SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Questions and Answers

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-ri-consolidated-billing/

RI discounts apply to accounts in an organization's consolidated billing family depending upon whether RI sharing is turned on or off for the accounts. By default, RI sharing for all accounts in an organization is turned on. The management account of an organization can change this setting by turning off RI sharing for an account. The capacity reservation for an RI applies only to the account the RI was purchased on, no matter whether RI sharing is turned on or off.

Auto Scaling groups automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances to handle the load on your application. A target tracking scaling policy adjusts the capacity of the Auto Scaling group based on a target metric, such as CPU utilization or application latency.

Create an Auto Scaling Group:

Navigate to the EC2 console and select "Auto Scaling Groups".

Create a new Auto Scaling group and specify the launch template or configuration for your EC2 instances.

Configure Target Tracking Scaling Policy:

In the Auto Scaling group settings, add a scaling policy.

Choose "Target Tracking" and select a predefined metric such as "Average CPU Utilization".

Set the target value (e.g., 50% CPU utilization).

Attach ALB to Auto Scaling Group:

In the "Load Balancing" section of the Auto Scaling group settings, attach your existing ALB.

This ensures that new instances are automatically registered with the ALB.

Review and Create:

Review the Auto Scaling group settings and create the group.

References:

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

The problem requires modifying the inbound SSH rule to restrict access to a list of trusted IPs instead of deleting it entirely. AWS Config rules can be configured with automatic remediation actions using either Systems Manager Automation runbooks or Lambda functions. However, AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks are often more appropriate for managing infrastructure changes like security group modifications because they are reusable, parameterized, and easier to audit.

Create a Systems Manager Automation runbook: This runbook will contain steps to add or modify the existing security group rule, allowing SSH access only from the specified IP addresses.

Update the AWS Config rule: Modify the Config rule to call this new runbook for its automatic remediation. This will prevent deletion of the SSH rule and instead update it based on the IP list.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Users report that file retrieval from the Amazon EFS file system is slower than normal.

Analyze the Requirements:

Improve the performance of the EFS file system to handle increased usage and file retrieval speed.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Configure the file system for Provisioned Throughput.

Provisioned Throughput mode allows you to specify the throughput of your file system independent of the amount of data stored.

This option is suitable for applications with high throughput-to-storage ratio requirements and ensures consistent performance.

Option B: Enable encryption in transit on the file system.

While this enhances security, it does not directly improve performance.

Option C: Identify any unused files in the file system, and remove the unused files.

This may free up some resources but does not address the root cause of slow performance.

Option D: Resize the Amazon EBS volume of each of the EC2 instances.

EFS performance issues are not directly related to the size of EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Configuring the file system for Provisioned Throughput ensures consistent performance by allowing you to set the required throughput regardless of the amount of data stored.

References:

Amazon EFS Performance

Provisioned Throughput Mode

Configuring Provisioned Throughput for Amazon EFS provides a consistent and higher performance level, which is suitable for high throughput requirements.

To record all S3 API activity, the SysOps administrator should create an AWS CloudTrail trail to log data events for all S3 objects. This solution provides comprehensive logging of all API activities at the object level within S3 buckets.

AWS CloudTrail:

CloudTrail allows you to log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure.

It records all API calls for Amazon S3 objects, providing a detailed history of changes made to S3 resources.

Configuration Steps:

Go to the CloudTrail console and create a new trail.

Enable data events and specify the S3 buckets to monitor.

CloudTrail will then record S3 object-level API operations such as GetObject, DeleteObject, and PutObject.

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that delivers your content with low latency and high transfer speeds. By distributing the static content (images and videos) to CloudFront edge locations, users in the United States and Europe can access the content from the nearest edge location, significantly improving the load times.

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the Amazon CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Choose Create Distribution and select Web.

Specify the S3 bucket as the origin where your static content is stored.

Configure Distribution Settings:

Configure the settings, such as cache behaviors and SSL/TLS settings.

Optionally, configure additional features like geo-restriction and logging.

Update DNS Configuration:

Update your DNS records to point to the CloudFront distribution. This can be done via Amazon Route 53 or your DNS provider.

Monitor Performance:

Use CloudFront reports and logs to monitor the performance and adjust configurations if needed.

References:

Amazon CloudFront Overview

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

To make the application accessible only through the CloudFront distribution and not directly through the Application Load Balancer (ALB), you can add a custom HTTP header to the origin settings for the CloudFront distribution. You can then create a rule in the ALB listener to forward requests that contain the matching custom header and its value to the origin. You can also add a default rule to the ALB listener to return a fixed response code of 403 for requests that do not contain the matching custom header. This will allow you to redirect all requests to the CloudFront distribution and block direct access to the application through the ALB.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/restrict-access-to-load-balancer.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-attribute-dependson.html

Syntax The DependsOn attribute can take a single string or list of strings. "DependsOn" : [ String, ... ] Example The following template contains an AWS::EC2::Instance resource with a DependsOn attribute that specifies myDB, an AWS::RDS::DBInstance. When CloudFormation creates this stack, it first creates myDB, then creates Ec2Instance.

