AWSCP1
AWSCP1
AWSCP1
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Hybrid deployment
A hybrid deployment is a way to connect your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. The
most common method of hybrid deployment is between the cloud and existing on-premises
infrastructure to extend an organization's infrastructure into the cloud while connecting cloud
resources to internal systems.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/
Incorrect options:
Cloud deployment - For this type of deployment, a cloud-based application is fully deployed
in the cloud, and all parts of the application run in the cloud. Applications in the cloud have
either been created in the cloud or have been migrated from an existing infrastructure to take
advantage of the benefits of cloud computing.
Private deployment - For this deployment model, resources are deployed on-premises using
virtualization technologies. On-premises deployment does not provide many of the benefits
of cloud computing but is sometimes sought for its ability to provide dedicated resources.
Mixed deployment - This is a made-up option and has been added as a distractor.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/
https://aws.amazon.com/hybrid/
Question 2: Correct
Which of the following options is NOT a feature of Amazon Inspector?
Track configuration changes
(Correct)
AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of
your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource
configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against
desired configurations.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/config/
Incorrect options:
Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the
security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon Inspector automatically
assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices.
Amazon Inspector security assessments help you check for unintended network accessibility
of your Amazon EC2 instances and for vulnerabilities on those EC2 instances.
Amazon Inspector also offers predefined software called an agent that you can optionally
install in the operating system of the EC2 instances that you want to assess. The agent
monitors the behavior of the EC2 instances, including network, file system, and process
activity. It also collects a wide set of behavior and configuration data (telemetry).
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/config/
https://aws.amazon.com/inspector/
Question 3: Incorrect
An IT company wants to run a log backup process every Monday at 2 AM. The usual runtime
of the process is 5 minutes. As a Cloud Practitioner, which AWS services would you
recommend to build a serverless solution for this use-case? (Select two)
EC2 Instance
(Incorrect)
Lambda
(Correct)
Step Function
Systems Manager
CloudWatch
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
To build the solution for the given use-case, you can create a CloudWatch Events rule that
triggers on a schedule via a cron expression. You can then set the Lambda as the target for
this rule.
Incorrect options:
Systems Manager - AWS Systems Manager gives you visibility and control of your
infrastructure on AWS. Systems Manager provides a unified user interface so you can view
operational data from multiple AWS services and allows you to automate operational tasks
across your AWS resources. With Systems Manager, you can group resources, like Amazon
EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, or Amazon RDS instances, by application, view
operational data for monitoring and troubleshooting, and take action on your groups of
resources. Secrets Manager cannot be used to run a process on a schedule.
EC2 Instance - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that
provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud with support for per-second billing.
It is the easiest way to provision servers on AWS Cloud and access the underlying OS. As the
company wants a serverless solution, so this option is ruled out.
Step Function - AWS Step Function lets you coordinate multiple AWS services into
serverless workflows. You can design and run workflows that stitch together services such as
AWS Lambda, AWS Glue and Amazon SageMaker. Step Function cannot be used to run a
process on a schedule.
Reference:
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.concepts.wa-concepts.en.html
Question 4: Incorrect
Which of the following is a container service of AWS?
Amazon SageMaker
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Fargate
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS Fargate
AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that works with both Amazon
Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). Fargate
makes it easy for you to focus on building your applications. Fargate removes the need to
provision and manage servers, lets you specify and pay for resources per application, and
improves security through application isolation by design.
How Fargate
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
Incorrect options:
AWS Elastic Beanstalk - AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and
scaling web applications and services. You simply upload your code and Elastic Beanstalk
automatically handles the deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-
scaling to application health monitoring. Beanstalk provisions servers so it is not a serverless
service.
Amazon SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed service that provides every
developer and data scientist with the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning (ML)
models quickly. SageMaker removes the heavy lifting from each step of the machine learning
process to make it easier to develop high-quality models.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
Question 5: Incorrect
Which of the following AWS authentication mechanisms supports a Multi-Factor
Authentication (MFA) device that you can plug into a USB port on your computer?
Hardware MFA device
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
U2F security key - Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) Security Key is a device that you can plug
into a USB port on your computer. U2F is an open authentication standard hosted by the
FIDO Alliance. When you enable a U2F security key, you sign in by entering your
credentials and then tapping the device instead of manually entering a code.
How to enable the U2F Security Key for your own IAM
user:
via
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_mfa_enable_u2f.html
Incorrect options:
Virtual MFA device - This is a software app that runs on a phone or other device and
emulates a physical device. The device generates a six-digit numeric code based upon a time-
synchronized one-time password algorithm. The user must type a valid code from the device
on a second webpage during sign-in. Each virtual MFA device assigned to a user must be
unique.
Hardware MFA device - This is a hardware device that generates a six-digit numeric code
based upon a time-synchronized one-time password algorithm. The user must type a valid
code from the device on a second webpage during sign-in. Each MFA device assigned to a
user must be unique. A user cannot type a code from another user's device to be
authenticated.
SMS text message-based MFA - This is a type of MFA in which the IAM user settings
include the phone number of the user's SMS-compatible mobile device. When the user signs
in, AWS sends a six-digit numeric code by SMS text message to the user's mobile device.
The user is required to type that code on a second webpage during sign-in.
References:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_mfa.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_mfa_enable_u2f.html
Question 6: Incorrect
AWS Compute Optimizer delivers recommendations for which of the following AWS
resources? (Select two)
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), AWS Lambda functions
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct options:
Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups
AWS Compute Optimizer helps you identify the optimal AWS resource configurations, such
as Amazon EC2 instance types, Amazon EBS volume configurations, and AWS Lambda
function memory sizes, using machine learning to analyze historical utilization metrics. AWS
Compute Optimizer delivers recommendations for selected types of EC2 instances, EC2 Auto
Scaling groups, EBS volumes, and Lambda functions.
Compute Optimizer calculates an individual performance risk score for each resource
dimension of the recommended instance, including CPU, memory, EBS throughput, EBS
IOPS, disk throughput, disk throughput, network throughput, and network packets per second
(PPS).
AWS Compute Optimizer provides EC2 instance type and size recommendations for EC2
Auto Scaling groups with a fixed group size, meaning desired, minimum, and maximum are
all set to the same value and have no scaling policy attached.
AWS Compute Optimizer supports IOPS and throughput recommendations for General
Purpose (SSD) (gp3) volumes and IOPS recommendations for Provisioned IOPS (io1 and
io2) volumes.
