SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores data on an Amazon EBS volume. The SysOps administrator needs to implement a backup strategy that ensures data can be recovered in the event of an AZ failure. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure automated snapshots using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.. Options B and D are correct. Option B: Cross-region snapshot copy protects against AZ failure by storing data in another region. Option D: Automating snapshots with a lifecycle policy ensures regular backups. Option A is wrong because Multi-Attach EBS does not provide backup. Option C is wrong because increasing volume size does not provide backup. Option E is wrong because EBS encryption protects data at rest but not against failure.

Answer

Increase the EBS volume size to maximize I/O performance.

Answer

Enable EBS encryption using AWS KMS.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach to allow the volume to be attached to instances in another AZ.

Question 2

A SysOps administrator is designing a highly available architecture for a web application using an Application Load Balancer and an Auto Scaling group across three Availability Zones. The application must be able to withstand the loss of an entire AZ. Which THREE components are necessary to meet this requirement? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Launch EC2 instances in at least two Availability Zones.. Options A, C, and E are correct. Option A: Multi-AZ deployment ensures instances are in multiple AZs. Option C: Cross-zone load balancing ensures ALB can route to instances in any AZ. Option E: Health checks ensure only healthy instances receive traffic. Option B is wrong because a single NAT gateway in one AZ is a single point of failure. Option D is wrong because placement groups are for low latency within a single AZ, not high availability across AZs.

Answer

Use a single NAT gateway to provide internet access.

Answer

Use a cluster placement group for EC2 instances.

Question 3

A company uses Amazon S3 to store backup data. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that the data is encrypted at rest and that access is limited to only authorized users. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Enable default encryption on the S3 bucket using SSE-S3 or AWS KMS.. Options A and D are correct. Option A: Enabling S3 default encryption ensures all objects are encrypted at rest. Option D: Using bucket policies with conditions like aws:SourceIp or aws:PrincipalArn restricts access. Option B is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration is for faster uploads, not encryption. Option C is wrong because blocking public access is a security best practice but does not guarantee authorized user access. Option E is wrong because versioning is for data protection, not encryption or access control.

Answer

Block all public access to the S3 bucket.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration.

Question 4

A company is designing a highly available web application using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones. Which configuration ensures that the application remains available if one Availability Zone fails?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to launch instances in at least two Availability Zones. Correct answer is B. Distributing instances across multiple Availability Zones ensures that a failure in one zone does not affect the other. Option A is wrong because placing all instances in a single AZ creates a single point of failure. Option C is wrong because using a single instance is not highly available. Option D is wrong because disabling health checks would prevent the ALB from routing traffic away from unhealthy instances.

Answer

Use a single large EC2 instance instead of multiple instances

Answer

Disable health checks on the ALB to avoid false positives

Answer

Launch all EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone

Question 5

A SysOps administrator is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical RDS MySQL database. The database must be available with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 1 hour and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 2 hours. The primary region is us-east-1. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a cross-Region read replica in us-west-2 and promote it during a disaster. Correct answer is C. Cross-Region read replicas provide asynchronous replication with RPO typically seconds to minutes, and promoting a replica can be done in minutes, meeting both RPO and RTO. Option A is wrong because automated backups have RPO of up to 5 minutes but restoring in another region takes longer than 2 hours. Option B is wrong because Multi-AZ is for high availability within a region, not cross-region DR. Option D is wrong because manual snapshots require manual intervention and restore time is unpredictable.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ deployment in the primary region

Answer

Enable automated backups and restore to a new region when needed

Answer

Take daily manual snapshots and copy them to another region

Question 6

A company runs a stateful application on EC2 instances behind a Network Load Balancer (NLB). The application uses sticky sessions (session affinity) to maintain client state. During a deployment, the SysOps administrator needs to replace instances without disrupting active sessions. Which approach should be used?

Accepted Answer

Deregister the old instances from the target group with connection draining enabled, then register new instances. Correct answer is A. By deregistering instances with a connection draining timeout, the NLB will stop sending new traffic but allow existing connections to complete. Then new instances can be registered. Option B is wrong because terminating instances immediately will drop active sessions. Option C is wrong because stopping the NLB would affect all traffic. Option D is wrong because sticky sessions are not configured on target group health checks; health checks are separate.

Answer

Stop the NLB, replace instances, and restart the NLB

Answer

Update the target group health check to remove old instances faster

Answer

Terminate the old instances immediately and launch new ones

Question 7

An organization needs to back up an Amazon EFS file system daily and retain backups for 30 days. Which AWS service provides a managed backup solution for EFS?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. Correct answer is C. AWS Backup is a fully managed backup service that supports EFS and can schedule daily backups with retention policies. Option A is wrong because S3 Lifecycle policies manage object lifecycle in S3, not EFS backups. Option B is wrong because Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) manages EBS snapshots, not EFS. Option D is wrong because EFS-to-EFS replication is for continuous replication, not scheduled backup with retention.

Answer

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM)

Answer

EFS replication to another region

Answer

S3 Lifecycle policies

Question 8

A company is running a critical application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application experiences occasional CPU spikes. The SysOps administrator needs to configure a scaling policy that reacts quickly to increased load but avoids unnecessary scaling actions due to short bursts. Which scaling policy type should be used?

