Free Amazon Web Services SAA-C03 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 5

AWS Step Functions is designed to coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows, handling errors, retries, and complex logic. By configuring Amazon S3 Event Notifications to trigger an Amazon EventBridge rule, you can automatically start a Step Functions workflow when a new object is uploaded to S3. Step Functions can manage retries for failed uploads and orchestrate calls to various AWS services with minimal operational effort.

AWS Documentation Extract:

“You can use Amazon EventBridge to initiate AWS Step Functions workflows in response to events from S3 buckets. Step Functions can orchestrate the sequence of AWS service calls and automatically handle retries and errors, making it ideal for automating and managing complex workflows.”

(Source: AWS Step Functions documentation, Using Step Functions with EventBridge and S3)

Other options:

A: Requires manual implementation of orchestration and error handling.

B & C: Involve additional infrastructure management and custom logic for workflow orchestration and error handling, increasing operational effort.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

Amazon RDS for MySQL supports the creation of read replicas, which are read-only copies of the primary database instance. By offloading read-heavy operations, such as reporting queries, to a read replica:

Performance Improvement: The primary DB instance is relieved from the additional load, reducing the likelihood of timeouts during order processing.

Data Consistency: Read replicas use asynchronous replication, ensuring that they have up-to-date data for accurate reporting.

Scalability: Multiple read replicas can be created to handle increased read traffic.

This approach allows employees to continue running necessary reports without impacting the performance of the ordering application.

Amazon GuardDuty detects cryptocurrency mining and sends findings to Amazon EventBridge. You can use EventBridge to trigger an automated Lambda function to isolate EC2 instances (such as by removing security group access or stopping/isolating the instance).

AWS Documentation Extract:

"Amazon GuardDuty findings can be sent to Amazon EventBridge, which enables you to trigger an automated response using AWS Lambda."

(Source: AWS GuardDuty documentation)

B, C, D: Security Hub, Inspector, and Config are not directly used for this detection-to-isolation workflow.

AWS KMS automatic key rotationis the simplest and most operationally efficient solution. Enabling automatic key rotation ensures that KMS automatically generates new key material for the key every year without requiring manual intervention.

Option B:Configuring alerts to rotate keys introduces operational overhead as the actual rotation must still be managed manually.

Option C:Scheduling a Lambda function to rotate keys adds unnecessary complexity compared to enabling automatic key rotation.

Option D:Using a CloudFormation stack to run a Lambda function for key rotation increases operational overhead and complexity unnecessarily.

AWS Documentation References:

AWS KMS Key Rotation

Using Customer-Managed Keys with Amazon RDS

A VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3 enables private connectivity to S3 without routing traffic through a NAT gateway or over the internet, eliminating NAT gateway costs. This solution is secure and redundant, as S3 endpoints are highly available by design.

AWS Documentation Extract:

"A gateway VPC endpoint enables you to privately connect your VPC to supported AWS services without requiring a NAT gateway or internet gateway."

(Source: Amazon VPC documentation, Gateway Endpoints)

A: NAT instances still incur operational overhead and costs.

B: Internet gateway exposes resources and does not provide private access.

D: Direct Connect is for hybrid networking, not for cost-efficient S3 access.

Converting the existing DynamoDB table to aglobal tableprovides active-active replication and low-latency reads and writes in both Regions. DynamoDB global tables are specifically designed for multi-Region and multi-active use cases.

Option A:GSIs do not provide multi-Region replication or active-active capabilities.

Option B and D:Using DynamoDB Streams and custom replication is less operationally efficient than global tables and introduces additional complexity.

AWS Documentation References:

DynamoDB Global Tables

The requirement is for immediate processing of uploaded videos and prompt notification to users. According to AWS best practices for event-driven architectures, using S3 event notifications to trigger a Lambda function upon an object creation (upload) is the optimal solution for real-time processing. Lambda can process the file as soon as it is uploaded, ensuring low latency. Once processing is complete, Lambda can save the processed file back to S3 and use Amazon SNS to notify the user.

This approach uses managed services with minimal operational overhead, is scalable, and ensures event-driven processing with instant user feedback. AWS Amplify primarily facilitates application development and hosting but does not natively provide direct push notification support for this backend workflow; instead, SNS is designed for such notification scenarios.

Reference Extract from AWS Documentation / Study Guide:

"Amazon S3 can publish events to AWS Lambda when objects are created. AWS Lambda runs code in response to events and can interact with other AWS services. Amazon SNS is a flexible, fully managed pub/sub messaging and mobile notifications service for coordinating the delivery of messages to subscribing endpoints and clients."

Source: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Official Study Guide, Event-driven Architectures section; AWS Lambda Developer Guide (S3 triggers); Amazon SNS User Guide.

This solution meets the requirements because it uses the following components and features:

AdministratorAccess identity-based policy: This is an AWS managed policy that provides full access to AWSservices and resources1. By attaching this policy to the IAM user group, the solutions architect can grant the permissions needed for the designated employees to perform any task in the AWS account.

IAM user group: This is a collection of IAM users that share common permissions2. By creating a user group and adding the five designated employees as members, the solutions architect can simplify the management of permissions and reduce the risk of human errors or inconsistencies.

IAM users: These are identities that represent the designated employees in AWS2. By creating an IAM user for each employee and requiring them to sign in with their own credentials, the solutions architect can enhance the security and accountability of the AWS account.

This solution meets the requirements because it uses SCPs to restrict the actions that can be performed on cost usage tags in the organization. SCPs are a type of organization policy that you can use to manage permissions in your organization. SCPs specify the maximum permissions for an organization, organizational unit (OU), or account. You can use SCPs to enforce consistent tag policies across your organization and prevent unauthorized or accidental changes to your tags. You can also create exceptions for authorized principals, such as administrators or auditors, who need to modify tags for legitimate purposes.

