrator needs to detect unauthorized changes to security groups and automatically notify the operations team. Which two AWS services should be part of the solution? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail.. AWS CloudTrail is correct because it records API calls made to create, modify, or delete security groups, providing the audit trail needed to detect unauthorized changes. By enabling CloudTrail on the account and configuring a trail to deliver logs to Amazon S3, the administrator can monitor security group events such as AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress or RevokeSecurityGroupEgress. This log data is essential for identifying when a change occurred, who made it, and from which source IP.

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Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration.

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AWS Snowball Edge.

Question 10

A SysOps administrator needs to monitor memory utilization on an Amazon EC2 instance. Memory metrics are not available by default in Amazon CloudWatch for EC2 instances. Which action should the administrator take to collect memory utilization metrics?

Accepted Answer

Install the CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instance. The CloudWatch agent is the correct solution because it can collect custom metrics, including memory utilization, from EC2 instances. Unlike the default hypervisor-level metrics (CPU, network, disk), memory metrics require an in-guest agent to read the operating system's memory counters and publish them to CloudWatch.

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Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instance

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Use an AWS Lambda function to query the EC2 instance for memory metrics

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Use Amazon Inspector to collect memory metrics

Question 11

An EC2 instance runs a Java application. The operations team wants to monitor heap memory utilization in CloudWatch and set alarms when it exceeds 85 percent. EC2 does not natively publish memory metrics to CloudWatch. What is the simplest way to get this metric into CloudWatch?

Accepted Answer

Install the CloudWatch agent on the instance and configure it to collect mem_used_percent; publish JVM heap metrics from the application using PutMetricData. The CloudWatch agent can collect custom metrics like memory utilization from the EC2 instance, and the Java application can directly publish JVM heap metrics to CloudWatch using the PutMetricData API. This combination provides the simplest and most direct way to monitor heap memory utilization and set alarms at the 85% threshold, as EC2 does not natively expose memory metrics.

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Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instance to increase metric resolution to 1-minute intervals

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Configure a CloudWatch Logs metric filter on the application log stream to count lines containing 'OutOfMemoryError'

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Use AWS Systems Manager Inventory to collect memory data and sync it to CloudWatch

Question 12

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.

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

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

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

Question 13

An environment has 12 individual CloudWatch metric alarms covering CPU, memory, disk, and network. When one instance degrades, all 12 alarms fire simultaneously and send 12 separate notifications to the on-call engineer. The team wants a single notification per incident regardless of how many individual alarms trigger. What CloudWatch feature addresses this?

Accepted Answer

Create a composite alarm that enters ALARM state when any of the 12 child alarms is in ALARM state, and configure a single SNS action on the composite alarm only. A composite alarm in CloudWatch can aggregate multiple child alarms into a single parent alarm. When any of the 12 child alarms enters the ALARM state, the composite alarm transitions to ALARM and triggers a single SNS notification, thereby reducing alert noise to one notification per incident.

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Increase the alarm evaluation period on all 12 alarms to 30 minutes so they fire less frequently

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Use an SNS topic with a delivery policy that batches notifications sent within a 60-second window

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Configure all 12 alarms to write to the same CloudWatch Events rule and suppress duplicate events with EventBridge deduplication

Question 14

The security team requires that no S3 bucket in the account ever has public read or write ACLs enabled. They want non-compliant buckets automatically remediated within 5 minutes of detection without any manual intervention. What is the correct implementation?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS Config rule for s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited; configure auto-remediation using the AWS-DisableS3BucketPublicReadWrite SSM Automation document. AWS Config can evaluate S3 bucket ACLs against the `s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited` managed rule and automatically trigger an AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Automation document (`AWS-DisableS3BucketPublicReadWrite`) as a remediation action. This ensures non-compliant buckets are fixed within minutes without manual intervention, meeting the 5-minute requirement.

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Create an EventBridge rule that matches S3 PutBucketAcl API calls and triggers a Lambda function to re-apply a private ACL

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Enable S3 Block Public Access at the account level to prevent public ACLs from being set in the first place

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Schedule a daily Lambda function that lists all buckets, checks ACLs, and removes public grants if found

Question 15

The monitoring team needs to collect per-process CPU and memory utilization for a specific Java process (named 'app.jar') running on EC2 Linux instances. Standard EC2 metrics show aggregate CPU but not per-process details. Which CloudWatch agent configuration section enables this?

Accepted Answer

Add a procstat section under metrics_collected in the CloudWatch agent config, specifying process_name = 'app.jar' to collect per-process CPU and memory. The CloudWatch agent's `procstat` plugin is specifically designed to collect per-process metrics such as CPU and memory utilization. By adding a `procstat` section under `metrics_collected` in the agent configuration file and specifying the process name (e.g., `process_name = 'app.jar'`), the agent will gather the required per-process metrics and send them to CloudWatch. This is the only native method within the CloudWatch ecosystem to achieve per-process monitoring on EC2 Linux instances.

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Enable enhanced monitoring on the EC2 instance and select 'per-process metrics' from the console

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Configure a CloudWatch Logs metric filter on the Java GC log output to derive CPU and memory figures

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Use the aws ec2 describe-instance-status API on a schedule to pull process metrics from the instance's system status checks