To enforce MFA for API calls using the AWS CLI, the users must use temporary security credentials obtained through the get-session-token command. Here’s how to do it:

Enable MFA for IAM Users:

Ensure that MFA is enabled and properly configured for each IAM user.

Configure IAM Policy for MFA Enforcement:

Attach an IAM policy that denies API calls unless MFA is used. This policy should be attached to all users.

Obtain Temporary Security Credentials Using MFA:

Users need to use the aws sts get-session-token command to obtain temporary credentials. This command requires the MFA token.

sh

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aws sts get-session-token --serial-number arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/user --token-code 123456

Use Temporary Credentials for API Calls:

After obtaining the temporary credentials, set them as environment variables or configure them in the AWS CLI profile to make API calls.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...

export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=...

References:

Enabling MFA for IAM Users

Using Temporary Security Credentials

AWS CLI get-session-token

Using an AMI with CloudWatch Agent:

The CloudWatch agent can collect memory utilization metrics and send them to CloudWatch.

Steps:

Create or use an existing AMI that includes the CloudWatch agent installed and configured.

Ensure the CloudWatch agent is configured to collect memory metrics.

Use this AMI for instances in the Auto Scaling group.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

CloudTrail must be re-enabled immediately if it is disabled.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement an automatic solution to monitor and re-enable CloudTrail.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Add the AWS account to AWS Organizations and enable CloudTrail in the management account.

This provides centralized management but does not ensure automatic re-enabling of CloudTrail.

Option B: Create an AWS Config rule with automatic remediation.

AWS Config can monitor changes and automatically remediate by re-enabling CloudTrail.

Option C: Create an AWS Config rule that invokes a Lambda function.

This requires custom code, which is not preferred.

Option D: Create an EventBridge rule with a Systems Manager Automation document.

This can re-enable CloudTrail but is more complex compared to AWS Config’s built-in remediation.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Using AWS Config with automatic remediation ensures CloudTrail is re-enabled without writing custom code.

References:

AWS Config Rules

Automatic Remediation with AWS Config

Creating an AWS Config rule with automatic remediation ensures that CloudTrail is immediately re-enabled if it is disabled.

To allow CloudFormation templates in all accounts within the organization to reference the latest AMI ID:

Parameter Store in Standard Tier: Storing the AMI ID in Systems Manager Parameter Store provides a central and easy-to-update source.

Enable Resource Sharing with Organizations: This allows the parameter to be shared across accounts in the organization.

Resource Share in AWS RAM: AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) can be used to share the parameter with the entire organization, allowing other accounts to access the AMI ID.

Using the standard tier in Parameter Store is sufficient, and an EventBridge rule with Lambda for updating AMIs would add unnecessary complexity.

Dedicated Hosts are physical servers that are dedicated to a single customer, ensuring that the customer’s workloads are not shared with other customers or with other AWS accounts within the company. This will ensure that the company’s security policy is followed and that sensitive workloads are running on hardware that is not shared with other customers or with other AWS accounts within the company.

To minimize latency and reduce the load on an Amazon S3 bucket serving static web content, creating an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin is the most effective solution.

Amazon CloudFront:

CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches copies of your content at edge locations around the world, reducing latency by serving content closer to end users.

By using CloudFront, you can offload the read operations from your S3 bucket to the edge locations, reducing the load on the bucket.

Creating a CloudFront Distribution:

Go to the CloudFront console and click "Create Distribution."

Select "Web" as the delivery method and specify the S3 bucket as the origin.

Configure the distribution settings, including cache behaviors and restrictions if needed.

Once the distribution is deployed, update your application to use the CloudFront URL for accessing static content.

References:

Amazon CloudFront

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

"C" because Elastic Load Balancing provides access logs that capture detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/load-balancer-access-logs.html

"D" because "you can configure CloudFront to create log files that contain detailed information about every user request that CloudFront receives"

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/AccessLogs.html

To supply documentation of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance for the infrastructure managed by AWS, the SysOps administrator should download the applicable reports from the AWS Artifact portal.

AWS Artifact:

AWS Artifact is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS’ security and compliance reports and select online agreements.

It includes compliance reports for standards such as PCI DSS, SOC, ISO, and more.

Steps to Access Reports:

Open the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to the AWS Artifact console.

Browse and download the PCI DSS compliance report.

Providing Documentation:

Download the relevant PCI DSS reports and provide them to the auditors as required.

References:

AWS Artifact

PCI DSS Compliance

To prevent Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Multi-AZ DB instances from running low on disk space, enabling storage auto-scaling is the most straightforward solution. This feature automatically adjusts the storage capacity of the DB instance when it approaches its limit, thus preventing the database from running out of space and triggering CloudWatch alarms. Option C is the least intrusive and most effective solution as it only requires a modification to the existing CloudFormation template to enable auto-scaling on storage. For reference, see AWS documentation on managing RDS storage automatically Managing RDS Storage Automatically.