AWS Secrets Manager is a fully managed service specifically designed to securely store and automatically rotate database credentials, API keys, and other secrets. Secrets Manager provides built-in integration with Amazon RDS for automatic credential rotation on a configurable schedule without requiring downtime. It also manages the secure distribution of the credentials to authorized services, such as your web servers, using IAM policies. Manual solutions (S3, files, cron jobs) do not provide the same level of automation, audit, or security.

Reference Extract from AWS Documentation / Study Guide:

"AWS Secrets Manager enables you to rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials securely. It supports automatic rotation of secrets for supported AWS databases without requiring application downtime."

Source: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Official Study Guide, Security and Secrets Management section.

This option is the best solution because it allows the company to run its payment application on AWS with minimal operational overhead and infrastructure management. By using Amazon API Gateway, the company can create a secure and scalable API to receive payment notifications from mobile devices. By using AWS Lambda, the company can run a serverless function to validate the payment notifications and send them to the backend application. Lambda handles the provisioning, scaling, and security of the function, reducing the operational complexity and cost. By using Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate,the company can run the backend application on a fully managed container service that scales the compute resources automatically and does not require any EC2 instances to manage. Fargate allocates the right amount of CPU and memory for each container and adjusts them as needed.

A. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue Integrate the queue with an Amazon EventBndge rule to receive payment notifications from mobile devices Configure the rule to validate payment notifications and send the notifications to the backend application Deploy the backend application on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Anywhere Create a standalone cluster. This option is not optimal because it requires the company to manage the Kubernetes cluster that runs the backend application. Amazon EKS Anywhere is a deployment option that allows the company to create and operate Kubernetes clusters on-premises or in other environments outside AWS. The company would need to provision, configure, scale, patch, and monitor the cluster nodes, which can increase theoperational overhead and complexity. Moreover, the company would need to ensure the connectivity and security between the AWS services and the EKS Anywhere cluster, which can also add challenges and risks.

B. Create an Amazon API Gateway API Integrate the API with anAWS Step Functions state ma-chine to receive payment notifications from mobile devices Invoke the state machine to validate payment notifications and send the notifications to the backend application Deploy the backend application on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Sen/ice (Amazon EKS). Configure an EKS cluster with self-managed nodes. This option is not ideal because it requires the company to manage the EC2 instances that host the Kubernetes cluster that runs the backend application. Amazon EKS is a fully managed service that runs Kubernetes on AWS, but it still requires the company to manage the worker nodes that run the containers. The company would need to provision, configure, scale, patch, and monitor the EC2 instances, which can increase the operational overhead and infrastructure costs. Moreover, using AWS Step Functions to validate the payment notifications may be unnecessary and complex, as the validation logic can be implemented in a simpler way with Lambda or other services.

C. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Sen/ice (Amazon SQS) queue Integrate the queue with an Amazon EventBridge rule to receive payment notifications from mobile devices Configure the rule to validate payment notifications and send the notifications to the backend application Deploy the backend application on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances Configure a Spot Fleet with a default al-location strategy. This option is not cost-effective because it requires the company to manage the EC2 instances that run the backend application. The company would need to provision, configure, scale, patch, and monitor the EC2 instances, which can increase the operational overhead and infrastructure costs. Moreover, using Spot Instances can introduce the risk of interruptions, as Spot Instances are reclaimed by AWS when the demand for On-Demand Instances increases. The company would need to handle the interruptions gracefully and ensure the availability and reliability of the backend application.

To migrate the DNS hosting service to a more resilient managed DNS service on AWS, the company should use Amazon Route 53, which is a highly available and scalable cloud DNS web service. Route 53 can host public DNS records for the company’s domain name and provide reliable and secure DNS resolution. To rapidly migrate the DNS hosting service, thecompanyshould create a public hosted zone for the domain name in Route 53, which is a container for the domain’s DNS records. Then, the company should import the zone file containing the domain records hosted by the previous provider, which is a text file that defines the DNS records for the domain. This way, the company can quickly transfer the existing DNS records to Route 53 without manually creating them. After importing the zone file, the company should update the domain registrar to use the name servers that Route 53 assigns to the hosted zone. This will ensure that DNS queries for the domain name are routed to Route 53 and resolved by the imported records.

This option is the most cost-effective solution because it leverages the Spot Instances, which are unused EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices.Spot Instances can be interrupted by AWS when the demand for On-Demand instances increases, but since the batch jobs are fault-tolerant and can be reprocessed by another instance, this is not a major issue. By using a launch template, the company can specify the configuration of the Spot Instances, such as the instance type, the operating system, and the user data. By using an Auto Scaling group, the company can automatically scale the number of Spot Instances based on the CPU usage, which reflects the load of the batch jobs. This way, the company can optimize the performance and the cost of the EC2 instances for the nightly batch jobs.

A. Purchase a 1-year Savings Plan for Amazon EC2 that covers the instance family of the Auto Scaling group that the batch job uses. This option is not optimal because it requires a commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage per hour for a one-year term, regardless of the instance type, size, region, or operating system. This can limit the flexibility and scalability of the Auto Scaling group and result in overpaying for unused compute capacity. Moreover, Savings Plans do not provide a capacity reservation, which means the company still needs to reserve capacity with On-Demand Capacity Reservations and pay lower prices with Savings Plans.

