Free Amazon Web Services DOP-C02 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 13

To meet the requirements of deploying a workload on several hundred EC2 instances with least-privilege permissions and temporary security credentials, the company should use an IAM role and an instance profile. An IAM role is a way to grant permissions to an entity that you trust, such as an EC2 instance. An instance profile is a container for an IAM role that you can use to pass role information to an EC2 instance when the instance starts. By using an IAM role and an instance profile, the EC2 instances can automatically receive temporary security credentials from the AWS Security Token Service (STS) and use them to access the S3 buckets. This way, the company does not need to manage or rotate any long-term credentials, such as IAM users or access keys.

To use an IAM role and an instance profile, the company should create an IAM role that has the appropriate permissions for S3 buckets. The permissions should allow the EC2 instances to read from the source S3 bucket and write to the destination S3 bucket. The company should also create a trust policy for the IAM role that specifies that EC2 is allowed to assume the role. Then, the company should add the IAM role to an instance profile. An instance profile can have only one IAM role, so the company does not need to create multiple roles or profiles for this scenario.

Next, the company should update the launch template to include the IAM instance profile. A launch template is a way to save launch parameters for EC2 instances, such as the instance type, security group, user data, and IAM instance profile. By using a launch template, the company can ensure that all EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group have consistent configuration and permissions. The company should specify the name or ARN of the IAM instance profile in the launch template. This way, when the Auto Scaling group launches new EC2 instances based on the launch template, they will automatically receive the IAM role and its permissions through the instance profile.

The other options are not correct because they do not meet the requirements or follow best practices. Creating an IAM user and generating a secret key and token is not a good option because it involves managing long-term credentials that need to be rotated regularly. Moreover, embedding credentials in user data is not secure because user data is visible to anyone who can describe the EC2 instance. Creating a trust anchor and profile is not a valid option because trust anchors are used for certificate-based authentication, not for IAM roles or instance profiles. Modifying user data to use a new secret key and token is also not a good option because it requires updating user data every time the credentials change, which is not scalable or efficient.

1: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional Certification | AWS Certification | AWS

2: DevOps Resources - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

3: Exam Readiness: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

IAM Roles for Amazon EC2 - AWS Identity and Access Management

Working with Instance Profiles - AWS Identity and Access Management

Launching an Instance Using a Launch Template - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Temporary Security Credentials - AWS Identity and Access Management

Use cross-account EventBridge by configuring a rule in the source (automation) account to send events to the target accounts’ default event buses, and grant permissions on the target default event buses to accept events from the source account. This is the standard cross-account event routing model.

Option A is the most correct because it provides both : (1) automated patching and (2) compliance monitoring/enforcement across a fleet, using AWS-native services built for exactly this purpose.

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is designed to automate patching of managed instances using patch baselines , maintenance windows (or on-demand), and it produces compliance status for patching. It’s the standard AWS service to apply OS/security patches at scale without SSH’ing into instances.

AWS Config can be used to evaluate and track compliance over time against defined rules, giving centralized visibility and continuous compliance assessment. With remediation , Config can invoke Systems Manager Automation documents to correct non-compliant resources or trigger patch actions (depending on the rule/remediation design). This meets the “monitor and enforce” requirement.

Why the other options don’t meet requirements as well:

B is manual, doesn’t scale well, and increases operational risk (key management, human error). It’s not “automated monitoring and enforcement.”

C (replacing instances with new AMIs) can be part of an immutable infrastructure strategy, but by itself it does not provide compliance monitoring across the current fleet, and scaling policies based on CloudWatch metrics are unrelated to patch compliance. Also, patch cadence would depend on AMI pipelines and instance rotation rather than direct compliance enforcement.

D is operationally heavy and mismatched: CloudTrail records API activity; it does not natively provide “patch compliance” status for instance OS packages. Recreating instances via CloudFormation for every patch is not an efficient or standard enforcement mechanism for patch compliance.