Using CloudFormation Stack Sets:

CloudFormation stack sets allow you to deploy CloudFormation stacks across multiple AWS accounts and regions.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudFormation and select "StackSets."

Click on "Create StackSet."

Provide the template URL or upload a template file.

Configure the stack set options and specify the accounts and regions.

Deploy the stack set to the specified accounts and regions.

AWS Backup provides a centralized way to manage backups across AWS services. Here's how to implement the required backup strategy with minimal administrative effort:

Create Backup Plans: Set up different backup plans in AWS Backup, each configured for a specific backup frequency—daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.

Set Retention Periods: For each backup plan, configure the retention settings to align with the required retention durations: 6 days, 4 weeks, 11 months, and 7 years respectively.

Tag Resources: Apply tags to each EC2 and RDS resource that needs to be backed up. This allows for the automated inclusion of these resources in the respective backup plans based on their tags.

Assign Resources to Backup Plans: Use the tags to define which resources are included in each backup plan, ensuring that all necessary resources are backed up according to the defined schedules and retention policies.

AWS Documentation Reference:More details on setting up and managing AWS Backup can be found here: AWS Backup.

Using a Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint allows DNS queries for on-premises hosts to be forwarded to the on-premises DNS server over the Direct Connect connection, minimizing maintenance and automating name resolution without the need for manual entry or file management.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/zh_tw/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/resolver-forwarding-outbound-queries.html

To give the application the ability to resolve internal domain names, the SysOps administrator should create an Amazon Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint and configure it to forward DNS queries to the on-premises DNS server.

Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

An outbound endpoint enables DNS queries to be forwarded from AWS resources in a VPC to an on-premises DNS server.

Steps to Implement:

In the Route 53 console, create a new outbound endpoint in the VPC.

Configure the outbound endpoint with the IP address of the on-premises DNS server.

Update the VPC DNS settings to use the Route 53 Resolver.

References:

Route 53 Resolver Endpoints

Creating an Outbound Endpoint

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

An EC2 instance needs to be reachable from the internet.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure proper routing for internet connectivity.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: A route for 0.0.0.0/0 that points to a NAT gateway.

NAT gateways allow instances in private subnets to access the internet, not the other way around.

Option B: A route for 0.0.0.0/0 that points to an egress-only internet gateway.

Egress-only gateways are for IPv6 traffic and do not provide inbound internet access.

Option C: A route for 0.0.0.0/0 that points to an internet gateway.

Internet gateways provide both inbound and outbound internet access.

Option D: A route for 0.0.0.0/0 that points to an elastic network interface.

Elastic network interfaces do not provide internet routing.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Adding a route to the internet gateway ensures the EC2 instance is reachable from the internet.

References:

Amazon VPC Internet Gateway

Configuring a route to the internet gateway ensures proper internet connectivity for the EC2 instance.

To configure replication of a DynamoDB table to another AWS Region for disaster recovery, you should use DynamoDB Global Tables. Global Tables use DynamoDB Streams to replicate changes across multiple regions.

Enable DynamoDB Streams:

Navigate to the DynamoDB console.

Select your table and enable DynamoDB Streams.

Add a Global Table Region:

With Streams enabled, go to the Global Tables tab.

Add a new region to the table, specifying the region where you want to replicate the data.

Automatic Replication:

DynamoDB will handle the replication of data across regions automatically, ensuring data consistency and high availability.

References:

DynamoDB Global Tables

Enabling DynamoDB Streams

For an RDS instance that needs high availability and automatic failover capabilities, setting it up as a Multi-AZ deployment is the most effective solution:

Multi-AZ Deployment: This feature allows Amazon RDS to automatically provision and manage a synchronous standby replica of your database in a different Availability Zone (AZ). The primary DB instance and the standby replica contain the same data, providing data redundancy and fail-safe mechanism.

Automatic Failover: In the event of a planned or unplanned outage of your primary DB instance (including DB instance failure, AZ failure, or network failure), RDS automatically fails over to the standby so that database operations can resume quickly without administrative intervention.

Data Integrity: This setup ensures no data loss for committed transactions, as the standby replica is always in sync with the primary.

By enabling Multi-AZ deployment, you ensure that your database environment has high availability and robustness, addressing both disaster recovery and operational continuity without losing any committed transactions.

Using AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager with a maintenance window is a best practice for automating OS patch management across instances in an Auto Scaling group.

Patch Manager: Allows for scheduled patching according to maintenance windows, ensuring minimal impact on application uptime.

RebootOption parameter: Setting this to RebootIfNeeded ensures patches are applied fully when a reboot is required.

AWS-RunPatchBaseline: This document automates the patching process and can be customized based on compliance requirements.

"A certificate is eligible for automatic renewal subject to the following considerations: ELIGIBLE if associated with another AWS service, such as Elastic Load Balancing or CloudFront. ELIGIBLE if exported since being issued or last renewed. ELIGIBLE if it is a private certificate issued by calling the ACM RequestCertificate API and then exported or associated with another AWS service. ELIGIBLE if it is a private certificate issued through the management console and then exported or associated with another AWS service." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/managed-renewal.html

To ensure that Amazon Elasticsearch Service (Amazon ES) can be accessed only from the branch offices while preserving existing data, an IP-based domain access policy is the best approach. This allows you to restrict access to specific IP ranges.

