Free Amazon Web Services SOA-C02 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 8

Amazon EFS is an NFS-based file system, designed for Linux/Unix environments. Windows does not natively support NFSv4 without additional configuration (and is often not reliable).

From the Amazon EFS documentation:

Amazon EFS is not designed for use with Microsoft Windows EC2 instances.

For Windows workloads that require shared storage, use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, which supports the SMB protocol.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

B: IAM is not used for mounting file systems like EFS.

C: Windows support for NFS is limited and complex, and not recommended.

D: Opening the NFS port won't help because Windows can't reliably mount NFSv4 volumes.

To ensure high availability and that instances are placed on distinct underlying hardware, a spread placement group should be used. Spread placement groups place instances on distinct hardware, reducing the risk of simultaneous failures.

Create Spread Placement Group:

Open the EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

Navigate to Placement Groups in the sidebar.

Click Create placement group and select Spread for the strategy.

Launch Instances:

When launching new instances, select the placement group you created.

Ensure the instances are in the same AWS Region but spread across distinct hardware.

Verify Placement:

After launching, verify that the instances are in the spread placement group by checking the instance details in the console.

Placement Groups

Creating a Spread Placement Group

To manage incomplete multipart uploads in an Amazon S3 bucket, creating an S3 Lifecycle rule to specifically address these uploads is the most effective method. The rule can be configured to automatically delete expired multipart upload parts, which helps in cleaning up unused data and reducing storage costs. Option A is correct as it directly addresses the requirement to manage incomplete uploads effectively. Reference on setting up S3 Lifecycle policies can be found here Amazon S3 Lifecycle.

Since the EC2 instance is attempting to access the internet using HTTP (port 80) but is configured only to allow HTTPS (port 443) traffic, the security group needs adjustment:

Security Group Configuration: The outbound rules of the security group associated with the EC2 instance must allow traffic over HTTP. Add an outbound rule that enables port 80 to destination 0.0.0.0/0. This rule will allow the instance to send HTTP requests to any IP address on the internet.

Test Connectivity: After updating the security group, test the connectivity using the curl command again to ensure the configuration allows internet access via HTTP.

This change is necessary because the existing security group configuration does not permit outbound HTTP traffic, which is essential for accessing websites using HTTP.

To review the VPC configuration of developer AWS accounts securely, the best practice is to use cross-account IAM roles with read-only access.

Create an IAM Policy with Read-Only Access:

Navigate to the IAM console in each developer account.

Create a new policy with read-only access to VPC resources. For example:

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": [

"ec2:DescribeVpcs",

"ec2:DescribeSubnets",

"ec2:DescribeRouteTables",

"ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",

"ec2:DescribeNetworkAcls"

],

"Resource": "*"

}

]

}

Save the policy.

Create a Cross-Account IAM Role:

In the IAM console, choose "Roles" and then "Create role".

Select "Another AWS account" and enter the AWS account ID of the security administrator's account.

Attach the read-only policy created in step 1 to the role.

Save the role and note the role ARN.

Assume the Role from the Security Administrator's Account:

In the security administrator's account, navigate to the IAM console.

Use the "Switch Role" option to assume the cross-account role created in the developer account using the role ARN.

The security administrator can now access the VPC configuration of the developer accounts with read-only permissions.

Cross-Account Access

Creating and Managing IAM Policies

To direct users to the region that provides the fastest response times, transitioning to a latency routing policy in Amazon Route 53 is the best solution.

Latency-Based Routing:

Latency-based routing allows you to route your traffic to the AWS region that provides the lowest latency.

Implementation:

In each new region (us-east-1 and ap-south-1), create a new Elastic Load Balancer and a new set of EC2 instances to run a copy of the application.

Open the Route 53 console.

Select the hosted zone and choose "Create Record Set."

Create latency-based records pointing to the load balancers in each region.

Amazon Route 53 Latency-Based Routing

One possible cause for the failure of the CloudFormation template to create an EC2 instance in the us-west-2 Region is that the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID referenced in the template could not be found in the us-west-2 Region. This could be due to the fact that the AMI is not available in that region, or the credentials used to access the AMI were not configured properly. The other options (resource tags defined in the CloudFormation template are specific to the us-east-I Region, the cfn-init script did not run during resource provisioning in the us-west-2 Region, and the IAM user was not created in the specified Region) are not valid causes for this failure.

Here are the steps to update an existing AWS CloudFormation stack:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the CloudFormation service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

Choose "Replace current template" and upload the updated CloudFormation template from the Amazon S3 bucket named "cloudformation-bucket"

In the "Parameter" section, update the EC2 instance type to us-east-t2.nano and add the IP address range 192.168.100.0/30 for SSH access.

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

In the "Capabilities" section, check the checkbox for "IAM Resources"

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

Once the update is complete, navigate to the stack and click on the "Stack options" button, and select "Prevent updates to prevent accidental deletion"

To get the value of the Prodlnstanceld , navigate to the "Outputs" tab in the CloudFormation stack and find the key "Prodlnstanceld". The value corresponding to it is the value that you need to enter in the text box below.

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation service role to deploy updates.

You can refer to the AWS CloudFormation documentation for more information on how to update and manage stacks: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

Problem Analysis:

The CloudWatch agent configuration is inconsistent across instances.

A centralized and automated mechanism is needed for consistent configuration management.

Action: Store Configuration in Systems Manager Parameter Store:

Parameter Store allows for secure, centralized storage of configuration files.

Steps:

Open Systems Manager Console.

Navigate to Parameter Store.

Create a parameter with the CloudWatch agent configuration file content.

Action: Use State Manager to Apply Configuration:

Systems Manager State Manager automates repetitive tasks such as ensuring consistent configuration.

Steps:

Open State Manager Console.

Create an association using the AmazonCloudWatch-ManageAgent document.

Configure the document to use Parameter Store as the configuration source.

Use tags (key = "OS", value = "Windows") to target the Windows EC2 instances.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: Using an S3 bucket for configuration storage lacks integration with Systems Manager for automation.

B: OpsCenter is for managing operational issues, not configuration files.

E: S3 as a configuration source is valid but introduces additional operational complexity compared to Parameter Store.

To upgrade the instance type of a Memcached cluster in Amazon ElastiCache due to increased usage and the need for more memory:

ModifyCacheCluster API: Utilize the ModifyCacheCluster API call. This API allows you to change various settings of an existing cache cluster, including the instance type, which is referred to as cacheNodeType.

Instance Upgrade: Specify a new, larger cacheNodeType that provides more memory. This upgrade will involve a brief interruption as nodes are replaced with the larger type, but it is necessary to accommodate the increased load and memory requirements.

Cluster Availability: Ensure that the Memcached cluster is configured for minimal downtime during this change. The upgrade process is handled by ElastiCache, and the new nodes will join the cluster with more memory capacity.

This approach enables you to effectively scale up the resources available to your Memcached cluster, enhancing its performance and capacity to handle larger workloads.