Question 1

An auction website enables users to bid on collectible items. The auction rules require that each bid is processed only once and in the order it was received. The current implementation is based on a fleet of Amazon EC2 web servers that write bid records into Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. A single t2.large instance has a cron job that runs the bid processor, which reads incoming bids from Kinesis Data Streams and processes each bid. The auction site is growing in popularity, but users are complaining that some bids are not registering. Troubleshooting indicates that the bid processor is too slow during peak demand hours, sometimes crashes while processing, and occasionally loses track of which records is being processed. What changes should make the bid processing more reliable?

Accepted Answer

A)  Refactor the web application to use the Amazon Kinesis Producer Library (KPL) when posting bids to Kinesis Data Streams. Refactor the bid processor to flag each record in Kinesis Data Streams as being unread, processing, and processed. At the start of each bid processing run, scan Kinesis Data Streams for unprocessed records. 
B)  Refactor the web application to post each incoming bid to an Amazon SNS topic in place of Kinesis Data Streams. Configure the SNS topic to trigger an AWS Lambda function that processes each bid as soon as a user submits it. 
C)  Refactor the web application to post each incoming bid to an Amazon SQS FIFO queue in place of Kinesis Data Streams. Refactor the bid processor to continuously the SQS queue. Place the bid processing EC2 instance in an Auto Scaling group with a minimum and a maximum size of 1. 
D)  Switch the EC2 instance type from t2.large to a larger general compute instance type. Put the bid processor EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group that scales out the number of EC2 instances running the bid processor, based on the IncomingRecords metric in Kinesis Data Streams.

Question 2

A company is migrating a legacy application from an on-premises data center to AWS. The application consists of a single application server and a Microsoft SQL Server database server. Each server is deployed on a VMware VM that consumes 500 TB of data across multiple attached volumes. The company has established a 10 Gbps AWS Direct Connect connection from the closest AWS Region to its on-premises data center. The Direct Connect connection is not currently in use by other services. Which combination of steps should a solutions architect take to migrate the application with the LEAST amount of downtime? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

A)  Use an AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS) replication job to migrate the database server VM to AWS. 
B)  Use VM Import/Export to import the application server VM. 
C)  Export the VM images to an AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device. 
D)  Use an AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS) replication job to migrate the application server VM to AWS. 
E)  Use an AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) replication instance to migrate the database to an Amazon RDS DB instance.

Question 3

A solutions architect is migrating an existing workload to AWS Fargate. The task can only run in a private subnet within the VPC where there is no direct connectivity from outside the system to the application. When the Fargate task is launched, the task fails with the following error: CannotPullContainerError: API error (500): Get https://111122223333.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/v2/: net/http: request canceled while waiting for connection How should the solutions architect correct this error?

Accepted Answer

A)  Ensure the task is set to ENABLED for the auto-assign public IP setting when launching the task. 
B)  Ensure the task is set to DISABLED for the auto-assign public IP setting when launching the task. Configure a NAT gateway in the public subnet in the VPC to route requests to the internet. 
C)  Ensure the task is set to DISABLED for the auto-assign public IP setting when launching the task. Configure a NAT gateway in the private subnet in the VPC to route requests to the internet. 
D)  Ensure the network mode is set to bridge in the Fargate task definition.

Question 4

Which of the following is the final step that should be completed to start using AWS Direct Connect?

Accepted Answer

A)  Creating your Virtual Interface 
B)  Configuring your router 
C)  Completing the Cross Connect 
D)  Verifying your Virtual Interface

Question 5

A user has created a VPC with CIDR 20.0.0.0/16 using the wizard. The user has created a public subnet CIDR (20.0.0.0/24) and VPN only subnets CIDR (20.0.1.0/24) along with the VPN gateway (vgw-123456) to connect to the user's data center. The user's data center has CIDR 172.28.0.0/12. The user has also setup a NAT instance (i-123456) to allow traffic to the internet from the VPN subnet. Which of the below mentioned options is not a valid entry for the main route table in this scenario?

Accepted Answer

A)  Destination: 20.0.0.0/16 and Target: local 
B)  Destination: 0.0.0.0/0 and Target: i-123456 
C)  Destination: 172.28.0.0/12 and Target: vgw-123456 
D)  Destination: 20.0.1.0/24 and Target: i-123456

Question 6

While assigning a tag to an instance, which of the below mentioned options is not a valid tag key/value pair?