Configure an IP-Based Domain Access Policy:

Navigate to the Amazon ES console.

Select the domain and go to the "Access policies" tab.

Update the Access Policy:

Edit the access policy to include an allow statement for the private IP CIDR blocks of each branch office.

Example policy:

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "es:*",

"Condition": {

"IpAddress": {

"aws:SourceIp": [

"branch-office-cidr-1",

"branch-office-cidr-2"

]

}

}

}

]

}

Verify the Configuration:

Ensure that the policy correctly restricts access to the specified IP ranges.

Test access from the branch offices to confirm connectivity.

References:

Amazon Elasticsearch Service Access Control

Configuring Access Policies

To efficiently manage application deployments and updates on Amazon EC2 instances within an Auto Scaling group, along with ensuring security through vulnerability scans:

EC2 Image Builder: This AWS service automates the creation, management, and deployment of customized, secure, and up-to-date "golden" server images. By using EC2 Image Builder, you can automate the installation of software, patches, and security configurations.

Custom Recipes: Define a custom recipe in EC2 Image Builder that includes steps to install the application and its dependencies. Additionally, configure the recipe to perform vulnerability scans as part of the image creation process.

Automated Pipeline: Set up an Image Builder pipeline that triggers on a regular schedule (e.g., weekly) to incorporate the latest application updates and security patches into the AMI. The new AMIs can then be automatically used by the Auto Scaling group to launch updated and secure instances.

This solution not only streamlines the management of application deployments and updates but also ensures that all instances launched by the Auto Scaling group meet the latest security and compliance standards, minimizing operational overhead and enhancing security.

Configuring Security Groups:

Security groups act as virtual firewalls for your instances to control inbound and outbound traffic.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2.

Select "Security Groups" from the left-hand menu.

Find and select the security group associated with your EC2 instances.

Choose the "Inbound rules" tab and click "Edit inbound rules."

Add a rule to allow traffic from the security group associated with the NLB.

Type: Custom TCP (or the specific port your application uses)

Source: Select "Custom" and enter the ID of the NLB's security group.

This setup ensures that the EC2 instances accept traffic only from the NLB, enhancing security with minimal operational overhead.

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.

References:

Cross-Account Access

Creating and Managing IAM Policies

Using ALB health checks in the Auto Scaling group will provide more accurate health monitoring and replace instances if they are unhealthy.

ALB Health Checks: Configure health checks based on HTTP response codes, which will detect application-level issues causing the HTTP 500 errors and replace instances as needed.

EC2 vs. ALB Health Checks: EC2 status checks only verify instance hardware and OS, not the application’s responsiveness. By using ALB health checks, Auto Scaling can remove instances that are failing at the application level, thus preventing users from receiving 500 errors.

Replacing the ALB with a Network Load Balancer does not address HTTP 500 errors, and enabling session affinity does not resolve application health issues. The CloudWatch agent would not provide the required health check functionality for automated instance replacement.

To immediately notify software developers if an AWS Lambda function experiences an error, follow these steps:

Create an SNS Topic:

Navigate to the Amazon SNS console and create a new topic.

Add email subscriptions for each developer to the SNS topic.

To improve application responsiveness and handle high CPU utilization:

Create Auto Scaling Group:

Create an Auto Scaling group (ASG) for the EC2 instances running the application.

To ensure that EC2 instances in your VPC can send DNS queries for example.com to the DNS servers in your on-premises data center, follow these steps:

Create a Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

Set up an outbound endpoint in Route 53 Resolver in your VPC to forward DNS queries to your on-premises DNS servers.

Aurora Auto Scaling:

Aurora Auto Scaling adjusts the number of Aurora Replicas in response to changes in connectivity or workload.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the Aurora cluster.

Under "Actions," choose "Add Aurora Replica" to initially add replicas if needed.

Go to the "Auto Scaling" section and create an auto scaling policy.

Set the target value for the DatabaseConnections metric to 195.

Define the minimum and maximum number of replicas.

Save the configuration.

This ensures that the Aurora cluster scales automatically when the number of connections approaches the threshold, improving read performance.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Share an AMI with other AWS accounts while ensuring it is encrypted with AWS KMS keys and accessible only to authorized accounts.

Analyze the Requirements:

Encrypt the AMI with a customer-managed key (CMK).

Share the AMI securely with specific AWS accounts.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Create a CMK and modify the key policy but do not create a copy of the AMI.

This does not re-encrypt the AMI with the CMK.

Option B: Create a CMK, modify the key policy, create a copy of the AMI, and specify the CMK.

This ensures the AMI is encrypted with the CMK and shared securely.

Option C: Create a CMK, modify the key policy, create a copy of the AMI, and make it public.