B. Purchase a 1-year Reserved Instance for the specific instance type and operating system of the instances in the Auto Scaling group that the batch job uses. This option is not ideal because it requires a commitment to a specific instance configuration for a one-year term, which can reduce the flexibility and scalability of the Auto Scaling group and result in overpaying for unused compute capacity. Moreover, Reserved Instances do not provide a capacity reservation, which means the company still needs to reserve capacity with On-Demand Capacity Reservations and pay lower prices with Reserved Instances.

D. Create a new launch template for the Auto Scaling group Increase the instance size Set a policy to scale out based on CPU usage. This option is not cost-effective because it does not take advantage of the lower prices of Spot Instances. Increasing the instance size can improve the performance of the batch jobs, but it can also increase the cost of the On-Demand instances. Moreover, scaling out based on CPU usage can result in launching more instances than needed, which can also increase the cost of the system.

Deletion protection is a feature of DynamoDB that prevents accidental deletion of tables. When deletion protection is enabled, you cannot delete a table unless you explicitly disable it first. This adds an extra layer of security and reduces the risk of data loss and operational disruption. Deletion protection is easy to enable and disable using the AWS Management Console, the AWSCLI, or the DynamoDB API. This solution has the least operational overhead, as you do not need to create, manage, or invoke any additional resources or services. References:

Using deletion protection to protect your table

Preventing Accidental Table Deletion in DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB now supports table deletion protection

AWS Control Tower is a fully managed service that simplifies the setup and governance of a secure, compliant, multi-account AWS environment. It establishes a landing zone that is based on best-practices blueprints, and it enables governance using controls you can choose from a pre-packaged list. The landing zone is a well-architected, multi-account baseline that follows AWS best practices. Controls implement governance rules for security, compliance, and operations. AWS Security Hub is a service that provides a comprehensive view of your security posture across your AWS accounts. It aggregates, organizes, and prioritizes security alerts and findings from multiple AWS services, such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, Amazon Macie, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS IAM Access Analyzer, as well as from AWS Partner solutions. AWS Security Hub continuously monitors your environment using automatedcompliance checks based on the AWS best practices and industry standards, such as the AWS Foundational Security Best Practices (FSBP) standard. AWS Control Tower Account Factory is a feature that automates the provisioning of new AWS accounts that are preconfigured to meet your business, security, and compliance requirements. By deploying an AWS Control Tower environment in the Organizations management account, you can leverage the existing organization structure and policies, and enable AWS Security Hub and AWS Control Tower Account Factory in the environment. This way, you can audit all API calls and logins in any existing or new AWS account, monitor the compliance status of each account with the FSBP standard, and provision new accounts with ease and consistency. This solution meets the requirements with the least operational overhead, as you do not need to manage any infrastructure, perform any data migration, or submit any requests for changes.

To provide access to the SQS queue to the other company without giving up its own account permissions, a solutions architect should create an SQS access policy that provides the other company access to the SQS queue. An SQS access policy is a resource-based policy that defines who can access the queue and what actions they can perform. The policy can specify the AWS account ID of the other company as a principal, and grant permissions for actions such as sqs:ReceiveMessage, sqs:DeleteMessage, and sqs:GetQueueAttributes. This way, the other company can poll the queue using its own credentials, without needing to assume a role or use cross-account access keys. References:

Using identity-based policies (IAM policies) for Amazon SQS

Using custom policies with the Amazon SQS access policy language

The most cost-effective solution for the online video game company is to configure a Network Load Balancer with the required protocol and ports for the internet traffic and specify the EC2 instances as the targets. This solution will enable the company to handle millions of UDP requests per second with ultra-low latency and high performance.

A Network Load Balancer is a type of Elastic Load Balancing that operates at the connection level (Layer 4) and routes traffic to targets (EC2 instances, microservices, or containers) within Amazon VPC based on IP protocol data. A Network Load Balancer is ideal for load balancing of both TCP and UDP traffic, as it is capable of handling millions of requests per second while maintaining high throughput at ultra-low latency. A Network Load Balancer also preserves the source IP address of the clients to the back-end applications, which can be useful for logging or security purposes1.

Application Load Balancer (ALB): ALB is suitable for routing HTTP/HTTPS traffic to the application servers. It provides advanced routing features and integrates well with Auto Scaling groups.

Target Group Configuration:

Create a target group for the application servers and register the Auto Scaling group with this target group.

Configure the ALB to forward requests from the web servers to the application servers.

Security Group Setup:

Configure the security group of the application servers to only allow traffic from the web servers' security group.

This ensures that only the web servers can access the application servers, meeting the requirement to limit access.

Benefits:

Security: Using security groups to restrict access ensures a secure environment where only intended traffic is allowed.

Scalability: ALB works seamlessly with Auto Scaling groups, ensuring the application can handle varying loads efficiently.

This solution meets the requirements because it enables the company to observe the performance and behavior of its microservices-based application on Amazon EKS. Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights is a feature that collects, aggregates, and summarizes metrics and logs from containerized applications and microservices. Container Insights integrates with Amazon EKS and Kubernetes to provide metrics at the cluster, node, pod, task, and service level. You can use Container Insights to monitor the CPU, memory, disk, and network utilization of your EKS clusters and identify bottlenecks, latency spikes, and other issues. AWS X-Ray is a service that collects data about requests that your application serves, and provides tools that you can use to view, filter, and gain insights into that data. X-Ray integrates with Amazon EKS and Kubernetes to trace the requests that your microservices make to downstream AWS resources, microservices, databases, and web APIs. You can use X-Ray to analyze the root cause of errors, faults, and performance issues, and visualize the service map of your application.

The company is looking for a solution that provides single sign-on (SSO) across multiple AWS accounts while continuing to manage users and groups in their on-premises Active Directory (AD). AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) is the recommended solution for this type of requirement.