Accepted Answer

A)  Key ; "aws" Value:"aws" 
B)  Key; "aws;name" Value: "instanceAnswer; Aws" 
C)  Key; "Name :aws" Value: "instanceAnswer; Aws" 
D)  Key ; "nameAnswer; Aws" Value:"aws;instance"

Question 7

DynamoDB usesonly as a transport protocol, not as a storage format.

Accepted Answer

A)  WDDX 
B)  XML 
C)  SGML 
D)  JSON

Question 8

Which of the following AWS services can be used to define alarms to trigger on a certain activity, such as activity success, failure, or delay in AWS Data Pipeline?

Accepted Answer

A)  Amazon SES 
B)  Amazon CodeDeploy 
C)  Amazon SNS 
D)  Amazon SQS

Question 9

You require the ability to analyze a customer's clickstream data on a website so they can do behavioral analysis. Your customer needs to know what sequence of pages and ads their customer clicked on. This data will be used in real time to modify the page layouts as customers click through the site to increase stickiness and advertising click-through. Which option meets the requirements for captioning and analyzing this data?

Accepted Answer

A)  Log clicks in weblogs by URL store to Amazon S3, and then analyze with Elastic MapReduce 
B)  Push web clicks by session to Amazon Kinesis and analyze behavior using Kinesis workers 
C)  Write click events directly to Amazon Redshift and then analyze with SQL 
D)  Publish web clicks by session to an Amazon SQS queue then periodically drain these events to Amazon RDS and analyze with SQL.

Question 10

A company runs an ordering system on AWS using Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda, with each order received as a JSON message. Recently the company had a marketing event that led to a tenfold increase in orders. With this increase, the following undesired behaviors started in the ordering system: Lambda failures while processing orders lead to queue backlogs. The same orders have been processed multiple times. A Solutions Architect has been asked to solve the existing issues with the ordering system and add the following resiliency features: Retain problematic orders for analysis. Send notification if errors go beyond a threshold value. How should the Solutions Architect meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

A)  Receive multiple messages with each Lambda invocation, add error handling to message processing code and delete messages after processing, increase the visibility timeout for the messages, create a dead letter queue for messages that could not be processed, create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm on Lambda errors for notification. 
B)  Receive single messages with each Lambda invocation, put additional Lambda workers to poll the queue, delete messages after processing, increase the message timer for the messages, use Amazon CloudWatch Logs for messages that could not be processed, create a CloudWatch alarm on Lambda errors for notification. 
C)  Receive multiple messages with each Lambda invocation, use long polling when receiving the messages, log the errors from the message processing code using Amazon CloudWatch Logs, create a dead letter queue with AWS Lambda to capture failed invocations, create CloudWatch events on Lambda errors for notification. 
D)  Receive multiple messages with each Lambda invocation, add error handling to message processing code and delete messages after processing, increase the visibility timeout for the messages, create a delay queue for messages that could not be processed, create an Amazon CloudWatch metric on Lambda errors for notification.

Question 11

"In the context of Amazon ElastiCache, from the application's point of view, connecting to the cluster configuration endpoint is no different than connecting directly to an individual cache node."

Accepted Answer

A)  True, from the application's point of view, connecting to the cluster configuration endpoint is no different than connecting directly to an individual cache node since, each has a unique node identifier. 
B)  True, from the application's point of view, connecting to the cluster configuration endpoint is no different than connecting directly to an individual cache node. 
C)  False, you can connect to a cache node, but not to a cluster configuration endpoint. 
D)  False, you can connect to a cluster configuration endpoint, but not to a cache node.

Question 12

A company is running a distributed application on a set of Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores large amounts of data on an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system, and new data is generated monthly. The company needs to back up the data in a secondary AWS Region to restore from in case of a performance problem in its primary Region. The company has an RTO of 1 hour. A solutions architect needs to create a backup strategy while minimizing the extra cost. Which backup strategy should the solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

A)  Create a pipeline in AWS Data Pipeline. Copy the data to an EFS file system in the secondary Region. Create a lifecycle policy to move files to the EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access storage class. 
B)  Set up automatic backups by using AWS Backup. Create a copy rule to copy backups to an Amazon S3 bucket in the secondary Region. Create a lifecycle policy to move backups to the S3 Glacier storage class. 
C)  Set up AWS DataSync and continuously copy the files to an Amazon S3 bucket in the secondary Region. Create a lifecycle policy to move files to the S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage class. 
D)  Turn on EFS Cross-Region Replication and set the secondary Region as the target. Create a lifecycle policy to move files to the EFS Infrequent Access storage class in the secondary Region.