Making the AMI public does not meet the requirement of sharing with specific accounts only.

Option D: Modify the key policy of the AWS managed key and share the AMI.

AWS managed keys cannot have their key policies modified to add permissions for other accounts.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Creating a CMK, modifying the key policy, creating a copy of the AMI with the CMK, and specifying the permissions ensures the AMI is securely shared with specific AWS accounts.

References:

Copying an AMI

Creating and Managing Keys

Sharing AMIs

This solution ensures the AMI is encrypted with a customer-managed key and shared securely with the specified AWS accounts.

AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets that alert you when you exceed your thresholds. This feature helps teams to monitor their spending and ensure it aligns with the set budget.

Steps:

Open AWS Budgets:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

Open the AWS Budgets dashboard.

Create a New Budget:

Click on "Create a budget".

Select "Cost budget" and click "Next".

Set Budget Details:

Enter a unique name for the budget.

Define the period (e.g., quarterly) and start date.

Set the budgeted amount as specified by the finance department.

Define Filters:

Use the filters to select the specific services each team is responsible for (e.g., storage, compute, database).

Set Alerts:

Specify the threshold for forecasted cost that will trigger an alert (e.g., 80% of the budget).

Enter the email addresses of the recipients (the respective teams).

Review and Create:

Review the configuration and click "Create budget".

By setting up individual budgets for each team and filtering by services, you can ensure that each team is alerted when their projected spend approaches the threshold. This method does not incur additional compute, storage, or database costs.

References:

AWS Budgets

Creating an AWS Budget

FIFO queues don't support per-message delays, only per-queue delays. If your application sets the same value of the DelaySeconds parameter on each message, you must modify your application to remove the per-message delay and set DelaySeconds on the entire queue instead.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/FIFO-queues-moving.html

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-enable-secure-access-to-kibana-usin g-aws-single-sign-on/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/es-cogn ito-auth.html

To troubleshoot connectivity issues for an EC2 instance that's not accessible via RDP after moving to a private subnet, VPC flow logs are the most direct and useful tool. VPC flow logs capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC, enabling you to identify whether the traffic to the EC2 instance is being allowed or rejected. Setting up flow logs for the EC2 instance’s network interface will help pinpoint any blocks or drops in traffic that could be causing the timeout error. Option C is the correct action as it directly investigates the traffic flow, which is crucial for resolving connectivity issues. AWS documentation on VPC flow logs provides further details VPC Flow Logs.

 Create an SNS Topic and Subscription:

Amazon SNS allows you to send notifications to multiple endpoints.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to SNS and create a new topic.

Create a subscription for the topic using the email protocol.

Enter the architecture team's email address as the subscriber.

To delete the AWS CloudFormation stack without deleting the DynamoDB table, you need to apply a deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource. The Retain deletion policy ensures that the specified resource is not deleted when the stack is deleted. Instead, it is retained.

Steps:

Modify the CloudFormation Template:

Add a deletion policy to the DynamoDB table resource.

json

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{

"Resources": {

"MyDynamoDBTable": {

"Type": "AWS::DynamoDB::Table",

"DeletionPolicy": "Retain",

}

}

}

To address the performance issues of a CPU-heavy application running on a t2.large EC2 instance, the best course of action is to upgrade to a compute-optimized instance. Compute-optimized instances provide a higher ratio of CPU resources compared to memory, making them ideal for applications that require high CPU performance.

Upgrade to a Compute-Optimized Instance:

Identify a suitable compute-optimized instance type, such as the c5.large, which offers better CPU performance compared to the t2.large.

Stop the current EC2 instance and change the instance type to the chosen compute-optimized instance.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the capability of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and AWS Regions

If a Lambda function is not being invoked by an Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) rule, the likely issue is a missing permission. The Lambda function needs permission to be invoked by the EventBridge rule.

Steps:

Add Permission to Lambda Function:

Open the AWS Lambda console.

Select your Lambda function.

Choose "Configuration" and then "Permissions".

Under the "Resource-based policy" section, add a policy that grants EventBridge permission to invoke your function.

Example policy:

json

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{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"Service": "events.amazonaws.com"

},

"Action": "lambda:InvokeFunction",

"Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:function:FUNCTION_NAME",

"Condition": {

"ArnLike": {

"AWS:SourceArn": "arn:aws:events:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:rule/RULE_NAME"

}

}

}

]

}

Verify the EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console.

Select the rule that targets your Lambda function.

Ensure that the rule is correctly configured to match events and the target is your Lambda function.

References:

AWS Lambda Permissions Model

Amazon EventBridge Rules

 AWS Config Managed Rule for S3 Logging:

The s3-bucket-logging-enabled AWS Config rule checks whether S3 buckets have logging enabled.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Config.

Create a rule using s3-bucket-logging-enabled.

Add a remediation action using an AWS Lambda function or Systems Manager Automation runbook.

When managing performance and cost for EC2 instances across different families, the following steps are recommended:

Utilize AWS Compute Optimizer: This service provides recommendations for EC2 instances based on historical usage patterns and existing configurations. It helps identify optimal EC2 instance types and sizes that could deliver better performance and cost savings for your specific workload.

