Free Amazon Web Services SOA-C03 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 4

Amazon EventBridge supports custom event buses for application-specific events. EventBridge archives allow events to be retained and replayed later based on time ranges or event patterns, directly meeting the replay requirement.

Creating a custom event bus provides isolation and governance for application events. The archive preserves events automatically, and EventBridge rules route events to AWS Lambda for processing without custom code.

Options B and C do not properly align with custom event use cases or supported archive behavior. Option D lacks native replay functionality.

Therefore, a custom event bus with an archive and rule is the correct solution.

Amazon EC2 Instance Connect enables secure SSH access to EC2 instances without requiring a traditional SSH key pair. However, although authentication is handled through IAM and the Instance Connect endpoint, the underlying network requirements for SSH still apply.

For EC2 Instance Connect to function, the EC2 instance’s security group must allow inbound traffic on TCP port 22 from the network where the Instance Connect endpoint resides. In this case, both the endpoint and the EC2 instance are in the private subnet, so the security group must explicitly allow SSH traffic from that subnet or from the security group associated with the endpoint.

Allowing HTTPS traffic on port 443 does not enable SSH access. Systems Manager Session Manager is a separate access mechanism and does not resolve an EC2 Instance Connect failure. Recreating the instance with an SSH key pair is unnecessary because EC2 Instance Connect does not rely on key pairs.

Therefore, enabling inbound SSH traffic on port 22 from the private subnet resolves the connection issue.

The least-effort, most scalable approach to ensure consistent software installation and ongoing updates across tagged Windows instances is to use AWS Systems Manager’s native software distribution and desired-state capabilities. Systems Manager Distributor lets you package third-party software as an “SSM package,” version it, and publish updates in a controlled way. This directly supports the requirement to install a third-party agent and deploy periodic updates when new versions are available.

State Manager Associations let you enforce configuration continuously or on a schedule across a fleet, targeting instances by tags (which the scenario explicitly says are in place). By creating an association that runs AWS-ConfigureAWSPackage, you instruct Systems Manager to install (and optionally update) a specific SSM package on all instances that match the Windows tag criteria. This provides ongoing compliance: newly launched instances that receive the tag will automatically get the agent installed, and existing instances will receive updates according to the association’s frequency and the package version strategy.

Option C (custom Lambda that logs in) is high operational overhead and poor practice (credentials, connectivity, error handling, scaling, and security concerns). Option D (RunRemoteScript) can work but is more brittle than ConfigureAWSPackage because it shifts lifecycle management (versioning, state, idempotency) into scripts. Option B (OpsItem + Inventory) is not an enforcement mechanism for installation/updating; it’s for operations tracking and visibility.

Therefore, Distributor (A) + State Manager association using AWS-ConfigureAWSPackage targeted by tags (E) is the cleanest and lowest-ops solution.

The AWS Cloud Operations and Content Delivery documentation explains that Amazon CloudFront caches objects in edge locations for a defined time based on TTL settings or origin headers. When new content is deployed to the S3 origin, previously cached versions remain in edge caches until they expire.

To immediately serve the new version, CloudOps engineers must initiate a CloudFront invalidation, which removes cached objects from all edge locations. This forces CloudFront to fetch the latest version from the origin (S3).

Invalidations can target individual objects (e.g., /index.html) or wildcard paths (e.g., /*) and are the AWS-recommended approach for dynamic content refresh after static site updates.

Changing headers (Option A), enforcing HTTPS (Option B), or applying caching policies (Option C) do not directly refresh outdated cache content.

Thus, Option D — issuing a CloudFront invalidation — ensures users receive the latest website content immediately after deployment.

Per the AWS Cloud Operations and EventBridge documentation, when events are sent across AWS accounts — particularly from multiple accounts in an AWS Organization — the target event bus in the receiver account must include a resource-based policy that explicitly allows events:PutEvents API calls from the sender accounts or the organization ID.

Even if the sender accounts have IAM permissions to call PutEvents, the receiving event bus must trust those accounts via a resource policy. Without this configuration, EventBridge automatically rejects incoming cross-account events, and those events never reach the target Lambda function for processing.

AWS guidance states that “Cross-account event delivery requires a resource-based policy on the event bus that grants permissions to the source accounts or organization.” The policy can include either individual AWS account IDs or the organization’s root ID.