Compute Optimizer helps you optimize two categories of Lambda functions. The first
category includes Lambda functions that may be over-provisioned in memory sizes. The
second category includes compute-intensive Lambda functions that may benefit from
additional CPU power.
Incorrect options:
AWS Compute Optimizer does not provide optimization recommendations for S3 and EFS,
so these options are incorrect.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/compute-optimizer/faqs/
Question 7: Correct
A company would like to separate cost for AWS services by the department for cost
allocation. Which of the following is the simplest way to achieve this task?
Create one account for all departments and share this account
Create different accounts for different departments
Create different VPCs for different departments
Create tags for each department
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
You can assign metadata to your AWS resources in the form of tags. Each tag is a label
consisting of a user-defined key and value. Tags can help you manage, identify, organize,
search for, and filter resources. You can create tags to categorize resources by purpose,
owner, environment, or other criteria.
Typically, you use business tags such as cost center/business unit, customer, or project to
associate AWS costs with traditional cost-allocation dimensions. But a cost allocation report
can include any tag. This lets you associate costs with technical or security dimensions, such
as specific applications, environments, or compliance programs.
optimization: via
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_tagging.html
Incorrect options:
Create different accounts for different departments - Users can belong to several
departments. Therefore, having different accounts for different departments would imply
some users having several accounts. This is contrary to the security best practice: one
physical user = one account. Also, it is much simpler to set up tags for tracking costs for each
department.
Create one account for all departments and share this account - Sharing accounts is not a
security best practice, and is not recommended.
Create different VPCs for different departments - Creating different VPCs will not help
with separating costs.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_tagging.html
Question 8: Incorrect
Which policy describes prohibited uses of the web services offered by Amazon Web
Services?
AWS Applicable Use Policy
AWS Trusted Advisor
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
The Acceptable Use Policy describes prohibited uses of the web services offered by Amazon
Web Services, Inc. and its affiliates (the “Services”) and the website located at
http://aws.amazon.com (the “AWS Site”). This policy is present at
https://aws.amazon.com/aup/ and is updated on a need basis by AWS.
Incorrect options:
AWS Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real-time
guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices on cost
optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits, and performance improvement. Whether
establishing new workflows, developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement,
recommendations provided by Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions
provisioned optimally. Trusted Advisor does not describe prohibited uses of the web services
offered by Amazon Web Services.
AWS Fair Use Policy - This is a made-up option and has been added as a distractor.
AWS Applicable Use Policy - This is a made-up option and has been added as a distractor.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/aup/
Question 9: Correct
A unicorn startup is building an analytics application with support for a speech-based
interface. The application will accept speech-based input from users and then convey results
via speech. As a Cloud Practitioner, which solution would you recommend for the given use-
case?
Use Amazon Polly to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then use
Amazon Translate to convey the text results via speech
Use Amazon Translate to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then
use Amazon Polly to convey the text results via speech
Use Amazon Transcribe to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then
use Amazon Polly to convey the text results via speech
(Correct)
Use Amazon Polly to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then use
Amazon Transcribe to convey the text results via speech
Explanation
Correct option:
Use Amazon Transcribe to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then use
Amazon Polly to convey the text results via speech
You can use Amazon Transcribe to add speech-to-text capability to your applications.
Amazon Transcribe uses a deep learning process called automatic speech recognition (ASR)
to convert speech to text quickly and accurately. Amazon Transcribe can be used to
transcribe customer service calls, to automate closed captioning and subtitling, and to
generate metadata for media assets.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/
You can use Amazon Polly to turn text into lifelike speech thereby allowing you to create
applications that talk. Polly's Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning
technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech.
Amazon Polly
Benefits:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/polly/
Amazon Translate is used for language translation. Amazon Translate uses neural machine
translation via deep learning models to deliver more accurate and more natural-sounding
translation than traditional statistical and rule-based translation algorithms.
Incorrect options:
Use Amazon Polly to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then use Amazon
Transcribe to convey the text results via speech - Amazon Polly cannot be used to convert
speech to text, so this option is incorrect.
Use Amazon Translate to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then use
Amazon Polly to convey the text results via speech - Amazon Translate cannot convert
speech to text, so this option is incorrect.
Use Amazon Polly to convert speech to text for downstream analysis. Then use Amazon
Translate to convey the text results via speech - Amazon Polly cannot be used to convert
speech to text, so this option is incorrect.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/
https://aws.amazon.com/polly/
(Correct)
(Correct)
Serverless is the native architecture of the cloud that enables you to shift more of your
operational responsibilities to AWS, increasing your agility and innovation. Serverless allows
you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers. It eliminates
infrastructure management tasks such as server or cluster provisioning, patching, operating
system maintenance, and capacity provisioning.
AWS Lambda - With Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or
backend service - all with zero administration. Just upload your code and Lambda takes care
of everything required to run and scale your code with high availability. You can set up your
code to automatically trigger from other AWS services or call it directly from any web or
mobile app.
AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for
the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running.
AWS Fargate - AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that works with
both Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
(EKS). Fargate makes it easy for you to focus on building your applications. Fargate removes
the need to provision and manage servers, lets you specify and pay for resources per
application, and improves security through application isolation by design.
AWS Fargate is a purpose-built serverless compute engine for containers. Fargate scales and
manages the infrastructure required to run your containers.
Incorrect options:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud with support for
per-second billing. It is the easiest way to provision servers on AWS Cloud and access the
underlying OS. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server
instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your
computing requirements change.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk - AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and
scaling web applications and services. You simply upload your code and Elastic Beanstalk
automatically handles the deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-
scaling to application health monitoring. Beanstalk provisions servers so it is not a serverless
service.
Amazon Lightsail - Lightsail is an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers you everything
needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan. Lightsail offers
several preconfigured, one-click-to-launch operating systems, development stacks, and web
applications, including Linux, Windows OS, and WordPress.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/
https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
(Correct)
ECS
Instance Store
(Correct)
EFS
Explanation
Correct options:
EBS - Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is an easy to use, high-performance block storage
service designed for use with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for both throughput and
transaction-intensive workloads at any scale. A broad range of workloads, such as relational
and non-relational databases, enterprise applications, containerized applications, big data
analytics engines, file systems, and media workflows are widely deployed on Amazon EBS.
Instance Store - An instance store provides temporary block-level storage for your EC2
instance. This storage is located on disks that are physically attached to the host computer.
Instance store is ideal for the temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such
as buffers, caches, scratch data, and other temporary content, or for data that is replicated
across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers. Instance storage is
temporary, data is lost if instance experiences failure or is terminated. EC2 instance store
cannot be used for file sharing between instances.