Implement Compute Savings Plans: After determining the most suitable instance types and sizes through Compute Optimizer, purchasing Compute Savings Plans can offer significant cost savings. These savings plans apply to any instance family across any region, providing flexibility and cost efficiency without upfront commitment to specific instance types.

AWS Documentation Reference:Further details can be found in the AWS documentation on Compute Optimizer and Compute Savings Plans:

AWS Compute Optimizer

AWS Compute Savings Plans.

Understand the Problem:

The requirement is to delete the CloudFormation stack without deleting the DynamoDB table.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure the DynamoDB table is preserved when the CloudFormation stack is deleted.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Add a Retain deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource.

The Retain policy ensures that the DynamoDB table is not deleted when the stack is deleted.

Option B: Add a Snapshot deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource.

Snapshot policy is not applicable to DynamoDB tables and would not retain the table itself.

Option C: Enable termination protection on the CloudFormation stack.

Prevents stack deletion entirely but does not specifically protect the DynamoDB table.

Option D: Update the IAM policy with a Deny statement for dynamodb:DeleteTable.

Prevents deletion of the table but is not a CloudFormation stack-specific solution.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Adding a Retain deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource in the CloudFormation stack ensures the table is preserved when the stack is deleted.

References:

AWS CloudFormation Deletion Policy

Using the Retain deletion policy ensures that the DynamoDB table is not deleted when the CloudFormation stack is deleted, preserving critical data.

This solution is operationally efficient and leverages AWS services to provide notifications when the Lambda function is not invoked, indicating that the file did not arrive.

Steps:

Create a CloudWatch Alarm:

Open the Amazon CloudWatch console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Alarms" and then "Create Alarm".

Select Lambda Metrics:

Choose "Select metric" and then navigate to "AWS Lambda" metrics.

Select the Lambda function that processes the S3 files.

Choose the "Invocations" metric.

Configure the Alarm:

Set the period to 1 hour.

Define the threshold condition to trigger when the Invocations metric is zero.

Under "Additional configuration", configure the alarm to treat missing data as "breaching".

Set Alarm Actions:

Configure the alarm action to send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic.

Create an SNS topic if one does not exist, and subscribe the application team to this topic.

Testing and Verification:

Ensure that the alarm triggers correctly by simulating a missing file scenario and confirming that the notification is sent to the SNS topic.

This approach uses CloudWatch to monitor the invocation frequency of the Lambda function, ensuring that the application team is notified whenever the expected file does not arrive within the specified timeframe.

References:

Amazon CloudWatch Alarms

Monitoring Lambda Functions

Amazon SNS Notifications

VPC peering allows two VPCs to communicate with each other securely. By configuring VPC peering between the two VPCs, the SysOps administrator will be able to give the EC2 instance in VPC1 the ability to connect to the database in VPC2. Once the VPC peering is configured, the EC2 instance will be able to communicate with the database using the private IP address of the DB instance in the private subnet.

DependsOn Attribute in CloudFormation:

The DependsOn attribute in AWS CloudFormation ensures that one resource is created only after another resource has been successfully created. In this case, it ensures that the EC2 instance is fully launched before the custom resource (the Lambda function) is executed.

Steps:

Update the CloudFormation template to include the DependsOn attribute for the custom resource.

Ensure that the custom resource references the EC2 instance.

Resources:

MyEC2Instance:

Type: AWS::EC2::Instance

Properties:

# EC2 properties

MyCustomResource:

Type: Custom::MyCustomResource

DependsOn: MyEC2Instance

Properties:

ServiceToken: !GetAtt MyLambdaFunction.Arn

# Other properties

When using Amazon Route 53 to manage DNS records for a website hosted behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB), an ALIAS record should be used for the apex domain (e.g., example.com). ALIAS records are designed to map domain names to AWS resources like ALBs, CloudFront distributions, and S3 buckets, providing efficient DNS resolution.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Route 53 console at Amazon Route 53 Console.

Select Hosted Zone:

Select the hosted zone for your domain.

Create Record Set:

Click on Create record.

In the Record name field, leave it blank to indicate the apex domain.

Select ALIAS as the record type.

Choose the Alias Target to be your Application Load Balancer from the dropdown menu.

Save Record Set:

Review the settings and click Create records.

References:

Choosing Between Alias and Non-Alias Records

Routing Traffic to an ELB Load Balancer

Storage Auto Scaling:

Aurora storage auto scaling automatically increases the storage capacity of the database cluster when free storage space is running low.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select your Aurora DB cluster.

Modify the DB cluster configuration to enable storage auto scaling.

Apply the changes.

To minimize costs while moving from EC2 instances to AWS Fargate, Compute Savings Plans are the most flexible and cost-effective option. Compute Savings Plans apply to a variety of compute services including AWS Fargate, Amazon EC2, and AWS Lambda, allowing for greater flexibility in managing costs as the company transitions to using only Fargate.

