SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company has an S3 bucket that stores critical data. The bucket has versioning enabled. A SysOps administrator accidentally deletes a version of an object. What is the quickest way to recover the deleted version?

Accepted Answer

Copy the deleted version from the bucket's version history.. Option B is correct because S3 versioning allows you to restore a previous version by copying it back to the bucket. Option A is wrong because the object is not permanently deleted; it can be undeleted via versioning. Option C is wrong as long as versioning is on. Option D is wrong because MFA Delete does not help with recovery.

Answer

Use the S3 bucket's 'Undelete' feature.

Answer

Enable MFA Delete and then restore the object.

Answer

Contact AWS Support to restore the object.

Question 2

A company runs a production application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores data on an EBS volume. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure that the data is durable and available even if an EC2 instance fails. Which approach should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Migrate the data to Amazon EFS and mount it to all instances.. Option C is correct because storing data on EFS provides a shared file system that persists independently of EC2 instances, and EFS is designed for high availability and durability. Option A is wrong because EBS volumes are tied to a single AZ and instance. Option B is wrong because instance store is ephemeral. Option D is wrong because S3 is object storage, not a file system.

Answer

Use an instance store volume and replicate data across instances.

Answer

Use an EBS volume with snapshots taken every hour.

Answer

Move the data to an S3 bucket and access it via S3 API.

Question 3

A company wants to ensure that its EC2 instances receive patches automatically to maintain security compliance. Which AWS service can be used to automate patch management?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. Option D is correct because AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates patching of managed instances. Option A is wrong because CloudWatch is for monitoring. Option B is wrong because Config is for compliance auditing. Option C is wrong because CloudTrail is for API logging.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 4

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for its critical applications. The plan must minimize data loss and recovery time. Which TWO measures should the SysOps administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Perform regular backups to Amazon S3.. Options A and C are correct. Regular backups to S3 provide data durability, and multi-region replication ensures availability in another region. Option B is wrong because a single region does not protect against region failure. Option D is wrong because manual failover is slow. Option E is wrong because RTO is about time, not backup frequency.

Answer

Set a recovery time objective (RTO) of 24 hours.

Answer

Use manual procedures to restore from backups.

Answer

Run all workloads in a single AWS region.

Question 5

A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting a high error rate on an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The ALB is configured with two target groups: one for EC2 instances and one for Lambda functions. The administrator notices that the EC2 target group is unhealthy. Which THREE steps should the administrator take to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Verify that the EC2 instances' security groups allow traffic from the ALB.. Options A, B, and D are correct. Checking security groups ensures traffic from ALB is allowed, health check configuration ensures correct path and interval, and instance logs help identify application errors. Option C is wrong because DNS issues are not related to health checks. Option E is wrong because scaling does not fix health check failures.

Answer

Review the ALB's DNS resolution for the target instances.

Answer

Increase the size of the Auto Scaling group to distribute load.

Question 6

A company runs a stateless web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The company wants to improve the application's availability and fault tolerance. Which TWO actions should the SysOps administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Configure Auto Scaling to maintain a minimum number of instances.. Options B and C are correct. Multi-AZ deployment ensures availability if one AZ fails, and Auto Scaling maintains desired capacity. Option A is wrong because larger instances do not improve fault tolerance. Option D is wrong because CloudFront is for content delivery, not compute fault tolerance. Option E is wrong because stopping termination protection does not improve availability.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudFront as an origin for the ALB.

Answer

Disable termination protection on EC2 instances.

Answer

Use larger EC2 instance types.

Question 7

Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator creates an IAM policy to allow an EC2 instance to upload objects to an S3 bucket. However, the instance is unable to upload objects. What is the MOST likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The IAM role is not attached to the EC2 instance.. Option A is correct because the policy allows s3:PutObject only, but the EC2 instance likely needs to assume the role via sts:AssumeRole. However, the policy does not include that action. More commonly, the issue is that the policy is missing s3:PutObjectAcl or the bucket policy denies access. But among the options, the most likely is that the policy does not include s3:ListBucket, which is often required for PUT operations? Actually, s3:PutObject does not require ListBucket. However, the typical issue is that the IAM role is not attached to the instance. Option B is correct: The role is not attached to the EC2 instance. Option A is wrong because s3:PutObject is allowed. Option C is wrong because there is no bucket policy shown. Option D is wrong because S3 server-side encryption does not block uploads.

Answer

The S3 bucket has server-side encryption enabled.

Answer

The policy does not include s3:GetObject permission.

Answer

The bucket policy denies all access.

Question 8

Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator needs to restore the database 'mydb' to the most recent restorable time shown. However, the administrator cannot restore to that time. What is the MOST likely reason?