Incorrect options:
EFS - Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides a simple, scalable, fully
managed, elastic NFS file system. It is built to scale on-demand to petabytes without
disrupting applications, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files,
eliminating the need to provision and manage capacity to accommodate growth. Amazon
EFS is designed to provide massively parallel shared access to thousands of Amazon EC2
instances, enabling your applications to achieve high levels of aggregate throughput and
IOPS with consistent low latencies.
S3 - Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service that offers
industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. This means
customers of all sizes and industries can use it to store and protect any amount of data for a
range of use cases, such as websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive,
enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceStorage.html
(Correct)
AWS CloudFormation
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates code deployments to any instance, including
Amazon EC2 instances and instances running on-premises. AWS CodeDeploy makes it
easier for you to rapidly release new features, helps you avoid downtime during deployment,
and handles the complexity of updating your applications. You can use AWS CodeDeploy to
automate deployments, eliminating the need for error-prone manual operations, and the
service scales with your infrastructure so you can easily deploy to one instance or thousands.
Incorrect options:
AWS CodePipeline - AWS CodePipeline is a continuous delivery service that enables you to
model, visualize, and automate the steps required to release your software. With AWS
CodePipeline, you model the full release process for building your code, deploying to pre-
production environments, testing your application and releasing it to production.
AWS CodePipeline integrates with AWS services such as AWS CodeCommit, Amazon S3,
AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS CloudFormation, AWS
OpsWorks, Amazon ECS, and AWS Lambda. To further elucidate, CodePipeline cannot by
itself deploy the code, it can integrate with CodeDeploy for the actual deployment.
How CodePipeline
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/
Amazon RedShift
Amazon Aurora
Explanation
Correct option:
Amazon DynamoDB
Incorrect options:
Amazon Aurora - Amazon Aurora is an AWS service for relational databases. Aurora
requires a well-defined schema.
Amazon RDS - Amazon RDS is an AWS service for relational databases. RDS requires a
well-defined schema.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/features/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/
SQLtoNoSQL.WhyDynamoDB.html
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
APN Consulting Partner
The AWS Partner Network (APN) is the global partner program for technology and
consulting businesses that leverage Amazon Web Services to build solutions and services for
customers.
APN Consulting Partners are professional services firms that help customers of all types and
sizes design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on AWS,
accelerating their migration to AWS cloud.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/partners/
Incorrect options:
AWS Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real-time
guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices on cost
optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits, and performance improvement. Whether
establishing new workflows, developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement,
recommendations provided by Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions
provisioned optimally. All AWS customers get access to the seven core Trusted Advisor
checks to help increase the security and performance of the AWS environment. Trusted
Advisor cannot be used to migrate to AWS and manage applications on AWS Cloud.
Concierge Support Team - The Concierge Support Team are AWS billing and account
experts that specialize in working with enterprise accounts. They will quickly and efficiently
assist you with your billing and account inquiries. The Concierge Support Team is only
available for the Enterprise Support plan. Concierge Support Team cannot help in migrating
to AWS and managing applications on AWS Cloud.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/partners/
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide enhanced availability and durability for RDS
database (DB) instances, making them a natural fit for production database workloads. When
you provision a Multi-AZ DB Instance, Amazon RDS automatically creates a primary DB
Instance and synchronously replicates the data to a standby instance in a different
Availability Zone (AZ).
How Multi-AZ
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/rds/features/multi-az/
Exam Alert:
Please review the differences between Multi-AZ, Multi-Region and Read Replica
deployments for
RDS:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/rds/features/multi-az/
Incorrect options:
Multi-AZ protects the database from a regional failure - You need to use RDS in Multi-
Region deployment configuration to protect from a regional failure. Multi-AZ cannot protect
from a regional failure.
Multi-AZ reduces database usage costs - Multi-AZ RDS increases the database costs
compared to the standard deployment. So this option is incorrect.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/rds/features/multi-az/
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS X-Ray - You can use AWS X-Ray to analyze and debug serverless and distributed
applications such as those built using a microservices architecture. With X-Ray, you can
understand how your application and its underlying services are performing to identify and
troubleshoot the root cause of performance issues and errors.
How X-Ray
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/xray/
Incorrect options:
AWS Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real-time
guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices on cost
optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits and performance improvement. Whether
establishing new workflows, developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement,
recommendations provided by Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions
provisioned optimally. Trusted Advisor cannot be used to debug performance issues for this
serverless application built using a microservices architecture.
Amazon Pinpoint - Amazon Pinpoint allows marketers and developers to deliver customer-
centric engagement experiences by capturing customer usage data to draw real-time insights.
Pinpoint cannot be used to debug performance issues for this serverless application built
using a microservices architecture.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/pinpoint/
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/xray/
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS SSO is an AWS service that enables you to makes it easy to centrally manage access to
multiple AWS accounts and business applications and provide users with single sign-on
access to all their assigned accounts and applications from one place.
With AWS SSO, you can easily manage SSO access and user permissions to all of your
accounts in AWS Organizations centrally. AWS SSO allows you to create and manage user
identities in AWS SSO’s identity store, or easily connect to your existing identity source
including Microsoft Active Directory, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), and Okta
Universal Directory.
You can use AWS SSO to quickly and easily assign and manage your employees’ access to
multiple AWS accounts, SAML-enabled cloud applications (such as Salesforce, Office 365,
and Box), and custom-built in-house applications, all from a central place.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/single-sign-on/
Incorrect options:
AWS Cognito - Amazon Cognito lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to
your web and mobile apps quickly and easily. With Amazon Cognito, you also have the
option to authenticate users through social identity providers such as Facebook, Twitter, or
Amazon, with SAML identity solutions, or by using your own identity system. It is an
identity management solution for customers/developers building B2C or B2B apps for their
customers.
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) - AWS Identity and Access Management
(IAM) enables you to securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users.
Using IAM, you can create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow
and deny their access to AWS resources. It is not used to log in but to manage users and
roles.
AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) - The AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) is a
unified tool to manage your AWS services. With just one tool to download and configure,
you can control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through
scripts. It is not a central user portal.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/single-sign-on/
(Correct)
(Correct)
Exam Alert:
Please check out the following six advantages of Cloud Computing. You would certainly be
asked questions on the advantages of Cloud Computing compared to a traditional on-
premises setup:
via - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/six-advantages-of-cloud-
computing.html
Incorrect options:
Limited scaling - Scaling is not limited in the cloud. You can access as much or as little
capacity as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes’ notice.
AWS is responsible for security in the cloud - AWS is responsible for security OF the
cloud, which means AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all the
services offered in the AWS Cloud.
Trade operational expense for capital expense - In the cloud, you trade capital expense
(CAPEX) for the operational expense (OPEX). Instead of having to invest heavily in data
centers and servers before you know how you’re going to use them, you can pay only when
you consume computing resources, and pay only for how much you consume.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/six-advantages-of-cloud-
computing.html
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
CloudTrail
You can use CloudTrail to log, monitor and retain account activity related to actions across
your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides an event history of your AWS account
activity, including actions taken through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs,
command-line tools, and other AWS services.
How CloudTrail
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/
Incorrect options:
Config - AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the
configurations of your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS
resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations
against desired configurations.
Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real-time
guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices on cost
optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits and performance improvement.
Exam Alert:
You may see use-cases asking you to select one of CloudWatch vs CloudTrail vs Config. Just
remember this thumb rule -
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/
(Correct)
Developer
Business
Basic
Explanation
Correct option:
Enterprise
AWS offers three different support plans to cater to each of its customers - Developer,
Business, and Enterprise Support plans. A basic support plan is included for all AWS
customers.
AWS Enterprise Support provides customers with concierge-like service where the main
focus is on helping the customer achieve their outcomes and find success in the cloud. With
Enterprise Support, you get access to online training with self-paced labs, 24x7 technical
support from high-quality engineers, tools and technology to automatically manage the health
of your environment, consultative architectural guidance, a designated Technical Account
Manager (TAM) to coordinate access to proactive/preventative programs and AWS subject
matter experts.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/plans/enterprise/
Incorrect options:
Developer - AWS recommends Developer Support if you are testing or doing early
development on AWS and want the ability to get technical support during business hours as
well as general architectural guidance as you build and test.
Business - AWS recommends Business Support if you have production workloads on AWS
and want 24x7 access to technical support and architectural guidance in the context of your
specific use-cases.
None of these three support plans provide access to online training with self-paced labs.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/plans/
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/plans/enterprise/
Question 21: Incorrect
Which of the following AWS services are always free to use (Select two)?
DynamoDB
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct options:
Identity and Access Management (IAM) - AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Using IAM, you can
create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their
access to AWS resources. IAM is a feature of your AWS account offered at no additional
charge.
AWS Auto Scaling - AWS Auto Scaling monitors your applications and automatically
adjusts the capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost.
Using AWS Auto Scaling, it’s easy to setup application scaling for multiple resources across
multiple services in minutes. AWS Auto Scaling is available at no additional charge. You pay
only for the AWS resources needed to run your applications and Amazon CloudWatch
monitoring fees.
Incorrect options:
Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed
to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers. This is not a free service. You pay
for what you use or depending on the plan you choose.
Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) - Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an
object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and
performance. S3 service is not free and you pay to depend on the storage class you choose for
your data.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/iam/
https://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/
(Correct)
AWS Service Health Dashboard publishes most up-to-the-minute information on the status
and availability of all AWS services in tabular form for all Regions that AWS is present in.
You can check on this page https://status.aws.amazon.com/ to get current status information.
AWS Service Health Dashboard offers the possibility to subscribe to an RSS feed to be
notified of interruptions to each service.
Incorrect options:
Amazon SNS - Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a highly available,
durable, secure, fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to decouple
microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. It can be used to deliver
notifications, but it does not provide current services' status.
AWS Personal Health Dashboard - AWS Personal Health Dashboard provides alerts and
remediation guidance when AWS is experiencing events that may impact you. It does not
provide updates about the general status for all AWS services.
Exam Alert:
While the Service Health Dashboard displays the general status of AWS services, Personal
Health Dashboard gives you a personalized view of the performance and availability of the
AWS services underlying your AWS resources.
AWS Lambda - AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.
It does not provide all AWS services' status.
Reference:
https://status.aws.amazon.com/
(Incorrect)
Multi AZ deployment
Auto Scaling
(Correct)
Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling helps you ensure that you have the correct number of Amazon EC2 instances
available to handle the load for your application. You create collections of EC2 instances,
called Auto Scaling groups. You can specify the minimum number of instances in each Auto
Scaling group, and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling ensures that your group never goes below this
size.
via - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/what-is-amazon-ec2-auto-
scaling.html
Incorrect options:
Multi AZ deployment - With Availability Zones, you can design and operate applications
and databases that automatically failover between zones without interruption. Multi AZ
deployment of EC2 instances provided high availability, it does not help in scaling resources.
Network Load Balancer - Network Load Balancer is best suited for load balancing of
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Transport Layer
Security (TLS) traffic where extreme performance is required. It distributes traffic, does not
scale resources.
Application Load Balancer - An Application Load Balancer serves as the single point of
contact for clients. The load balancer distributes incoming application traffic across multiple
targets, such as EC2 instances, in multiple Availability Zones. It distributes traffic, does not
scale resources.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/what-is-amazon-ec2-auto-
scaling.html
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
AWS Cost Explorer has an easy-to-use interface that lets you visualize, understand, and
manage your AWS costs and usage over time. AWS Cost Explorer includes a default report
that helps you visualize the costs and usage associated with your top five cost-accruing AWS
services, and gives you a detailed breakdown of all services in the table view. The reports let
you adjust the time range to view historical data going back up to twelve months to gain an
understanding of your cost trends. AWS Cost Explorer also supports forecasting to get a
better idea of what your costs and usage may look like in the future so that you can plan.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/
Incorrect options:
AWS Cost and Usage Reports - The AWS Cost and Usage Reports (AWS CUR) contains
the most comprehensive set of cost and usage data available. You can use Cost and Usage
Reports to publish your AWS billing reports to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon
S3) bucket that you own. You can receive reports that break down your costs by the hour or
month, by product or product resource, or by tags that you define yourself. AWS updates the
report in your bucket once a day in a comma-separated value (CSV) format. AWS Cost and
Usage Reports cannot forecast your AWS account cost and usage.
AWS Budgets - AWS Budgets gives the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when
your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount. You can also
use AWS Budgets to set reservation utilization or coverage targets and receive alerts when
your utilization drops below the threshold you define. Budgets can be created at the monthly,
quarterly, or yearly level, and you can customize the start and end dates. You can further
refine your budget to track costs associated with multiple dimensions, such as AWS service,
linked account, tag, and others. AWS Budgets cannot forecast your AWS account cost and
usage.
AWS Pricing Calculator - AWS Pricing Calculator lets you explore AWS services and
create an estimate for the cost of your use cases on AWS. You can model your solutions
before building them, explore the price points and calculations behind your estimate, and find
the available instance types and contract terms that meet your needs. This enables you to
make informed decisions about using AWS. You can plan your AWS costs and usage or price
out setting up a new set of instances and services. You cannot use this service to forecast your
AWS account cost and usage.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
S3 Glacier Deep Archive is Amazon S3’s lowest-cost storage class and supports long-term
retention and digital preservation for data that may be accessed once or twice in a year. It is
designed for customers — particularly those in highly-regulated industries, such as the
Financial Services, Healthcare, and Public Sectors — that retain data sets for 7-10 years or
longer to meet regulatory compliance requirements. S3 Glacier Deep Archive can also be
used for backup and disaster recovery use cases. It has a retrieval time (first byte latency) of
12 to 48 hours.
Incorrect options:
AWS Storage Gateway - AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that gives
you on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage. All data transferred between the
gateway and AWS storage is encrypted using SSL (for all three types of gateways - File,
Volume and Tape Gateways). Storage Gateway cannot be used for data archival.
Amazon EFS - Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides a simple, scalable, fully
managed elastic NFS file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises
resources. It is built to scale on-demand to petabytes without disrupting applications, growing
and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, eliminating the need to provision
and manage capacity to accommodate growth.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/
(Correct)
AWS CloudFormation
(Incorrect)
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS CloudTrail
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct options:
Foundations are part of the Reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. AWS
states that before architecting any system, foundational requirements that influence reliability
should be in place. The services that are part of foundations are: Amazon VPC, AWS Trusted
Advisor, AWS Service Quotas (formerly called AWS Service Limits).
AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real-time guidance to help you
provision your resources following AWS best practices on cost optimization, security, fault
tolerance, service limits, and performance improvement. Whether establishing new
workflows, developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement, recommendations
provided by Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions provisioned optimally.
Service Quotas enables you to view and manage your quotas for AWS services from a central
location. Quotas, also referred to as limits in AWS, are the maximum values for the
resources, actions, and items in your AWS account. Each AWS service defines its quotas and
establishes default values for those quotas.
Incorrect options:
Reference:
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.pillar.reliability.en.html
(Correct)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Set up Auto Scaling groups to align the number of instances with demand
An Auto Scaling group contains a collection of Amazon EC2 instances that are treated as a
logical grouping for automatic scaling and management. You can adjust its size to meet
demand, either manually or by using automatic scaling.
AWS Auto Scaling can help you optimize your utilization and cost efficiencies when
consuming AWS services so you only pay for the resources you need.
Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances (RI) provide a significant discount (up to 72%) compared
to On-Demand pricing and provide a capacity reservation when used in a specific
Availability Zone.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Incorrect options:
Vertically scale the EC2 instances - Vertically scaling EC2 instances (increasing one
computer performance by adding CPUs, memory, and storage) is limited and is way more
expensive than scaling horizontally (adding more computers to the system).
Opt for a higher AWS Support plan - The AWS Support plans do not help with EC2 costs.
Build its own servers - Building your own servers is more expensive than using EC2
instances in the cloud. You're more likely to spend more money than saving money.
References:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/AutoScalingGroup.html
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.concept.horizontal-scaling.en.html
https://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
A software app that runs on a phone or other device and emulates a physical device. The
device generates a six-digit numeric code based upon a time-synchronized one-time password
algorithm. The user must type a valid code from the device on a second webpage during sign-
in. Each virtual MFA device assigned to a user must be unique. A user cannot type a code
from another user's virtual MFA device to authenticate.
Google Authenticator is an example of a Virtual MFA
device:
Incorrect options:
U2F security key - A device that you plug into a USB port on your computer. U2F is an
open authentication standard hosted by the FIDO Alliance. When you enable a U2F security
key, you sign in by entering your credentials and then tapping the device instead of manually
entering a code.
Hardware MFA device - A hardware device that generates a six-digit numeric code based
upon a time-synchronized one-time password algorithm. The user must type a valid code
from the device on a second webpage during sign-in. Each MFA device assigned to a user
must be unique. A user cannot type a code from another user's device to be authenticated.
Soft Token MFA device - This is a made-up option and has been added as a distractor.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_mfa.html
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Incorrect options:
Horizontal Scaling - A "horizontally scalable" system is one that can increase capacity by
adding more computers to the system. This is in contrast to a "vertically scalable" system,
which is constrained to running its processes on only one computer; in such systems, the only
way to increase performance is to add more resources into one computer in the form of faster
(or more) CPUs, memory or storage. Horizontally scalable systems are oftentimes able to
outperform vertically scalable systems by enabling parallel execution of workloads and
distributing those across many different computers. Auto Scaling Group is an example of
Horizontal Scaling on AWS.
Vertical Scaling - Vertical Scaling is adding more resources (like CPU, RAM) to a single
node or machine. Example- Resizing an instance of EC2.
References:
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.concept.availability.en.html
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.concept.horizontal-scaling.en.html
(Correct)
AWS Systems Manager allows you to centralize operational data from multiple AWS
services and automate tasks across your AWS resources. You can create logical groups of
resources such as applications, different layers of an application stack, or production versus
development environments.
With Systems Manager, you can select a resource group and view its recent API activity,
resource configuration changes, related notifications, operational alerts, software inventory,
and patch compliance status. You can also take action on each resource group depending on
your operational needs. Systems Manager provides a central place to view and manage your
AWS resources, so you can have complete visibility and control over your operations.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/
Incorrect options:
AWS Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online resource to help you reduce
cost, increase performance, and improve security by optimizing your AWS environment.
Trusted Advisor provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following
AWS best practices. It is not used to get operational insights of AWS resources.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/
(Correct)
AWS Batch
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS OpsWorks
Incorrect options:
AWS CodeDeploy - AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates code deployments to any
instance, including EC2 instances and instances running on premises. It does not use Chef
and Puppet, and does not deal with infrastructure configuration and orchestration.
AWS Batch - AWS Batch enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and
efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. It is not used to
automate operations on his on-premises environment using Chef and Puppet.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/opsworks/
(Incorrect)
300 seconds
60 seconds
(Correct)
600 seconds
Explanation
Correct option:
60 seconds - There is a one-minute minimum charge for Linux based EC2 instances, so this
is the correct option.
Incorrect options:
30 seconds
300 seconds
600 seconds
These three options contradict the details provided earlier in the explanation, so these options
are incorrect.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-per-second-billing-for-ec2-instances-and-ebs-
volumes/
(Correct)
Cost Optimization
Performance Efficiency
Security
Explanation
Correct option:
Operational Excellence
The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of decisions
you make while building systems on AWS. By using the Framework you will learn
architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-
effective systems in the cloud. It provides a way for you to consistently measure your
architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement.
The Operational Excellence pillar includes the ability to run and monitor systems to deliver
business value and to continually improve supporting processes and procedures. In the cloud,
you can apply the same engineering discipline that you use for application code to your entire
environment. You can define your entire workload (applications, infrastructure) as code and
update it with code. You can implement your operations procedures as code and automate
their execution by triggering them in response to events.
Incorrect options:
Cost Optimization - Cost Optimization focuses on avoiding un-needed costs. Key topics
include understanding and controlling where the money is being spent, selecting the most
appropriate and right number of resource types, analyzing spend over time, and scaling to
meet business needs without overspending.
Security - The security pillar focuses on protecting information & systems. Key topics
include confidentiality and integrity of data, identifying and managing who can do what with
privilege management, protecting systems, and establishing controls to detect security events.
Reference:
https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.pillar.operationalExcellence.en.html
Spot Instance
On-Demand Instance
Dedicated Host
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
Reserved Instance - Reserved Instances provide you with significant savings (up to 75%) on
your Amazon EC2 costs compared to On-Demand Instance pricing. Reserved Instances are
not physical instances, but rather a billing discount applied to the use of On-Demand
Instances in your account. You can purchase a Reserved Instance for a one-year or three-year
commitment, with the three-year commitment offering a bigger discount. Reserved instances
cannot be interrupted. So this is the correct option.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Incorrect options:
Spot Instance - A Spot Instance is an unused EC2 instance that is available for less than the
On-Demand price. Because Spot Instances enable you to request unused EC2 instances at
steep discounts (up to 90%), you can lower your Amazon EC2 costs significantly. Spot
Instances are well-suited for data analysis, batch jobs, background processing, and optional
tasks. These can be terminated at short notice, so these are not suitable for critical workloads
that need to run at a specific point in time. So this option is not correct for the given use-case.
Dedicated Host - Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts allow you to use your eligible software
licenses from vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle on Amazon EC2 so that you get the
flexibility and cost-effectiveness of using your licenses, but with the resiliency, simplicity,
and elasticity of AWS. An Amazon EC2 Dedicated Host is a physical server fully dedicated
for your use, so you can help address corporate compliance requirement. They're not cost-
efficient compared to On-Demand instances. So this option is not correct.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
AWS Whitepapers
AWS Forums
Explanation
Correct option:
Quick Starts are built by AWS solutions architects and partners to help you deploy popular
technologies on AWS, based on AWS best practices for security and high availability. These
accelerators reduce hundreds of manual procedures into just a few steps, so you can build
your production environment quickly and start using it immediately.
Each Quick Start includes AWS CloudFormation templates that automate the deployment
and a guide that discusses the architecture and provides step-by-step deployment instructions.
Incorrect options:
AWS Forums - AWS Forums is an AWS community platform where people can help each
other. It is not used to deploy technologies on AWS.
AWS CodeDeploy - AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates code deployments to any
instance, including EC2 instances and instances running on-premises. It is not suited to
rapidly deploy popular technologies on AWS ready to used immediately.
AWS Whitepapers - AWS Whitepapers are technical content authored by AWS and the
AWS community to expand your knowledge of the cloud. They include technical
whitepapers, technical guides, reference material, and reference architectures diagrams. You
can find useful content for your deployment, but it is not a service that will deploy
technologies.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/
(Correct)
AWS OpsWorks
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation allows you to use programming languages or a simple text file to
model and provision, in an automated and secure manner, all the resources needed for your
applications across all Regions and accounts. A stack is a collection of AWS resources that
you can manage as a single unit. In other words, you can create, update, or delete a collection
of resources by creating, updating, or deleting stacks.
How CloudFormation
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/
Incorrect options:
AWS Systems Manager - AWS Systems Manager gives you visibility and control of your
infrastructure on AWS. Systems Manager provides a unified user interface so you can view
operational data from multiple AWS services and allows you to automate operational tasks
across your AWS resources. With Systems Manager, you can group resources, like Amazon
EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, or Amazon RDS instances, by application, view
operational data for monitoring and troubleshooting, and take action on your groups of
resources. You cannot use this service to provision AWS infrastructure.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/what-is-
cfnstacksets.html
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
Deploy patches on EC2 instances across the member AWS accounts
Provision EC2 Spot instances across the member AWS accounts
Volume discounts for Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 aggregated across the
member AWS accounts
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Volume discounts for Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 aggregated across the member
AWS accounts
Share the reserved EC2 instances amongst the member AWS accounts
AWS Organizations helps you to centrally manage billing; control access, compliance, and
security; and share resources such as reserved EC2 instances across your AWS accounts.
Using AWS Organizations, you can automate account creation, create groups of accounts to
reflect your business needs, and apply policies for these groups for governance. You can also
simplify billing by setting up a single payment method for all of your AWS accounts. AWS
Organizations is available to all AWS customers at no additional charge.
You can use AWS Organizations to set up a single payment method for all the AWS accounts
in your organization through consolidated billing. With consolidated billing, you can see a
combined view of charges incurred by all your accounts, as well as take advantage of pricing
benefits from aggregated usage, such as volume discounts for Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/organizations/
Incorrect options:
Check vulnerabilities on EC2 instances across the member AWS accounts
These three options contradict the details provided earlier in the explanation, so these options
are incorrect.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/organizations/
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Amazon Inspector
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS SSM Session Manager is a fully-managed service that provides you with an interactive
browser-based shell and CLI experience. It helps provide secure and auditable instance
management without the need to open inbound ports, maintain bastion hosts, and manage
SSH keys. Session Manager helps to enable compliance with corporate policies that require
controlled access to instances, increase security and auditability of access to the instances
while providing simplicity and cross-platform instance access to end-users.
Incorrect options:
Amazon EC2 Instance Connect - Amazon EC2 Instance Connect provides a simple and
secure way to connect to your Linux instances using Secure Shell (SSH). With EC2 Instance
Connect, you use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and principals to
control SSH access to your instances, removing the need to share and manage SSH keys.
