SOA-C02: AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate

An organization is using cost allocation tags to find the cost distribution of different departments and projects. One of the instances has two separate tags with the key/ value as "InstanceName/HR", "CostCenter/HR". What will AWS do in this case?

InstanceName is a reserved tag for AWS. Thus, AWS will not allow this tag
AWS will not allow the tags as the value is the same for different keys
AWS will allow tags but will not show correctly in the cost allocation report due to the same value of the two separate keys
AWS will allow both the tags and show properly in the cost distribution report

Correct answer: D

Explanation:

AWS provides cost allocation tags to categorize and track the AWS costs. When the user applies tags to his AWS resources, AWS generates a cost allocation report as a comma-separated value (CSV file. with the usage and costs aggregated by those tags. Each tag will have a key-value and can be applied to services, such as EC2, S3, RDS, EMR, etc. It is required that the key should be different for each tag. The value can be the same for different keys. In this case since the value is different, AWS will properly show the distribution report with the correct values.

Network ACLs in a VPC operate at the ______.

TCP level
instance level
subnet level
gateway level

Correct answer: C

Explanation:

Security Groups in VPC operate at the instance level, providing a way to control the incoming and outgoing instance traffic. In contrast, network ACLs operate at the subnet level, providing a way to control the traffic that flows through the subnets of your VPC.Reference:http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Security.html

Security Groups in VPC operate at the instance level, providing a way to control the incoming and outgoing instance traffic. In contrast, network ACLs operate at the subnet level, providing a way to control the traffic that flows through the subnets of your VPC.

Reference:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Security.html

What is Amazon Import/Export?

A properly configured service role and instance profile
An international shipping division to help you enhance your sales reach
A service that accelerates transferring large amounts of data into and out of AWS using physical storage appliances
A software developed by Amazon to migrate the data from/to your datacenter to AWS

Correct answer: C

Explanation:

AWS Import/Export accelerates transferring large amounts of data between the AWS cloud and portable storage devices that you mail to us. AWS transfers data directly onto and off of your stor-age devices using Amazon high-speed internal network.Reference:http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSImportExport/latest/DG/whatisIE.html

AWS Import/Export accelerates transferring large amounts of data between the AWS cloud and portable storage devices that you mail to us. AWS transfers data directly onto and off of your stor-age devices using Amazon high-speed internal network.

Reference:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSImportExport/latest/DG/whatisIE.html

What does enabling a sticky session with ELB do?

Routes all the requests to a single DNS
Ensures that all requests from the user's session are sent to multiple instances
Binds the user session with a specific instance
Provides a single ELB DNS for each IP address

Correct answer: C

Explanation:

By default, a load balancer routes each request independently to the registered instance with the smallest load. However, you can use the sticky session feature(also known as session affinity), which enables the load balancer to bind a user's session to a specific instance. This ensures that all requests from the user during the session are sent to the same instance.Reference:http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/elb-sticky-sessions.html

By default, a load balancer routes each request independently to the registered instance with the smallest load. However, you can use the sticky session feature

(also known as session affinity), which enables the load balancer to bind a user's session to a specific instance. This ensures that all requests from the user during the session are sent to the same instance.

Reference:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/elb-sticky-sessions.html

Amazon EC2 provides virtual computing environments known as _____.

instances
volumes
microsystems
servers

Correct answer: A

Explanation:

Amazon EC2 provides virtual computing environments known as instances. When you launch an instance, the instance type that you specify determines the hardware of the host computer used for your instance. Each instance type offers different compute, memory, and storage capabilities and are grouped in instance families based on these capabilities. Select an instance type based on the re-quirements of the application or software that you plan to run on your instance.Reference:http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concepts.html

Amazon EC2 provides virtual computing environments known as instances. When you launch an instance, the instance type that you specify determines the hardware of the host computer used for your instance. Each instance type offers different compute, memory, and storage capabilities and are grouped in instance families based on these capabilities. Select an instance type based on the re-quirements of the application or software that you plan to run on your instance.

Reference:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concepts.html

A corporate website is hosted on several Amazon EC2 instances across multiple regions around the globe.

How should an Administrator configure the website to maintain high availability with minimal downtime if one of the regions has network connectivity congestion for an extended period of time?