Accepted Answer

Automated backups are disabled (BackupRetentionPeriod is 0).. Option C is correct because BackupRetentionPeriod is 0, which disables automated backups. Without backups, point-in-time recovery is not possible. Option A is wrong because Multi-AZ is false but does not prevent restores. Option B is wrong because the backup window has passed; restores can still happen. Option D is wrong because engine is MySQL, which supports restores.

Answer

The database engine does not support point-in-time recovery.

Answer

The backup window has already passed.

Answer

The database is not Multi-AZ.

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator creates a CloudFormation stack with the template shown. After 30 days, what happens to noncurrent versions of objects in the bucket?

Accepted Answer

They are permanently deleted.. Option A is correct because the lifecycle rule deletes noncurrent versions after 30 days. Option B is wrong because they are deleted, not archived. Option C is wrong because they are deleted, not transitioned. Option D is wrong because they are deleted after 30 days, not immediately.

Answer

They are moved to Amazon S3 Glacier.

Answer

They become the current version.

Answer

They are moved to Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access.

Question 10

A company is running a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. They want to ensure that if an entire Availability Zone fails, the application remains available. Which configuration should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to launch instances in multiple Availability Zones.. Option B is correct because deploying EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) ensures that if one AZ fails, traffic can be routed to healthy instances in other AZs. Option A is wrong because an Auto Scaling group with a single AZ does not protect against AZ failure. Option C is wrong because a larger instance type improves performance but not availability. Option D is wrong because read replicas are for databases, not EC2 instances.

Answer

Use an RDS Multi-AZ deployment for the application.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instances.

Question 11

A company uses S3 to store critical data. They need to ensure that data can be recovered in the event of accidental deletion or overwriting by users. Which combination of actions should they take?

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and MFA Delete.. Option C is correct because enabling S3 Versioning allows recovery of previous versions, and enabling MFA Delete adds an extra layer of protection. Option A is wrong because S3 Cross-Region Replication does not prevent deletion. Option B is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration is for speed. Option D is wrong because logging does not prevent deletion.

Answer

Enable S3 Cross-Region Replication and S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Answer

Enable S3 Server Access Logging and S3 Object Lock.

Question 12

A SysOps administrator is setting up a backup plan for an RDS MySQL database. The database is 500 GB in size and is used for a critical application. The company requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the RDS instance in a Multi-AZ configuration with automatic failover.. Option A is correct because Multi-AZ with automatic failover provides a low RTO (typically under 1 minute) and synchronous replication ensures RPO of seconds. Option B is wrong because manual snapshots have higher RPO and RTO. Option C is wrong because cross-region read replicas are asynchronous and may have higher RPO. Option D is wrong because S3 backups would have high RTO.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to copy snapshots to a different AWS Region.

Answer

Take manual snapshots every 5 minutes and store them in Amazon S3.

Answer

Configure a cross-region read replica and promote it during failover.

Question 13

An application running on EC2 instances stores session data in an attached EBS volume. The company wants to ensure session data is not lost if an instance fails. Which solution should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Move session storage to Amazon ElastiCache for Redis with replication.. Option C is correct because ElastiCache provides a highly available, in-memory data store outside the EC2 instance, preserving session data on instance failure. Option A is wrong because an EBS snapshot is not real-time. Option B is wrong because EBS Multi-Attach is for shared block storage, not session data. Option D is wrong because scaling up does not provide durability.

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach to attach the volume to multiple instances.

Answer

Take frequent EBS snapshots of the volume.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type with more memory.

Question 14

A company runs a critical application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of 2 instances. The instances are in a single Availability Zone. The company wants to achieve 99.99% availability. Which change should they make?

Accepted Answer

Modify the Auto Scaling group to launch instances in multiple Availability Zones and place an Application Load Balancer in front.. Option D is correct because using multiple Availability Zones with an Application Load Balancer distributes traffic and provides high availability. Option A is wrong because a single AZ cannot achieve 99.99% availability. Option B is wrong because increasing instance size does not improve availability. Option C is wrong because scaling based on memory does not provide AZ redundancy.

Answer

Increase the minimum size of the Auto Scaling group to 4 instances.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type to handle more traffic.

Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to scale based on memory utilization.

Question 15

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for its on-premises database. They need to replicate the database to AWS with low latency. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication.. Option B is correct because AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) supports continuous replication from on-premises to AWS RDS. Option A is wrong because S3 is object storage. Option C is wrong because Direct Connect is a network connection, not a replication service. Option D is wrong because Storage Gateway is for file/volume storage, not database replication.

Answer

Amazon S3 with Cross-Region Replication.

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway with volume gateway.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection.