A company runs an application on Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets of a VPC. The application needs to upload files to an Amazon S3 bucket in the same AWS Region. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure that traffic to S3 does not traverse the internet and minimizes data transfer costs. Which solution 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.
Distractor review
Create a NAT gateway in a public subnet and route private subnet traffic to it.
This would route traffic over the internet, incurring NAT gateway costs and data transfer charges, and not fully private.
Best answer
Create an S3 Gateway Endpoint and add a route in the private subnet route table pointing to it.
Gateway Endpoints are free, provide private connectivity, and keep traffic within the AWS network.
Distractor review
Create an S3 Interface Endpoint and assign a security group.
Interface Endpoints are charged per hour and per GB, making them more costly than Gateway Endpoints for S3.
Distractor review
Use AWS PrivateLink to connect to S3.
PrivateLink for S3 is essentially an Interface Endpoint, which is costlier than a Gateway Endpoint.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: usable hosts are not the same as total addresses
Subnetting questions often tempt you into counting all addresses. In normal IPv4 subnets, the network and broadcast addresses are not usable host addresses.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
Subnetting questions test whether you can identify the network, broadcast address, usable range, mask and correct subnet. Slow down enough to calculate the block size correctly.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
- Block size helps identify subnet boundaries.
- Network and broadcast addresses are not usable hosts in normal IPv4 subnets.
- The required host count determines the smallest suitable subnet.
TExam Day Tips
- Write the block size before choosing the subnet.
- Check whether the question asks for hosts, subnets or a specific address range.
- Do not confuse /24, /25, /26 and /27 host counts.
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?
CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Create an S3 Gateway Endpoint and add a route in the private subnet route table pointing to it. — A VPC Gateway Endpoint for S3 provides a private connection to S3 without traversing the internet. It is free of charge and routes traffic through AWS’s internal network. A NAT gateway would route traffic over the internet and incur costs. An Interface Endpoint (AWS PrivateLink) for S3 also provides private connectivity but is charged per hour and per GB processed, making it more expensive than a Gateway Endpoint. PrivateLink is typically used for services that don't support Gateway Endpoints.
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.
Discussion
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