For cross-account deployments, CodePipeline must assume a role in the target account. Configure S3 bucket policy to allow the target account (CodeDeployAccount) access, trust relationship in DevOps_Role to allow assumption by the pipeline’s account (PipelineAccount), and update CodePipeline_Service_Role with sts:AssumeRole permissions. This cross-account pipeline setup is documented in “Cross-Account Access for AWS CodePipeline.”

" Note that the metric filter is different from a log insights query, where the experience is interactive and provides immediate search results for the user to investigate. No automatic action can be invoked from an insights query. Metric filters, on the other hand, will generate metric data in the form of a time series. This lets you create alarms that integrate into your ITSM processes, execute AWS Lambda functions, or even create anomaly detection models. " https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/quantify-custom-application-metrics-with-amazon-cloudwatch-logs-and-metric-filters/

Refactor User Data to Use cfn-init and cfn-hup:

cfn-init helps to bootstrap the instance, installing packages and starting services.

cfn-hup is a daemon that can monitor metadata changes and re-apply configurations when necessary.

Example user data script with cfn-init:

#!/bin/bash

yum update -y

yum install -y aws-cfn-bootstrap

/opt/aws/bin/cfn-init -v --stack ${AWS::StackName} --resource WebServer --region ${AWS::Region}

/opt/aws/bin/cfn-hup

Use Systems Manager State Manager:

State Manager can automatically apply an AWS Systems Manager document to instances at regular intervals, ensuring configurations are kept up-to-date.

Steps:

Create an SSM document that installs and configures your application.

Use State Manager to associate this document with your EC2 instances.

Example SSM document:

{

" schemaVersion " : " 2.2 " ,

" description " : " Install My Application " ,

" mainSteps " : [

{

" action " : " aws:runShellScript " ,

" name " : " installApplication " ,

" inputs " : {

" runCommand " : [

" yum install -y my-application "

]

}

}

]

}

Create State Manager association:

aws ssm create-association --name " InstallMyApplication " --instance-id < instance-id > --document-version " \$LATEST "

 Turn off cross-zone load balancing on the ALB ' s target group:

Cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic evenly across all registered targets in all enabled Availability Zones. Turning this off will ensure that each target group only handles requests from its respective Availability Zone.

To disable cross-zone load balancing:

Go to the Amazon EC2 console.

Navigate to Load Balancers and select the ALB.

Choose the Target Groups tab, select the target group, and then select the Group details tab.

Click on Edit and turn off Cross-zone load balancing.

 Use Amazon Route 53 Application Recovery Controller to start a zonal shift away from the Availability Zone:

Amazon Route 53 Application Recovery Controller provides the ability to control traffic flow to ensure high availability and disaster recovery.

By using Route 53 Application Recovery Controller, you can perform a zonal shift to redirect traffic away from the unhealthy Availability Zone.

To start a zonal shift:

Configure Route 53 Application Recovery Controller by creating a cluster and control panel.

Create routing controls to manage traffic shifts between Availability Zones.

Use the routing control to shift traffic away from the affected Availability Zone.

Create an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) rule that matches an AWS Config evaluation result of NON_COMPLIANT for the restricted-ssh rule. Configure an input transformer for the EventBridge (CloudWatch Events) rule. Configure the EventBridge (CloudWatch Events) rule to publish a notification to the SNS topic. This approach uses Amazon EventBridge (previously known as Amazon CloudWatch Events) to filter AWS Config evaluation results based on the restricted-ssh rule and its compliance status (NON_COMPLIANT). An input transformer can be used to customize the information contained in the notification, such as the name and ID of the noncompliant security group. The EventBridge (CloudWatch Events) rule can then be configured to publish a notification to the SNS topic, which will notify the appropriate personnel in real-time.

https://aws.amazon.com/es/blogs/devops/complete-ci-cd-with-aws-codecommit-aws-codebuild-aws-codedeploy-and-aws-codepipeline/