AWS IAM Identity Centerprovides a centralized identity management solution, enabling single sign-on across multiple AWS accounts and other cloud applications. It can integrate with on-premises Active Directory to leverage existing users and groups.

By configuring a two-way forest trust relationship between AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory and the company's on-premises Active Directory, users can be authenticated by their on-premises AD and still access AWS resources through IAM Identity Center. This solution allows centralized management of AWS accounts within AWS Organizations.

The two-way trust allows mutual access between the on-premises AD and the AWS Directory Service. This means that users and groups in the on-premises AD can be used for authentication in AWS IAM Identity Center while maintaining the existing identity management system.

AWS References:

AWS IAM Identity Center Documentation

AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory Trust Relationships

AWS Directory Service Integration with IAM Identity Center

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Create an Enterprise Edition Active Directory in AWS Directory Service: This would require setting up a new directory and managing it in AWS, which adds unnecessary overhead. The requirement is to continue using the existing on-premises AD, making this option unsuitable.

C. Use AWS Directory Service and create a two-way trust relationship: While this approach establishes a trust between on-premises AD and AWS Directory Service, it does not address the single sign-on (SSO) requirements across multiple AWS accounts through IAM Identity Center.

D. Deploy an identity provider (IdP) on Amazon EC2: This is more complex than necessary and introduces more management overhead. AWS IAM Identity Center natively supports integration with on-premises Active Directory without requiring a custom IdP.

Option B: FSx for Lustre is designed for HPC workloads with high IOPS.

Option E: A cluster placement group ensures low-latency networking for HPC analytics workloads.

Option A: Amazon EFS is not optimized for HPC.

Option D: Mountpoint for S3 does not meet high IOPS needs.

Amazon Macieis purpose-built for detecting PII in S3.

Option Auses EventBridge to filter SensitiveData findings and notify via SNS, meeting the requirements.

Options B and Dinvolve GuardDuty, which is not designed for PII detection.

Option Cuses SQS, which is less suitable for immediate notifications.

This solution meets the requirements of providing encryption at both the network and session layers while also allowing for controlled access between on-premises systems and AWS resources.

AWS Site-to-Site VPN: This service allows you to establish a secure and encrypted connection between your on-premises network and AWS VPC over the internet or via AWS Direct Connect. The VPN encrypts data at the network layer (IPsec) as it travels between the corporate network and AWS.

Routing and Security Controls: By configuring route table entries, you can ensure that only the traffic intended for AWS resources is directed to the VPC. Additionally, by setting up security groups and network ACLs, you can further restrict and control which traffic is allowed to communicate with the instances within your VPC. This approach provides the necessary security to prevent unrestricted access, aligning with the company’s security policies.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option A (AWS Direct Connect): While Direct Connect provides a private connection, it does not inherently provide encryption. Additional steps would be required to encrypt traffic, and it doesn’t address the session layer encryption.

Option B (IAM policies for Console access): This option does not meet the requirement for network-level encryption and security between the corporate network and the VPC.

Option D (AWS Transit Gateway): Although Transit Gateway can help in managing multiple connections, it doesn’t directly provide encryption at the network layer. You would still need to configure a VPN or use other methods for encryption.

AWS References:

AWS Site-to-Site VPN- Overview of AWS Site-to-Site VPN capabilities, including encryption.

Security Groups and Network ACLs- Information on configuring security groups and network ACLs to control traffic.

This solution meets the company's requirements with minimal administrative overhead and ensures security and ease of management.

AWS AppConfig: AWS AppConfig is a service designed to manage application configuration in a secure and validated way. It allows you to deploy configurations safely and quickly without affecting the application's performance or availability.

AWS Secrets Manager: AWS Secrets Manager is specifically designed to manage, retrieve, and rotate credentials for databases and other services. It integrates seamlessly with AWS services like Amazon RDS, making it an ideal solution for securely storing and retrieving database credentials. Secrets Manager also provides automatic rotation of credentials, reducing the operational burden.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option B (AWS Lambda + Parameter Store): While AWS Lambda can be used for managing configurations and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store can store credentials, this approach involves more manual setup and does not offer the same level of integrated management and security as AppConfig and Secrets Manager.

Option C (Encrypted S3 Configuration File): Storing configuration and credentials in S3 files involves more manual management and security considerations, increasing the administrative overhead.

Option D (AppConfig + RDS for credentials): RDS is not designed for storing application credentials; it's better suited for managing database instances and their configurations.

AWS References:

AWS AppConfig- Describes how to use AWS AppConfig for managing application configurations.

AWS Secrets Manager- Provides details on securely storing and retrieving credentials using AWS Secrets Manager.

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can create Lambda functions using various languages, including Java, and specify the amount of memory and CPU allocated to your function. Lambda charges you only for the compute time you consume, which is calculated based on the number of requests and the duration of your code execution. You can use Amazon EventBridge to trigger your Lambda function on a schedule, such as every hour, using cron or rate expressions. This solution will optimize the costs to run the job, as you will not payfor any idle time or unused resources, unlike running the job on an EC2 instance. References: 1: AWS Lambda - FAQs2, General Information section2: Tutorial:Schedule AWS Lambda functions using EventBridge3, Introduction section3: Schedule expressions using rate or cron - AWS Lambda4, Introduction section.

The solution that meets the requirements with the least operational overhead is to migrate the web tier to Amazon EC2 instances in public subnets, migrate the application tier to EC2 instances in private subnets, and migrate the database tier to Amazon RDS for MySQL in private subnets. This solution allows the company to migrate its three-tier application to AWS by making minimal changes to the architecture, as it preserves the same web, application, anddatabase tiers and uses the same MySQL database engine. The solution also provides a database solution that can restore data to a specific point in time, as Amazon RDS for MySQL supports automated backups and point-in-time recovery. This solution also reduces the operational overhead by using managed servicessuch as Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS, which handle tasks such as provisioning, patching, scaling, and monitoring.

