Question 1hardmultiple choice
Full question →hardmultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a stateful application on a single Amazon EC2 instance with a 200 GB EBS volume. The application data changes frequently. The SysOps administrator needs a disaster recovery (DR) plan with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes. The DR region is us-west-2. Which combination of steps should the administrator implement?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Take hourly EBS snapshots and copy them to us-west-2. In a disaster, launch a new instance from the snapshot and attach it.
This approach does not specify an automated method for cross-region snapshot copy, which is essential for DR. Manual copying would not meet the RPO reliably.
B
Best answer
Use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) to take snapshots every hour and use AWS Backup to copy them to us-west-2. In a disaster, restore the snapshot as a volume and attach to a new instance in us-west-2.
DLM automates hourly snapshot creation, and AWS Backup can automate cross-region copy. This meets RPO of 1 hour. With a pre-prepared instance, RTO of 15 minutes is achievable.
C
Distractor review
Enable Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication for the EBS volume's snapshot repository.
EBS snapshots are stored in Amazon S3, but you cannot directly enable S3 Cross-Region Replication for the snapshot repository. Snapshots must be copied using AWS Backup or the EC2 API.
D
Distractor review
Attach an additional EBS volume configured with RAID 1, and use rsync to replicate data every hour to a volume in us-west-2.
This requires manual scripting and additional infrastructure. It is not a managed or automated solution and would be difficult to maintain with the required RTO.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Related practice questions
Related SOA-C02 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) to take snapshots every hour and use AWS Backup to copy them to us-west-2. In a disaster, restore the snapshot as a volume and attach to a new instance in us-west-2. — To meet an RPO of 1 hour, frequent snapshots of the EBS volume are needed. Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) can automate the creation of EBS snapshots on a schedule. AWS Backup can then automatically copy those snapshots to the DR region (us-west-2). During a disaster, you can restore the most recent snapshot as a volume and attach it to a pre-configured EC2 instance in us-west-2. This process can achieve an RTO of 15 minutes if the instance and networking are prepared. Other options either lack cross-region copy (A), use an inappropriate mechanism (C), or are overly complex and not automated (D).
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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