Instance Connect will need port 22 to be open for traffic. Therefore, not the correct option
here.
Amazon Inspector - Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that
helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon
Inspector automatically assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations
from best practices. After performing an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed
list of security findings prioritized by level of severity. Inspector cannot provide secure shell
access to EC2 instances.
Amazon Route 53 - Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain
Name System (DNS) web service. It is designed to give developers and businesses an
extremely reliable and cost-effective way to route end users to Internet applications by
translating names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that
computers use to connect to each other. Route 53 cannot provide secure shell access to EC2
instances.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/faq/
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS CloudHSM
AWS CloudHSM is a cloud-based Hardware Security Module (HSM) that enables you to
easily generate and use your encryption keys on the AWS Cloud. With CloudHSM, you can
manage your encryption keys using FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated HSMs. It is a fully-
managed service that automates time-consuming administrative tasks for you, such as
hardware provisioning, software patching, high-availability, and backups.
Incorrect options:
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) - AWS Key Management Service (KMS) makes it
easy for you to create and manage cryptographic keys and control their use across a wide
range of AWS services and in your applications. AWS KMS is a secure and resilient service
that uses hardware security modules that have been validated under FIPS 140-2, or are in the
process of being validated, to protect your keys. KMS cannot be used as a Hardware Security
Module for data encryption operations in AWS Cloud.
AWS Secrets Manager - AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access
your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate,
manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their
lifecycle. Users and applications retrieve secrets with a call to Secrets Manager APIs,
eliminating the need to hardcode sensitive information in plain text. Secrets Manager cannot
be used as a Hardware Security Module for data encryption operations in AWS Cloud.
AWS Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real-time
guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices on cost
optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits, and performance improvement. Whether
establishing new workflows, developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement,
recommendations provided by Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions
provisioned optimally.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/cloudhsm/
(Correct)
AWS Fargate
Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
Explanation
Correct option:
Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) - Amazon Elastic Container Service
(Amazon ECS) is a highly scalable, fast, container management service that makes it easy to
run, stop, and manage Docker containers on a cluster. This is not a fully managed service and
you can manage the underlying servers yourself.
Incorrect options:
AWS Fargate - AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers. It works with
both Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
(EKS). Fargate makes it easy for you to focus on building your applications. Fargate removes
the need to provision and manage servers, lets you specify and pay for resources per
application, and improves security through application isolation by design. With Fargate, you
do not have access to the underlying servers, so this option is incorrect.
How Fargate
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
AWS Lambda - AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without
provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and
scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second. Lambda does not
support running container applications.
Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) - Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
can be used to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images. Amazon ECR eliminates
the need to operate your container repositories. ECR does not support running container
applications.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
(Correct)
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS Config
Amazon Inspector
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides real-time guidance to help provision
your resources following AWS best practices. Whether establishing new workflows,
developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement, recommendations provided by
Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions provisioned optimally. AWS Trusted
Advisor analyzes your AWS environment and provides best practice recommendations in
five categories: Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, Service Limits.
AWS Trusted Advisor can check Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume
configurations and warns when volumes appear to be underused. Charges begin when a
volume is created. If a volume remains unattached or has very low write activity (excluding
boot volumes) for a period of time, the volume is probably not being used.
Incorrect options:
AWS Config - AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the
configurations of your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS
resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations
against desired configurations. Think resource-specific change history, audit, and
compliance; think Config. Its a configuration tracking service and not an infrastructure
tracking service.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/trusted-advisor/best-practice-checklist/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-cloud-watch-events.html
(Correct)
AWS customer can buy software that has been bundled into customized AMIs
by the AWS Marketplace sellers
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS customer can buy software that has been bundled into customized AMIs by the
AWS Marketplace sellers
AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent
software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS.
The AWS Marketplace enables qualified partners to market and sell their software to AWS
Customers.
AWS Marketplace offers two ways for sellers to deliver software to customers: Amazon
Machine Image (AMI) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
Amazon Machine Image (AMI): Offering an AMI is the preferred option for listing products
in AWS Marketplace. Partners have the option for free or paid products. Partners can offer
paid products charged by the hour or month. Bring Your Own License (BYOL) is also
available and enables customers with existing software licenses to easily migrate to AWS.
Software as a Service (SaaS): If you offer a SaaS solution running on AWS (and are unable
to build your product into an AMI) the SaaS listing offers our partners a way to market their
software to customers.
Incorrect options:
Buy Amazon EC2 Standard Reserved Instances - Amazon EC2 Standard Reserved
Instances can be bought from the Amazon EC2 console at
https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/
Raise request for purchasing AWS Direct Connect connection - AWS Direct Connect
connection can be raised from the AWS management console at
https://console.aws.amazon.com/directconnect/v2/home
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/partners/aws-marketplace/
https://aws.amazon.com/artifact/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ri-market-concepts-buying.html#ri-
queued-purchase
(Correct)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS Organizations helps you centrally govern your environment as you grow and scale your
workloads on AWS. Whether you are a growing startup or a large enterprise, Organizations
helps you to centrally manage billing; control access, compliance, and security; and share
resources across your AWS accounts.
Using AWS Organizations, you can automate account creation, create groups of accounts to
reflect your business needs, and apply policies for these groups for governance. You can also
simplify billing by setting up a single payment method for all of your AWS accounts.
Through integrations with other AWS services, you can use Organizations to define central
configurations and resource sharing across accounts in your organization. AWS
Organizations is available to all AWS customers at no additional charge.
You should create accounts per department based on regulatory restrictions (using SCP) for
better resource isolation, and to have separate per-account service limits.
AWS Organizations allows you to restrict what services and actions are allowed in your
accounts. You can use Service Control Policies (SCPs) to apply permission guardrails on
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users and roles.
Incorrect options:
Never use tags for billing - You should use tags standards to categorize AWS resources for
billing purposes.
Disable CloudTrail on several accounts - You should enable CloudTrail to monitor activity
on all accounts for governance, compliance, risk, and auditing purposes.
Do not use AWS Organizations to automate AWS account creation - AWS Organizations
helps you simplify IT operations by automating AWS account creation and management. The
Organizations APIs enable you to create new accounts programmatically, and to add the new
accounts to a group. The policies attached to the group are automatically applied to the new
account.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/organizations/
(Correct)
AWS Inspector
AWS Service Health Dashboard
Amazon CloudWatch
Explanation
Correct option: AWS Personal Health Dashboard
AWS Personal Health Dashboard provides alerts and remediation guidance when AWS is
experiencing events that may impact you. With Personal Health Dashboard, alerts are
triggered by changes in the health of your AWS resources, giving you event visibility, and
guidance to help quickly diagnose and resolve issues.
