DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Add a second pipeline for the approval step.

  Why it's wrong here

  AWS CodePipeline is designed to manage a complete release process within a single pipeline, progressing through defined stages like Source, Build, Test, and Deploy. Introducing a second, separate pipeline solely for an approval step would break the continuous flow and introduce unnecessary complexity and orchestration challenges. Manual approval actions are inherently integrated as a stage within the *same* pipeline to gate subsequent stages, maintaining a cohesive deployment workflow.

• ✓

  Configure the approval action to use an SNS topic for notifications.

  Why this is correct

  When a manual approval action is configured in AWS CodePipeline, it can be integrated with Amazon SNS to send notifications to designated approvers. Upon reaching the approval stage, CodePipeline publishes a message to the specified SNS topic, which can then trigger email subscriptions or other endpoints to alert approvers. This ensures timely communication and allows approvers to access the approval console link directly from the notification, facilitating a prompt decision.

• ✗

  Use AWS CodeBuild to run a script that waits for manual approval.

  Why it's wrong here

  AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed build service primarily used for compiling source code, running tests, and producing deployable artifacts. It is not designed to pause execution indefinitely while waiting for external human input or manual approval. Attempting to implement a manual approval mechanism within a CodeBuild project would be an anti-pattern, leading to inefficient resource utilization and a complex, unreliable workaround for CodePipeline's native approval actions.

• ✓

  Create an IAM role that allows the pipeline to publish to the SNS topic.

  Why this is correct

  For AWS CodePipeline to successfully publish messages to an Amazon SNS topic when an approval action is initiated, it requires appropriate permissions. This is achieved by associating an IAM service role with the CodePipeline, which must include a policy granting `sns:Publish` actions on the specific SNS topic's ARN. Without these explicit permissions, the pipeline would fail to send notifications to approvers, halting the workflow and preventing progress.

• ✓

  Add an approval action to the pipeline before the deploy stage.

  Why this is correct

  To implement a manual gate before critical deployments, an approval action must be added as a dedicated stage within the AWS CodePipeline. Placing this stage directly before the deploy stage ensures that human review and explicit consent are obtained before any changes are pushed to production environments. This configuration effectively pauses the pipeline's execution until an authorized user manually approves or rejects the pending changes, providing a critical control point.

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