The other solutions do not meet the requirements as well as the first one because they either involve more changes to the architecture, do not provide point-in-time recovery, or do not follow best practices for security and availability. Migrating the database tier to Amazon Aurora MySQL would require changing the database engine and potentially modifying the application code to ensure compatibility. Migrating the web tier and the application tier to public subnets would expose them to more security risks and reduce their availability in case of a subnet failure. Migrating the database tier to public subnets would also compromise its security and performance. References:

Migrate Your Application Database to Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS for MySQL

Amazon Aurora MySQL

Amazon VPC

The simplest and most effective way to ensure that all data that is written to the EBS volumes is encrypted at rest is to create the EBS volumes as encrypted volumes. You can do this by selecting the encryption option when you create a new EBS volume, or by copying an existing unencrypted volume to a new encrypted volume. You can also specify the AWS KMS key that you want to use for encryption, or use the default AWS-managed key. When you attach the encrypted EBS volumes to the EC2 instances, the data will be automatically encrypted and decrypted by the EC2 host. This solution does not require any additional IAM roles, tags, or policies.

Point-in-time recovery (PITR) for DynamoDB is a feature that enables you to restore your table data to any point in time during the last 35 days. PITR helps protect your table from accidental write or delete operations, such as a test script writing to a production table or a user issuing a wrong command. PITR is easy to use, fully managed, fast, and scalable. You can enable PITR with a single click in the DynamoDB console or with a simple API call. You can restore a table to a new table using the console, the AWS CLI, or the DynamoDB API. PITR does not consume any provisioned table capacity and has no impact on the performance or availability of your production applications. PITR meets the requirements of the company with the least operationaloverhead, as it does not require any manual backup creation, scheduling, or maintenance. It also provides per-second granularity for restoring the table to any point within the last 24 hours.

To maintain predictable database performance and ensure that the Lambda invocations do not overload the database with too many connections, a solutions architect should point the client driver at an RDS proxy endpoint and deploy the Lambda functions inside a VPC. An RDS proxy is a fully managed database proxy that allows applications to share connections to a database, improving database availability and scalability. By using an RDS proxy, the Lambda functions can reuse existing connections, rather than creating new ones for every invocation, reducing the connection overhead and latency. Deploying the Lambda functions inside a VPC allows them to access the private RDS DB instance securely and efficiently, without exposing it to the public internet. References:

Using Amazon RDS Proxy with AWS Lambda

Configuring a Lambda function to access resources in a VPC

AWS Systems Manager Session Manager is a service that enables you to securely connect to your EC2 instances without using SSH keys or bastion hosts. You can use Session Manager to access your instances through the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS SDKs. Session Manager uses IAM policies and roles to control who can access which instances. By attaching the AmazonSSMManagedlnstanceCore IAM policy to an IAM role that is associated with the EC2 instances, you grant the Session Manager service the necessary permissions to perform actions on your instances. You also need to attachanother IAM policy to the developers’ IAM users or roles that allows them to start sessions to the instances. Session Manager uses the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) that is installed by default on Amazon Linux 2 and other supported Linux distributions. Session Manager also encrypts all session data between your client and your instances, and streams session logs to Amazon S3, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, or both for auditing purposes. This solution is the most cost-effective, as it does not require any additional resources or services, such as bastion hosts, VPN connections, or NAT gateways. It also simplifies the security and management of SSH access, as it eliminates the need for SSH keys, port opening, or firewall rules. References:

What is AWS Systems Manager?

Setting up Session Manager

Getting started with Session Manager

Controlling access to Session Manager

Logging Session Manager activity

This solution will meet the requirements of high availability and eventual consistency with the least operational overhead. By modifying the Auto Scaling group to use EC2 instances acrossthree Availability Zones, the web application can handle the increase in traffic and tolerate the failure of one or two Availability Zones. By migrating the embedded NoSQL database to Amazon DynamoDB, the company can benefit from a fully managed, scalable, and reliable NoSQL database service that supports eventual consistency. AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) is a cloud service that makes it easy to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and other types of data stores. AWS DMS can migrate the embedded NoSQL database to Amazon DynamoDB with minimal downtime and zero data loss.

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a scalable and reliable service that can ingest, buffer, and process streaming data in real-time. It can handle large traffic spikes and preserve the order ofthe incoming data records. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that can process the data streams from Kinesis Data Streams without requiring any infrastructure management. It can also scale automatically to match the throughput of the data stream. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, highly available, and fast NoSQL database that can store the processed updates from Lambda. It can also handle high write throughput and provide consistent performance. By using these services, the solutions architect can design a solution that meets the requirements of the company with the least operational overhead.

This solution meets the following requirements:

It is cost-effective, as it only charges for the storage and data transfer of the replicated objects, and does not require any additional AWS services or custom scripts. S3 Same-Region Replication (SRR) is a feature that automatically replicates objects across S3 buckets within the same AWS Region. SRR can help you aggregate logs from multiple sources to a single destination for analysis and auditing. SRR also preserves the metadata, encryption, and access control of the source objects.

It is operationally efficient, as it does not require any manual intervention or scheduling. SRR replicates objects as soon as they are uploaded to the source bucket, ensuring that the destination bucket always has the latest log data. SRR also handles any updates or deletions of the source objects, keeping the destination bucket in sync. SRR can be enabled with a few clicks in the S3 console or with a simple API call.