Accepted Answer

Target tracking scaling policy with a CPU utilization target of 70%. Correct answer is B. A target tracking policy with a higher CPU target (e.g., 70%) and a warm-up time can handle spikes smoothly. Step scaling can also be used but requires more configuration. Option A is wrong because simple scaling has cooldown periods that can react slowly. Option C is wrong because scheduled scaling is for predictable load, not spikes. Option D is wrong because manual scaling is not automated.

Answer

Manual scaling

Answer

Scheduled scaling policy

Answer

Simple scaling policy

Question 9

A SysOps administrator is implementing a disaster recovery strategy for an S3 bucket containing critical data. The bucket must be available within 15 minutes if the primary region fails. Data must be replicated with RPO of less than 5 minutes. Which S3 replication configuration should be used?

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with replication time control (RTC). Correct answer is D. S3 Same-Region Replication (SRR) is for same-region, not DR. Cross-Region Replication (CRR) replicates to another region with RPO typically minutes. However, to achieve RPO <5 minutes and availability within 15 minutes, CRR is the correct choice. Option A is wrong because SRR does not protect against region failure. Option B is wrong because it uses SRR, which is same-region. Option C is wrong because versioning alone does not replicate to another region.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and S3 Same-Region Replication (SRR)

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and configure S3 Event Notifications to trigger a Lambda function that copies objects to another region

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and transfer data to another region using AWS DataSync

Question 10

A company uses Amazon Route 53 for DNS. They want to ensure that if the primary web server fails, traffic is automatically routed to a secondary server in another region. Which routing policy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Failover routing policy. Correct answer is C. Failover routing policy allows you to configure active-passive failover. Option A is wrong because simple routing does not support health checks. Option B is wrong because weighted routing distributes traffic based on weights, not failover. Option D is wrong because latency routing routes based on latency, not failover.

Answer

Simple routing policy

Answer

Latency routing policy

Answer

Weighted routing policy

Question 11

A SysOps administrator notices that an RDS instance's storage is nearly full. The instance uses General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage. The administrator needs to increase storage with minimal downtime. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Modify the RDS instance to increase the allocated storage size. Correct answer is D. Modifying the RDS instance to increase allocated storage can be done with minimal downtime (typically a few minutes). Option A is wrong because deleting old data is not a scalable solution. Option B is wrong because enabling storage auto-scaling is proactive but does not solve the immediate issue. Option C is wrong because converting to Provisioned IOPS is for performance, not capacity.

Answer

Enable storage auto-scaling

Answer

Delete old data to free up space

Answer

Convert the storage type to Provisioned IOPS

Question 12

A company runs a microservices architecture on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They need to ensure that if a task fails, it is automatically restarted. Which configuration is required?

Accepted Answer

Create an ECS service with a desired count and task definition. Correct answer is B. ECS services with a desired count maintain the number of tasks; if a task fails, the service scheduler replaces it. Option A is wrong because ECS tasks launched standalone are not automatically restarted. Option C is wrong because CloudWatch alarms can trigger actions but not directly restart tasks. Option D is wrong because Auto Scaling groups are for EC2, not Fargate tasks.

Answer

Configure a CloudWatch alarm to restart the task

Answer

Define tasks using the ECS RunTask API

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group for the Fargate tasks

Question 13

A company is designing a backup strategy for its on-premises file servers to AWS. Which TWO services can be used to back up data to AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. Correct answers are A and D. AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway provides on-premises caching with backup to S3. AWS Backup can be used for on-premises workloads via the AWS Backup gateway. Option B is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration is for speeding up uploads, not a backup service. Option C is wrong because Amazon EFS is a network file system, not a backup target for on-premises. Option E is wrong because Snowball is for large data transfer, not ongoing backups.

Answer

AWS Snowball

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 14

A SysOps administrator is designing a highly available architecture for a web application using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. Which TWO configurations are required to ensure high availability? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the ALB with health checks for the target group. Correct answers are A and C. Spreading instances across multiple Availability Zones ensures zone failure doesn't take down the application. Using an ALB with health checks ensures that unhealthy instances are removed from rotation. Option B is wrong because placing instances in the same AZ creates a single point of failure. Option D is wrong because disabling health checks prevents the ALB from detecting failures. Option E is wrong because using t2.micro instances is not a high availability consideration.

Answer

Launch all EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone to reduce latency

Answer

Use t2.micro instances to reduce cost

Answer

Disable health checks to reduce load on the ALB

Question 15

A company runs a critical application on EC2 instances with EBS volumes. The SysOps administrator must ensure that EBS snapshots are taken every hour and retained for 7 days. Which THREE steps should be taken to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Create an IAM role for DLM with permissions to create and delete snapshots. Correct answers are A, C, and D. Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) can automate EBS snapshot creation and retention. IAM roles are needed for DLM to manage snapshots. Tags can be used to select volumes. Option B is wrong because AWS Backup can also manage EBS snapshots, but it is not required if DLM is used; the question asks for steps to achieve the goal, and DLM is sufficient. However, AWS Backup is also a valid service, but the question expects DLM as primary. Option E is wrong because CloudWatch Events can trigger Lambda, but DLM is the managed solution.

Answer

Create a CloudWatch Events rule to trigger a Lambda function that creates snapshots

Answer

Use AWS Backup to create a backup plan with hourly frequency