Compute Savings Plans:

Savings Plans provide significant savings over On-Demand pricing, up to 66% savings.

Compute Savings Plans offer the flexibility to move across instance types, AWS Regions, and operating systems.

Payment Options:

The No Upfront payment option provides the most flexibility and avoids large upfront capital expenditures.

The Partial Upfront payment option offers more savings but requires an initial payment.

1-Year Term:

A 1-year term is suitable for the company's 6-month transition period, allowing for cost savings without a long-term commitment.

References:

AWS Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

To meet regulatory and compliance requirements for archiving sensitive data on Amazon S3 Glacier with no modifications allowed by any account, attaching a vault lock policy to an S3 Glacier vault and validating the vault lock policy after 24 hours is the most appropriate solution.

Vault Lock Policy:

Amazon S3 Glacier Vault Lock allows you to easily deploy and enforce compliance controls for individual S3 Glacier vaults via a lockable policy.

You can specify controls such as Write Once Read Many (WORM) in a vault lock policy and lock the policy from future edits.

Implementing Vault Lock:

Attach a vault lock policy to the S3 Glacier vault that contains the archived data.

Initiate the vault lock process, which involves providing a policy and locking it after a validation period of 24 hours.

Steps:

Open the S3 Glacier console.

Select the vault and configure a vault lock policy with the required compliance controls.

Use the InitiateVaultLock API to set the policy and start the lock process.

Validate and complete the lock process after 24 hours using the lock ID.

References:

Amazon S3 Glacier Vault Lock

Managing S3 Glacier Vault Lock Policies

To optimize the cost of a computing environment consisting of control nodes that are always on and task nodes that operate for a limited number of hours each day, consider the following strategies:

Purchase EC2 Instance Savings Plans for the Control Nodes: Since the control nodes are required to be operational 24/7, purchasing EC2 Instance Savings Plans is a cost-effective choice. These plans provide a lower price compared to on-demand instances, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a one or three-year period.

Use Spot Instances for the Task Nodes: Given that task nodes are used for a shorter duration (4 hours a day) and presumably can tolerate interruptions, using Spot Instances can significantly reduce costs. Spot Instances offer unused EC2 capacity at a fraction of the regular price, which can lead to substantial cost savings. Additionally, configure the system to fall back to On-Demand Instances during periods when Spot Instances are not available to ensure availability.

This combination leverages cost savings for continuous use and flexible, lower-cost options for intermittent use, optimizing overall operational costs efficiently.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts and workloads. It provides detailed monitoring for unauthorized access attempts, including console login attempts from unusual locations.

Amazon GuardDuty:

GuardDuty analyzes VPC flow logs, AWS CloudTrail logs, and DNS logs to detect suspicious activity.

It generates findings, such as UnauthorizedAccess

/ConsoleLoginSuccess, to alert administrators about potential security issues.

Setup:

Enable GuardDuty in your AWS account.

Configure GuardDuty to monitor unauthorized console logins.

Set up notifications for the relevant findings to alert administrators.

References:

Amazon GuardDuty

GuardDuty Finding Types

To reduce the cost of EC2 instances with a 1-year commitment across different regions, purchasing a Compute Savings Plan is the most suitable option.

Compute Savings Plan:

Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility and help to reduce your costs by up to 66%, offering savings on a variety of EC2 instance usage.

These plans apply to usage across any AWS Region, and they also apply to AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate usage.

Flexibility Across Regions:

Unlike Reserved Instances, which are tied to a specific instance family and region, Compute Savings Plans provide savings across any EC2 instance usage, regardless of region, instance family, operating system, or tenancy.

This flexibility is ideal for the company's requirement to migrate workloads from the eu-west-1 region to the eu-west-3 region within the commitment period.

Implementation:

Open the AWS Cost Management console.

Navigate to the "Savings Plans" section.

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan with a 1-year term.

References:

AWS Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/using-features.rolling-version-deploy.html

To maintain full capacity during new deployments in AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you can use the "Immutable" or "Rolling with additional batch" deployment policies.

Immutable Deployment:

This policy ensures that a new set of instances is launched with the new version of the application. The new instances are only promoted to serve traffic if the deployment succeeds. This ensures zero downtime and maintains full capacity during deployment.

Rolling with Additional Batch:

This policy launches a new batch of instances to handle the traffic while the old instances are being updated. This maintains the full capacity during the deployment process, ensuring that the application remains fully operational.

How to Configure Deployment Policies:

Open Elastic Beanstalk Console:

Navigate to the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console at AWS Elastic Beanstalk Console.

Update Environment Configuration:

Select the environment you want to configure.

Go to Configuration and then Rolling updates and deployments.

Choose either Immutable or Rolling with additional batch as the deployment policy.

References:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk Deployment Policies

Managing and Configuring Environments

To improve the performance of an Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) when users report slower file retrieval times, configuring the file system for Provisioned Throughput is an effective solution.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon EFS console at Amazon EFS Console.

Select the File System:

In the EFS console, select the file system that you want to modify.