It is secure, as it does not allow the logs to leave the us-west-2 Region. SRR only replicates objects within the same AWS Region, ensuring that the data sovereignty and compliance requirements are met. SRR also supports encryption of the source and destination objects, using either server-side encryption with AWS KMS or S3-managed keys, or client-side encryption.

This solution meets the requirements because it allows the company to use a single Direct Connect connection to connect to multiple VPCs in different Regions using a Direct Connect gateway. A Direct Connect gateway is a globally available resource that enables you to connect your on-premises network to VPCs in any AWS Region, except the AWS China Regions. You can associate a Direct Connect gateway with a transit gateway or a virtual private gateway in each Region. By routing traffic from the virtual private gateways of the VPCs to the Direct Connect gateway, you can enable inter-Region and on-premises connectivity for your VPCs. This solution is scalable because you can add more VPCs in different Regions to the Direct Connect gateway without creating additional connections. This solution also reduces operational overhead because you do not need to manage multiple VPN appliances, VPN connections, or VPC peering connections.

AWS DataSync is a service that makes it easy to move large amounts of data online between on-premises storage and AWS storage services. AWS DataSync can transfer data at speeds up to 10 times faster than open-source tools by using a purpose-built network protocol and parallelizing data transfers. AWS DataSync also handles encryption, data integrity verification, and bandwidth optimization. To use AWS DataSync, users need to deploy a DataSync agent on their on-premises servers, which connects to the NFS servers and syncs the data to Amazon S3. Users can schedule periodic or one-time sync tasks and monitor the progress and status of the transfers.

The other options are not correct because they are either not cost-effective or not suitable for the use case. Setting up AWS Glue to copy the data from the on-premises servers to Amazon S3 is not cost-effective because AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that is mainly used for extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations, not for simple data backup. Setting up an SFTP sync using AWS Transfer for SFTP to sync data from on premises to Amazon S3 is not cost-effective because AWS Transfer for SFTP is a fully managed service that provides secure file transfer using the SFTP protocol, which is more suitable for exchanging data with third parties than for backing up data. Setting up an AWS Direct Connect connection between the on-premises data center and a VPC, and copying the data to Amazon S3 is not cost-effective because AWS Direct Connect is a dedicated network connection between AWS and the on-premises location, which has high upfront costs and requires additional configuration.

AWS DataSync is a data transfer service that simplifies, automates, and accelerates moving data between on-premises storage systems and AWS storage services over the internet or AWS Direct Connect1. AWS DataSync can transfer data to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, which is a fully managed file system that is accessible over the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is builton Windows Server, delivering a wide range of administrative features suchas user quotas, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory (AD) integration2. This solution meets the requirements of the question because:

It can migrate more than 100 TB of data to AWS within a reasonable time frame, as AWS DataSync is optimized for high-speed and efficient data transfer1.

It can preserve the intricate directory structure and the millions of small files stored in deep hierarchies of subfolders, as AWS DataSync can handle complex file structures and metadata, such as file names, permissions, and timestamps1.

It can avoid changing the applications to access the data after migration, as Amazon FSx for Windows FileServer supports the same SMB protocol and Windows Server features that the company’s on-premises file storage uses2.

It can reduce the operational overhead, as AWS DataSync and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server are fully managed services that handle the tasks of setting up, configuring, and maintaining the data transfer and the file system12.

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering: This storage class is designed to optimize costs by automatically moving data between two access tiers (frequent and infrequent) when access patterns change. It provides cost savings without performance impact or operational overhead.

S3 Lifecycle Rules: By creating an S3 Lifecycle rule, the company can automatically transition objects to the Intelligent-Tiering storage class. This eliminates the need for manual intervention and ensures that objects are moved to the most cost-effective storage tier based on their access patterns.

Operational Efficiency: Intelligent-Tiering requires no additional management and delivers immediate availability for frequently accessed objects. This makes it the most operationally efficient solution for the given requirements.

The most secure solution for allowing EC2 instances to access an S3 bucket is by usingIAM roles. An IAM role can be created with an access policy that grants the required permissions (e.g., to read and write to the S3 bucket). The IAM role is then associated with the EC2 instances through anIAM instance profile.

By associating the role with the instances, the EC2 instances can securely assume the role and receive temporary credentials via the instance metadata service. This avoids the need to store credentials (such as access keys) on the instances or within the application, enhancing security and reducing the risk of credentials being exposed.

AWS CloudFormation can be used to automate the creation of the entire infrastructure, including EC2 instances, IAM roles, and associated policies.

AWS References:

IAM Roles for EC2 Instancesoutlines the use of IAM roles for secure access to AWS services.

AWS CloudFormation User Guidedetails how to create and manage resources using CloudFormation templates.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Save IAM access key in UserData: This is insecure because it involves storing long-term credentials in the instance user data, which can be exposed.

B. Store access keys in S3: This is also insecure, as it involves managing and distributing long-term credentials, which should be avoided.

D. Retrieve access keys via a script: This approach is unnecessarily complex and less secure than using IAM roles, which provide temporary credentials automatically.

AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) is the recommended tool for a lift-and-shift strategy, especially for time-sensitive migrations. It automates the replication of on-premises VMs to AWS, minimizing the effort required for migration and testing.

Key steps:

Replication with AWS MGN: The AWS Replication Agent is installed on the VMs to continuously replicate data to AWS, allowing you to manage migration easily.

Testing and Cutover: Initial replication allows for testing in AWS before performing the final cutover, ensuring that the migration process is smooth and data integrity is maintained.

AWS Documentation: AWS MGN is recommended for migrating virtual machines to the cloud with minimal downtime and disruption​​.