In this scenario, because the events originate from multiple accounts and there is no resource policy on the target event bus to authorize those sender accounts, the events are not delivered.

Therefore, the correct cause is C – the resource-based policy on the target event bus must be modified to allow PutEvents API calls from the sender accounts.

The PrivateDnsName attribute of an EC2 instance is automatically assigned by AWS at launch time and is a read-only property. CloudFormation does not allow users to specify this value manually.

Including PrivateDnsName in the EC2 instance properties causes validation to fail during stack creation. Outputs and Parameters sections are optional, and the VPC is implicitly defined through the subnet ID.

Therefore, attempting to set PrivateDnsName results in stack creation failure.

According to the AWS Cloud Operations and Identity Management documentation, when configuring federation between IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) and an external SAML 2.0 identity provider, two key prerequisites are required:

The IAM Identity Center SAML metadata file — This is uploaded to the external IdP to establish trust, define SAML endpoints, and enable identity federation.

The IdP metadata (including the public X.509 certificate) — This information is imported into IAM Identity Center to validate authentication assertions and encryption signatures.

IAM Identity Center and the IdP exchange this metadata to mutually establish secure, bidirectional federation.

Network-level details such as IP addresses (Option C) are unnecessary. Root access (Option D) or permissions to member accounts (Option E) are not required; only Control Tower or IAM administrative permissions in the management account are needed for setup.

Thus, the correct answer is A and B — the SAML metadata from both sides is required for federation.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Doocuments:

EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint (EIC Endpoint) enables SSH to instances in private subnets without public IPs and without needing to traverse the public internet. CloudOps guidance explains that you deploy the endpoint in the same VPC/subnet as the targets, then allow inbound SSH on the instance security group from the endpoint’s security group. Access is governed by IAM—administrators must have Instance Connect permissions; while the example uses a broad policy, the key mechanism is EIC in the private subnet plus SG rules scoped to the endpoint. Systems Manager Session Manager can provide shell access without SSH, but the requirement explicitly states “connect through SSH,” making EIC the purpose-built solution. Options B and D misuse Systems Manager for SSH and propose unnecessary SG changes or incorrect endpoint placement; Option C places the endpoint in a public subnet, which is not required for private SSH access. Therefore, creating an EC2 Instance Connect endpoint in the private subnet and updating SGs accordingly meets the requirement while keeping the instance non-internet-exposed.

The Storage Gateway service enables hybrid cloud backup by presenting local block storage that synchronizes with AWS cloud storage. For scenarios where all data must remain available locally while still backed up to AWS, the correct mode is gateway-stored volumes.

AWS documentation defines:

“Use stored volumes if you want to keep all your data locally while asynchronously backing up point-in-time snapshots to Amazon S3 for durable storage.”

These volumes expose an iSCSI interface compatible with POSIX file systems, allowing direct use by on-premises backup software.

Gateway-cached volumes (Option C) store primary data in AWS with limited local cache, violating the “all data must be available locally” requirement. Options A and B are object-based storage solutions, not compatible with POSIX or block-based backup applications.

Therefore, Option D fully satisfies CloudOps reliability and continuity best practices by ensuring local availability, cloud durability, and POSIX compatibility for backups.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Documents:

The requirement is classic active-passive (production in us-east-1, DR in us-west-2 “only for failover”). The most operationally efficient and purpose-built solution is Route 53 failover routing combined with health checks. With failover routing, Route 53 designates one record as PRIMARY (us-east-1) and another as SECONDARY (us-west-2). Route 53 continuously evaluates the health check associated with the primary endpoint (commonly the ALB DNS name or a specific health-check path). If the primary fails, Route 53 automatically returns the secondary record, directing client DNS resolution to the DR region. This ensures us-west-2 is used only when us-east-1 is unhealthy, directly matching the requirement.

Latency routing (Option B) is designed to route users to the region with the lowest latency, which can actively send traffic to us-west-2 even when us-east-1 is healthy—violating the “DR only” constraint. Options C and D introduce custom automation (CloudWatch + Lambda + DNS record updates) that increases operational overhead, adds failure modes, and is unnecessary because Route 53 already provides managed health-check-based failover. Additionally, “EC2 instance terminated” is not a reliable proxy for full application availability, and DNS modification automation is more complex than using native Route 53 failover policies.