Modify Throughput Settings:

Choose File system policy and then Manage file system policy.

Under Throughput mode, select Provisioned Throughput.

Specify the desired throughput in MiB/s based on your application's needs.

Apply Changes:

Save the changes to apply the new throughput settings to the file system.

References:

Amazon EFS Performance

Managing Throughput Modes

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The application read performance degrades when user connections exceed 200.

Need to automatically scale the database based on user demand.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement auto scaling based on user connections to ensure optimal performance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Migrate to a new Aurora multi-master DB cluster.

Multi-master clusters provide read and write scalability but may require significant changes to the application.

Option B: Modify the DB cluster to serverless mode.

Aurora Serverless provides automatic scaling, but it is more suitable for variable workloads with unpredictable demand.

Option C: Create an auto scaling policy with a target metric of 195 DatabaseConnections.

This directly addresses the need to scale based on user connections.

Auto scaling can add or remove replicas to maintain optimal performance.

Option D: Increase the Aurora Replica instance size.

This may improve performance but does not address scalability for sudden increases in user connections.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Creating an auto scaling policy with a target metric of 195 DatabaseConnections ensures the DB cluster scales automatically to handle increased load.

References:

Amazon Aurora Auto Scaling

Scaling Aurora DB Instances

Auto scaling based on DatabaseConnections ensures the Aurora DB cluster maintains optimal performance as user demand fluctuates.

Access to Amazon DynamoDB requires credentials. Those credentials must have permissions to access AWS resources, such as an Amazon DynamoDB table or an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance. The following sections provide details on how you can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and DynamoDB to help secure access to your resources. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/authentication-and-access-control.html

Here are the steps to configure an Amazon S3 bucket to serve a static error page in the event of a failure at the primary site:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the S3 service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing S3 bucket named lab-751906329398-26023898.com and click on it.

In the "Properties" tab, click on "Static website hosting" and select "Use this bucket to host a website".

In "Index Document" field, enter the name of the object that you want to use as the index document, in this case, "index.html"

In the "Permissions" tab, click on "Block Public Access", and make sure that "Block all public access" is turned OFF.

Click on "Bucket Policy" and add the following policy to allow public read access:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::lab-751906329398-26023898.com/*"

}

]

}

Now navigate to the Amazon Route 53 service, and find the existing hosted zone named lab-751906329398-26023898.com.

Click on the "A record" and update the routing policy to "Primary - Failover" and add the existing ALB as the primary record.

Click on "Create Record" button and create a new secondary failover alias record for the domain lab-751906329398-26023898.com that routes traffic to the existing S3 bucket.

Now, when the primary site (ALB) goes down, traffic will be automatically routed to the S3 bucket serving the static error page.

Note:

You can use CloudWatch to monitor the health of your ALB.

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

You can use Amazon Route 53 for routing traffic to different resources based on health checks.

You can refer to the AWS documentation for more information on how to configure and use these services:

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

https://aws.amazon.com/route53/

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated

Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

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/

Here are the steps to configure Amazon EventBridge to meet the above requirements:

Log in to the AWS Management Console by using the AWS Management Console shortcut from the VM desktop. Make sure that you are logged in to the desired AWS account.

Go to the EventBridge service in the us-east-2 Region.

In the EventBridge service, navigate to the "Event buses" page.

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

Give a name to your event bus, and select "default" as the event source type.

Navigate to "Rules" page and create a new rule named "RunFunction"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "Schedule" as the event source and set the schedule to run every 15 minutes.

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to Lambda" and choose the existing AWS Lambda function named "LogEventFunction"

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "EC2" as the event source, and filter the events on "EC2 Spot Instance interruption"

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to SNS topic" and create a new standard Amazon SNS topic named "TopicEvents"

In the "Input Transformer" section, set the Input Path to {“instance” : “$.detail.instance-id”} and Input template to “The EC2 Spot Instance has been interrupted on account.

Now all Amazon EC2 events in the default event bus will be replayable for past 90 days.

Note:

You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs to create and manage EventBridge resources.

You can use CloudTrail event history to replay events from the past 90 days.

You can refer to the AWS EventBridge documentation for more information on how to configure and use the service: https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/

Amazon Macie is a security service designed to help organizations find, classify, and protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. Amazon Macie uses machine learning to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data in Amazon S3. Creating a discovery job with the managed data identifier will allow Macie to identify sensitive personal information in the S3 files and classify it accordingly. Enabling AWS Config and Amazon GuardDuty will not help with this requirement as they are not designed to automatically classify and protect data.

When users report that old content is still appearing on the website after modifying files in an S3 bucket used by CloudFront, creating a CloudFront invalidation is the best solution.

CloudFront Invalidation:

Invalidation is the process of removing objects from the CloudFront cache before they expire.

This ensures that the updated content is served to the users.

Creating an Invalidation:

Open the CloudFront console.

Select the distribution and go to the "Invalidations" tab.

Create a new invalidation and specify the paths of the updated files.

References:

Invalidating Files in Amazon CloudFront