Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company's security team requires that all Amazon EC2 instances in a specific AWS account must have the tag 'Environment' set to either 'Production' or 'Test'. Any instance that is launched without this tag or with an invalid value must be automatically terminated within five minutes. Which combination of AWS services can enforce this requirement with minimal manual intervention?
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
Best answer
AWS Config with a custom rule and AWS Lambda
A custom AWS Config rule can evaluate EC2 instances when they are created (configuration change trigger) and invoke an AWS Lambda function to terminate instances lacking the required tag or having an invalid value. This provides continuous compliance enforcement.
B
Distractor review
AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch Events
CloudTrail logs API calls, and CloudWatch Events can trigger a Lambda function on the RunInstances event to check tags and terminate if needed. While this can work for new launches, it does not provide ongoing compliance monitoring for tag changes after launch, and it requires more custom logic than using AWS Config.
C
Distractor review
AWS Service Catalog and AWS Organizations
Service Catalog enforces tagging only for products provisioned through it. This does not cover instances launched outside Service Catalog, and AWS Organizations is for account management, not direct EC2 tag enforcement.
D
Distractor review
Amazon Inspector and AWS Systems Manager
Amazon Inspector is for vulnerability assessments, and Systems Manager is for operational management. Neither service is designed to enforce tags or terminate instances based on tags automatically.
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: AWS Config with a custom rule and AWS Lambda — AWS Config can be used to continuously monitor resources for compliance. A custom AWS Config rule can trigger an AWS Lambda function to evaluate EC2 instances upon creation (via configuration change triggers) and terminate non-compliant instances. This automated approach ensures enforcement without manual intervention. While CloudTrail and EventBridge could also react to instance launches, AWS Config provides ongoing compliance evaluation and is specifically designed for this purpose.
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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