Create an Elastic Load Balancer in front of all the Amazon EC2 instances.
Create an Elastic Load Balancer that fails over to the secondary site when the primary site is not reachable.
Create an Amazon Route 53 Latency Based Routing Record Set that resolves to an Elastic Load Balancer in each region. Set an appropriate health check on each ELB.
Create an Amazon Route 53 latency Based Routing Record Set that resolves to Elastic Load Balancers I each region and has the Evaluate Target Health flag set to "true".

Correct answer: D

Explanation:

Reference:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/dns-failover-complex-configs.html

Reference:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/dns-failover-complex-configs.html

A user has created a VPC with two subnets: one public and one private. The user is planning to run the patch update for the instances in the private subnet. How can the instances in the private subnet connect to the Internet?

Use the internet gateway with a private IP
Allow outbound traffic in the security group for port 80 to allow internet updates
The private subnet can never connect to the internet
Use NAT with an elastic IP

Correct answer: D

Explanation:

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a virtual network dedicated to the user's AWS account. A user can create a subnet with VPC and launch instances inside that subnet. If the user has created two subnets (one private and one public., he would need a Network Address Translation (NAT) instance with the elastic IP address. This enables the instances in the private subnet to send requests to the Internet (for example, to perform software updates).

A user is measuring the CPU utilization of a private data center machine every minute. The machine provides the aggregate of data every hour, such as "Sum of data", "Min value", "Max value", and "Number of Data points".

The user wants to send these values to CloudWatch. How can the user achieve this?

Send the data using the put-metric-data command with the aggregate-values parameter
Send the data using the put-metric-data command with the average-values parameter
Send the data using the put-metric-data command with the statistic-values parameter
Send the data using the put-metric-data command with the aggregate -data parameter

Correct answer: C

Explanation:

AWS CloudWatch supports the custom metrics. The user can always capture the custom data and upload the data to CloudWatch using CLI or APIs. The user can publish the data to CloudWatch as single data points or as an aggregated set of data points called a statistic set using the command put-metric-data. When sending the aggregate data, the user needs to send it with the parameter statistic-values:

A user has configured an ELB to distribute the traffic among multiple instances. The user instances are facing some issues due to the back-end servers. Which of the below mentioned CloudWatch metrics helps the user understand the issue with the instances?

HTTPCode_Backend_3XX
HTTPCode_Backend_4XX
HTTPCode_Backend_2XX
HTTPCode_Backend_5XX

Correct answer: D

Explanation:

CloudWatch is used to monitor AWS as well as the custom services. For ELB, CloudWatch provides various metrics including error code by ELB as well as by back-end servers (instances). It gives data for the count of the number of HTTP response codes generated by the back-end instances. This metric does not include any response codes generated by the load balancer. These metrics are:The 2XX class status codes represents successful actionsThe 3XX class status code indicates that the user agent requires actionThe 4XX class status code represents client errorsThe 5XX class status code represents back-end server errors

CloudWatch is used to monitor AWS as well as the custom services. For ELB, CloudWatch provides various metrics including error code by ELB as well as by back-end servers (instances). It gives data for the count of the number of HTTP response codes generated by the back-end instances. This metric does not include any response codes generated by the load balancer. These metrics are:

The 2XX class status codes represents successful actions

The 3XX class status code indicates that the user agent requires action

The 4XX class status code represents client errors

The 5XX class status code represents back-end server errors

A user has configured Auto Scaling with 3 instances. The user had created a new AMI after updating one of the instances. If the user wants to terminate two specific instances to ensure that Auto Scaling launches an instances with the new launch configuration, which command should he run?

as-delete-instance-in-auto-scaling-group <Instance ID> --no-decrement-desired-capacity
as-terminate-instance-in-auto-scaling-group <Instance ID> --update-desired-capacity
as-terminate-instance-in-auto-scaling-group <Instance ID> --decrement-desired-capacity
as-terminate-instance-in-auto-scaling-group <Instance ID> --no-decrement-desired-capacity

Correct answer: D

Explanation:

The Auto Scaling command as-terminate-instance-in-auto-scaling-group <Instance ID> will terminate the specific instance ID. The user is required to specify the parameter as -no-decrement-desired-capacity to ensure that it launches a new instance from the launch config after terminating the instance. If the user specifies the parameter --decrement-desired-capacity then Auto Scaling will terminate the instance and decrease the desired capacity by 1.