AmazonSES (Simple Email Service)allows for the automatic ingestion of incoming emails. By setting up email receiving in SES and creating a rule set with a receipt rule, you can configure SES to invoke anAWS Lambda functionwhenever an email is received. The Lambda function can then process the email body and attachments, saving any attachments to an Amazon S3 bucket. This solution is highly scalable, cost-effective, and provides near real-time processing of emails with minimal operational overhead.

Option B (Content filtering): This only filters emails based on content and does not provide the functionality to save attachments to S3.

Option C (S3 Event Notifications): While SES can store emails in S3, SES with Lambda offers more flexibility for processing attachments in real-time.

Option D (EventBridge rule): EventBridge cannot directly listen for incoming emails, making this solution incorrect.

AWS References:

Receiving Email with Amazon SES

Invoking Lambda from SES

The solution that will meet the requirements is to create Amazon Kinesis data streams for data ingestion, create Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery streams to consume the Kinesis data streams, and specify the S3 bucket as the destination of the delivery streams. This solution will allow the company’s application to ingest real-time data from third-party applications and place the ingested raw data in an S3 bucket. Amazon Kinesis data streams are scalable and durable streams that can capture and store data from hundreds of thousands of sources. Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that can deliver streaming data to destinations such as S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon OpenSearch Service, and Splunk. Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose can also transform and compress the data before delivering it to S3.

The other solutions are not as effective as the first one because they either do not support real-time data ingestion, do not work with third-party applications, or do not use S3 as the destination. Creating database migration tasks in AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) will not support real-time data ingestion, as AWS DMS is mainly designed for migrating relational databases, not streaming data. AWS DMS also requires replication instances, source endpoints, and target endpoints to be compatible with specific database engines and versions. Creating and configuring AWS DataSync agents on the EC2 instances will not work with third-party applications, as AWS DataSync is a service that transfers data between on-premises storage systems and AWS storage services, not between applications. AWS DataSync also requires installing agents on the source or destination servers. Creating an AWS Direct Connect connection to the application for data ingestion will not use S3 as the destination, as AWS Direct Connect is a service that establishes a dedicated network connection between on-premises andAWS, not between applications and storage services. AWS Direct Connect also requires a physical connection to an AWS Direct Connect location.

The solution that will meet the requirements is to deploy AWS Storage Gateway using cached volumes and use Storage Gateway to store data in Amazon S3 while retaining copies of frequently accessed data subsets locally. This solution will allow the company to migrate its storage infrastructure to AWS while minimizing bandwidth costs, as it will only transfer data that is not cached locally. The solution will also allow for immediate retrieval of data at no additional cost, as the cached volumes will provide low-latencyaccess to the most recently used data. The data stored in Amazon S3 will be durable, scalable, and secure.

The other solutions are not as effective as the first one because they either do not meet the requirements or introduce additional costs or complexity. Deploying Amazon S3 Glacier Vault and enabling expedited retrieval will not meet the requirements, as it will incur additional costs for both storage and retrieval. Amazon S3 Glacier is a low-cost storage service for data archivingand backup, but it has longer retrieval times than Amazon S3. Expedited retrieval is a feature that allows faster access to data, but it charges a higher fee per GB retrieved. Provisioned retrieval capacity is a feature that reserves dedicated capacity for expedited retrievals, but it also charges a monthly fee per provisioned capacity unit. Deploying AWS Storage Gateway using stored volumes to store data locally and use Storage Gateway to asynchronously back up point-in-time snapshots of the data to Amazon S3 will not meet the requirements, as it will not migrate the storage infrastructure to AWS, but only create backups. Stored volumes are volumes that store the primary data locally and back up snapshots to Amazon S3. This solution will not reduce the storage capacity needed on-premises, nor will it leverage the benefits of cloud storage. Deploying AWS Direct Connect to connect with the on-premises data center and configuring AWS Storage Gateway to store data locally and use Storage Gateway to asynchronously back up point-in-time snapshots of the data to Amazon S3 will not meet the requirements, as it will also not migrate the storage infrastructure to AWS, but only create backups. AWS Direct Connect is a service that establishes a dedicated network connection between the on-premises data center and AWS, which can reduce network costs and increase bandwidth. However, this solution will also not reduce the storage capacity needed on-premises, nor will it leverage the benefits of cloud storage.

This option is the most suitable way to improve the game’s metadata load times without migrating the database. Amazon ElastiCache for Redis is a fully managed, in-memory data store that provides sub-millisecond latency and high throughput for read-intensive workloads. You can use it as a caching layer in front of your RDS DB instance to store frequently accessed metadata and reduce the load on thedatabase. You can also take advantage of Redis features such as snapshots, replication, and data persistence to ensure data durability and availability. ElastiCache for Redis scales automatically to meet your demand and integrates with other AWS services such as CloudFormation, CloudWatch, and IAM.

Option A is not optimal because migrating the database to Amazon Aurora with Aurora Replicas would incur additional costs and complexity. Amazon Aurora is a relational database service that provides high performance, availability, and compatibility with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Aurora Replicas are read-only copies of the primary database that can be used for scaling read capacity and enhancing availability. However, migrating the database to Aurora would require modifying the application code, testing the compatibility, and performing the data migration. Moreover, Aurora Replicas may not provide sub-millisecond response times as ElastiCache for Redis does.

Option B is not optimal because migrating the database to Amazon DynamoDB with global tables would incur additional costs and complexity. Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service that provides fast and flexible data access for any scale. Global tables are a feature of DynamoDB that enables you to replicate your data across multiple AWS Regions for high availability and performance. However, migrating the database to DynamoDB would require changing the data model, modifying the application code, and performing the data migration. Moreover, global tables may not be necessary for the game’s metadata, as they are mainly used for cross-region data access and disaster recovery.