Question 13

A company has a web service deployed in the following two AWS Regions: us-west-2 and us-est-1. Each AWS region runs an identical version of the web service. Amazon Route 53 is used to route customers to the AWS Region that has the lowest latency. The company wants to improve the availability of the web service in case an outage occurs in one of the two AWS Regions. A Solutions Architect has recommended that a Route 53 health check be performed. The health check must detect a specific text on an endpoint. What combination of conditions should the endpoint meet to pass the Route 53 health check? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

A)  The endpoint must establish a TCP connection within 10 seconds. 
B)  The endpoint must return an HTTP 200 status code. 
C)  The endpoint must return an HTTP 2xx or 3xx status code. 
D)  The specific text string must appear within the first 5,120 bytes of the response. 
E)  The endpoint must respond to the request within the number of seconds specified when creating the health check.

Question 14

A company CFO recently analyzed the company's AWS monthly bill and identified an opportunity to reduce the cost for AWS Elastic Beanstalk environments in use. The CFO has asked a Solutions Architect to design a highly available solution that will spin up an Elastic Beanstalk environment in the morning and terminate it at the end of the day. The solution should be designed with minimal operational overhead and to minimize costs. It should also be able to handle the increased use of Elastic Beanstalk environments among different teams, and must provide a one-stop scheduler solution for all teams to keep the operational costs low. What design will meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

A)  Set up a Linux EC2 Micro instance. Configure an IAM role to allow the start and stop of the Elastic Beanstalk environment and attach it to the instance. Create scripts on the instance to start and stop the Elastic Beanstalk environment. Configure cron jobs on the instance to execute the scripts. 
B)  Develop AWS Lambda functions to start and stop the Elastic Beanstalk environment. Configure a Lambda execution role granting Elastic Beanstalk environment start/stop permissions, and assign the role to the Lambda functions. Configure cron expression Amazon CloudWatch Events rules to trigger the Lambda functions. 
C)  Develop an AWS Step Functions state machine with "wait" as its type to control the start and stop time. Use the activity task to start and stop the Elastic Beanstalk environment. Create a role for Step Functions to allow it to start and stop the Elastic Beanstalk environment. Invoke Step Functions daily. 
D)  Configure a time-based Auto Scaling group. In the morning, have the Auto Scaling group scale up an Amazon EC2 instance and put the Elastic Beanstalk environment start command in the EC2 instance user date. At the end of the day, scale down the instance number to 0 to terminate the EC2 instance. Configure a time-based Auto Scaling group. In the morning, have the Auto Scaling group scale up an Amazon EC2 instance and put the Elastic Beanstalk environment start command in the EC2 instance user date. At the end of the day, scale down the instance number to 0 to terminate the EC2 instance.

Question 15

An organization is planning to host a web application in the AWS VPC. The organization does not want to host a database in the public cloud due to statutory requirements. How can the organization setup in this scenario?

Accepted Answer

A)  The organization should plan the app server on the public subnet and database in the organization's data center and connect them with the VPN gateway. 
B)  The organization should plan the app server on the public subnet and use RDS with the private subnet for a secure data operation. 
C)  The organization should use the public subnet for the app server and use RDS with a storage gateway to access as well as sync the data securely from the local data center. 
D)  The organization should plan the app server on the public subnet and database in a private subnet so it will not be in the public cloud.

Question 16

A user has set the IAM policy where it denies all requests if a request is not from IP 10.10.10.1/32. The other policy says allow all requests between 5 PM to 7 PM. What will happen when a user is requesting access from IP 55.109.10.12/32 at 6 PM?

Accepted Answer

A)  It will deny access 
B)  It is not possible to set a policy based on the time or IP 
C)  IAM will throw an error for policy conflict 
D)  It will allow access

Question 17

A company's data center is connected to the AWS Cloud over a minimally used 10-Gbps AWS Direct Connect connection with a private virtual interface to its virtual private cloud (VPC). The company internet connection is 200 Mbps, and the company has a 150-TB dataset that is created each Friday. The data must be transferred and available in Amazon S3 on Monday morning. Which is the LEAST expensive way to meet the requirements while allowing for data transfer growth?