Option D is not optimal because adding an Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached layer in front of the database would not provide the same capabilities as ElastiCache for Redis. Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached is another fully managed, in-memory data store that provides high performance and scalability for caching workloads. However, Memcached does not support snapshots, replication, or data persistence, which means that the cached data may be lost in case of a node failure or a cache eviction. Moreover, Memcached does not integrate with other AWS services as well as Redis does. Therefore, ElastiCache for Redis is a better choice for this scenario. References:

What Is Amazon ElastiCache for Redis?

What Is Amazon Aurora?

What Is Amazon DynamoDB?

What Is Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached?

AWS Glue DataBrew is a visual data preparation tool that allows you to easily clean, normalize, and transform your data without writing any code. You can create and run data preparation jobs on your data stored in Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or other data sources. AWS Step Functions is a service that lets you coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows. You can use Step Functions to orchestrate your DataBrew jobs, define the order and parallelism of execution, handle errors and retries, and monitor the state of your workflow. By using AWS Glue DataBrew and AWS Step Functions, you can meet the requirements of the company with minimal operational overhead, as you do not need to write any code, manage any servers, or deal with complex dependencies.

This solution addresses the scalability needs of the workload while preventing failed processing attempts due to resource constraints.

Amazon S3 event notificationscan be used to trigger a message to an SQS queue whenever a new video is uploaded.

The existing Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances can poll the SQS queue, ensuring that the EC2 instances only process videos when there is a job in the queue.

SQS decouplesthe video upload and processing steps, allowing the system to handle sudden spikes in video uploads without overloading EC2 instances.

The use ofAuto Scalingensures that the EC2 instances can scale in or out based on the demand, maintaining cost efficiency while avoiding processing failures due to insufficient resources.

AWS References:

S3 Event Notificationsdetails how to configure notifications for S3 events.

Amazon SQSis a fully managed message queuing service that decouples components of the system.

Auto Scaling EC2explains how to manage automatic scaling of EC2 instances based on demand.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. AWS Lambda functions: While Lambda can handle some workloads, video processing is often resource-intensive and long-running, making EC2 a more suitable solution.

B. Using SNS with Lambda: Similar to A, Lambda is not ideal for large-scale video processing due to its time and memory limitations.

D. AWS Step Functions: While a valid orchestration solution, this introduces more complexity and overhead compared to the simpler SQS-based solution.

Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle: This service allows you to bring your own Oracle Database licenses and provides the flexibility to customize the database settings, making it suitable for applications that require privileged access and third-party database features.

BYOL (Bring Your Own License):

RDS Custom supports the BYOL model, allowing you to use your existing Oracle licenses and comply with licensing requirements.

This helps in leveraging existing investments and reducing migration costs.

Customization and Third-Party Features:

RDS Custom allows for deeper customization of the database environment compared to standard RDS instances.

This makes it possible to support the third-party features that your application relies on without significant changes.

Migration Process:

Use native Oracle tools like Data Pump or RMAN to migrate the database to RDS Custom.

Customize the database settings post-migration to ensure compatibility with third-party features.

A. Kinesis Data Streams:Supports high throughput, strict ordering, multiple consumers, and data retention for 365 days.

B. SNS + SQS FIFO:Can enforce ordering but lacks native support for 500 KB messages and retention requirements.

C. EventBridge:Lacks strict ordering and message size compatibility.

D. SNS + Firehose:Not designed for strict ordering or large message sizes.

This solution meets the requirements because it allows the company to move the application to a fully managed service without managing any servers or storage infrastructure. AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that runs the Amazon ECS tasks. With Fargate, the company does not need to provision, configure, or scale clusters of virtual machines to run containers. Amazon EFS is a fully managed file system that can be accessed by multiple containers concurrently. With EFS, the company does not need to provision and manage storage capacity. EFS provides a simple interface to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. The company can use the EFS volume as a persistent storage volume mounted in the containers to store the persistent data. The company can also use the EFS mount helper to simplify the mountingprocess. References: Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate, Using Amazon EFS file systems with Amazon ECS, Amazon EFS mount helper.

A public NAT gateway enables instances in a private subnet to send outbound traffic to the internet, while preventing the internet from initiating connections with the instances. A public NAT gateway requires an elastic IP address and a route to the internet gateway for the VPC. A private NAT gateway enables instances in a private subnet to connect to other VPCs or on-premises networks through a transit gateway or a virtual private gateway. A private NAT gateway does not require an elastic IP address or an internet gateway. Both private and public NAT gateways map the source private IPv4 address of the instances to the private IPv4 address of the NAT gateway, but in the case of a public NAT gateway, the internet gateway then maps the private IPv4 address of the public NAT gateway to the elastic IP address associated with the NAT gateway. When sending response traffic to the instances, whether it’s a public or private NAT gateway, the NAT gateway translates the address back to the original source IP address.

Creating public NAT gateways in the same private subnets as the EC2 instances (option A) is not a valid solution, as the NAT gateways would not have a route to the internet gateway. Creating private NAT gateways in the same private subnets as the EC2 instances (option B) is also not a valid solution, as the instances would not be able to access the internet through the private NATgateways. Creating private NAT gateways in public subnets in the same VPCs as the EC2 instances (option D) is not a valid solution either, as the internet gateway would drop the traffic from the private NAT gateways.

Therefore, the only valid solution is to create public NAT gateways in public subnets in the same VPCs as the EC2 instances (option C), as this would allow the instances to access the internet through the public NAT gateways and the internet gateway. References:

NAT gateways - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

NAT gateway use cases - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services – Introduction to NAT Gateways

What is AWS NAT Gateway? - KnowledgeHut