Accepted Answer

A)  Order two 80-GB AWS Snowball appliances. Offload the data to the appliances and ship them to AWS. AWS will copy the data from the Snowball appliances to Amazon S3. 
B)  Create a VPC endpoint for Amazon S3. Copy the data to Amazon S3 by using the VPC endpoint, forcing the transfer to use the Direct Connect connection. 
C)  Create a VPC endpoint for Amazon S3. Set up a reverse proxy farm behind a Classic Load Balancer in the VPC. Copy the data to Amazon S3 using the proxy. 
D)  Create a public virtual interface on a Direct Connect connection, and copy the data to Amazon S3 over the connection.

Question 18

A company has developed a web application that runs on Amazon EC2 instances in one AWS Region. The company has taken on new business in other countries and must deploy its application into other to meet low-latency requirements for its users. The regions can be segregated, and an application running in one region does not need to communicate with instances in other regions. How should the company's Solutions Architect automate the deployment of the application so that it can be MOST efficiently deployed into multiple regions?

Accepted Answer

A)  Write a bash script that uses the AWS CLI to query the current state in one region and output a JSON representation. Pass the JSON representation to the AWS CLI, specifying the --region parameter to deploy the application to other regions. Write a bash script that uses the AWS CLI to query the current state in one region and output a JSON representation. Pass the JSON representation to the AWS CLI, specifying the --region parameter to deploy the application to other regions. 
B)  Write a bash script that uses the AWS CLI to query the current state in one region and output an AWS CloudFormation template. Create a CloudFormation stack from the template by using the AWS CLI, specifying the --region parameter to deploy the application to other regions. Write a bash script that uses the AWS CLI to query the current state in one region and output an AWS CloudFormation template. Create a CloudFormation stack from the template by using the AWS CLI, specifying the --region 
C)  Write a CloudFormation template describing the application's infrastructure in the resources section. Create a CloudFormation stack from the template by using the AWS CLI, specify multiple regions using the --regions parameter to deploy the application. Write a CloudFormation template describing the application's infrastructure in the resources section. Create a CloudFormation stack from the template by using the AWS CLI, specify multiple regions using the --regions parameter to deploy the application. 
D)  Write a CloudFormation template describing the application's infrastructure in the Resources section. Use a CloudFormation stack set from an administrator account to launch stack instances that deploy the application to other regions.

Question 19

You have a website which requires international presence and consequently you have set it up as follows. It is hosted on 30 EC2 instances. It is on in 15 regions around the globe. Each region has 2 instances. All the instances are a public hosted zone. Which of the following is the best way to configure your site to maintain availability with minimum downtime if one of the 15 regions was to lose network connectivity for an extended period? (Choose 2 answers)

Accepted Answer

A)  Create a Route 53 Latency Based Routing Record set that resolves to an Elastic Load Balancer in each region and has the Evaluate Target Health flag set to true. 
B)  Create a Route 53 failover routing policy and configure an active-passive failover. 
C)  Create a Route 53 Failover Routing Policy and assign each resource record set a unique identifier and a relative weight. 
D)  Create a Route 53 Geolocation Routing Policy that resolves to an Elastic Load Balancer in each region and has the Evaluate Target Health flag set to false.

Question 20

A company has a complex web application that leverages Amazon CloudFront for global scalability and performance. Over time, users report that the web application is slowing down. The company's operations team reports that the CloudFront cache hit ratio has been dropping steadily. The cache metrics report indicates that query strings on some URLs are inconsistently ordered and are specified sometimes in mixed-case letters and sometimes in lowercase letters. Which set of actions should the solutions architect take to increase the cache hit ratio as quickly possible?

Accepted Answer

A)  Deploy a Lambda@Edge function to sort parameters by name and force them to be lowercase. Select the CloudFront viewer request trigger to invoke the function. 
B)  Update the CloudFront distribution to disable caching based on query string parameters. 
C)  Deploy a reverse proxy after the load balancer to post process the emitted URLs in the application to force the URL strings to be lowercase. 
D)  Update the CloudFront distribution to specify case-insensitive query string processing.

Exam 10: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C01)