Incorrect options:
AWS Service Health Dashboard - AWS Service Health Dashboard publishes most up-to-
the-minute information on the status and availability of all AWS services in tabular form for
all Regions that AWS is present in. You can check on this page
(https://status.aws.amazon.com/) any time to get current status information or subscribe to an
RSS feed to be notified of interruptions to each service.
Exam Alert:
While the Service Health Dashboard displays the general status of AWS services, Personal
Health Dashboard gives you a personalized view of the performance and availability of the
AWS services underlying your AWS resources.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/personal-health-dashboard/
(Incorrect)
Instance Store
EBS
EFS
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
"EFS" - Amazon EFS is a file storage service for use with Amazon EC2. Amazon EFS
provides a file system interface, file system access semantics, and concurrently-accessible
storage for up to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EFS uses the Network File
System protocol.
How EFS
works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/efs/
Incorrect options:
EBS - Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is an easy to use, high-performance block storage
service designed for use with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for both throughput and
transaction-intensive workloads at any scale. EBS volumes cannot be accessed
simultaneously by multiple EC2 instances, so this option is incorrect.
Instance Store - An instance store provides temporary block-level storage for your instance.
This storage is located on disks that are physically attached to the host computer. Instance
Store volumes cannot be accessed simultaneously by multiple EC2 instances, so this option is
incorrect.
S3 - Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service that offers
industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. S3 is object storage
and it does not support file append operations, so this option is incorrect.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/efs/
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS Trusted Advisor
(Correct)
AWS Budgets
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides real-time guidance to help provision
your resources following AWS best practices. Whether establishing new workflows,
developing applications, or as part of ongoing improvement, recommendations provided by
Trusted Advisor regularly help keep your solutions provisioned optimally. AWS Trusted
Advisor analyzes your AWS environment and provides best practice recommendations in
five categories: Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, Service Limits.
AWS Trusted Advisor checks the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances
that were running at any time during the last 14 days and alerts you if the daily CPU
utilization was 10% or less and network I/O was 5 MB or less on 4 or more days.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/trusted-advisor/best-practice-
checklist/#Cost_Optimization
AWS Cost Explorer has an easy-to-use interface that lets you visualize, understand, and
manage your AWS costs and usage over time. AWS Cost Explorer includes a default report
that helps you visualize the costs and usage associated with your top five cost-accruing AWS
services, and gives you a detailed breakdown of all services in the table view. The reports let
you adjust the time range to view historical data going back up to twelve months to gain an
understanding of your cost trends.
The rightsizing recommendations feature in Cost Explorer helps you identify cost-saving
opportunities by downsizing or terminating EC2 instances. You can see all of your
underutilized EC2 instances across member accounts in a single view to immediately identify
how much you can save.
Incorrect options:
AWS Cost and Usage Reports - The AWS Cost and Usage Reports (AWS CUR) contains
the most comprehensive set of cost and usage data available. You can use Cost and Usage
Reports to publish your AWS billing reports to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon
S3) bucket that you own. You can receive reports that break down your costs by the hour or
month, by product or product resource, or by tags that you define yourself. Cost and Usage
Reports cannot be used to identify under-utilized EC2 instances.
Amazon CloudWatch - Amazon CloudWatch can be used to create alarm to monitor your
estimated charges. When you enable the monitoring of estimated charges for your AWS
account, the estimated charges are calculated and sent several times daily to CloudWatch as
metric data. You can choose to receive alerts by email when charges have exceeded a certain
threshold. Think resource performance monitoring, events, and alerts; think CloudWatch.
CloudWatch cannot be used to identify under-utilized EC2 instances without manually
configuring an alarm with the appropriate threshold to track the EC2 utilization, so this
option is incorrect.
AWS Budgets - AWS Budgets gives the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when
your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount. You can also
use AWS Budgets to set reservation utilization or coverage targets and receive alerts when
your utilization drops below the threshold you define. Budgets can be created at the monthly,
quarterly, or yearly level, and you can customize the start and end dates. You can further
refine your budget to track costs associated with multiple dimensions, such as AWS service,
linked account, tag, and others. AWS Budgets cannot be used to identify under-utilized EC2
instances without manually configuring coverage targets, so this option is incorrect.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/trusted-advisor/best-practice-checklist/
#Cost_Optimization
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/ce-rightsizing.html
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Amazon Macie - Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and data privacy service
that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover and protect your sensitive data in
AWS. Macie automatically provides an inventory of Amazon S3 buckets including a list of
unencrypted buckets, publicly accessible buckets, and buckets shared with AWS accounts
outside those you have defined in AWS Organizations. Then, Macie applies machine learning
and pattern matching techniques to the buckets you select to identify and alert you to
sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII).
How Macie
Works:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/macie/
Incorrect options:
AWS Glue - AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that
makes it easy for customers to prepare and load their data for analytics. AWS Glue job is
meant to be used for batch ETL data processing. It cannot be used to discover and protect
your sensitive data in AWS.
Amazon Polly - Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you
to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products.
Polly's Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize
natural sounding human speech. It cannot be used to discover and protect your sensitive data
in AWS.
AWS Secrets Manager - AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access
your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate,
manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their
lifecycle. Users and applications retrieve secrets with a call to Secrets Manager APIs,
eliminating the need to hardcode sensitive information in plain text. It cannot be used to
discover and protect your sensitive data in AWS.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/macie/
Explanation
Correct option:
It is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) which allows you to deploy and scale web
applications and services
AWS Elastic Beanstalk makes it even easier for developers to quickly deploy and manage
applications in the AWS Cloud. Developers simply upload their application, and Elastic
Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load
balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.
It is a Platform as a Service as you only manage the applications and the data.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/
Incorrect options:
It is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) which allows you to model and provision resources
needed for an application - AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a Plarform as a Service. However, the
service that allows you to model and provision resources needed for an application is AWS
CloudFormation.
It is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which allows you to deploy and scale web
applications and services - AWS Elastic Beanstalk allows you to deploy and scale web
applications and services, but it is not an Infrastructure as a Service. With AWS Elastic
Beanstalk, you do not manage the runtime, the middleware, and the operating system.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/
(Correct)
Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web
service. It is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost-
effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating names like
www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to
connect to each other.
Weighted routing lets you associate multiple resources with a single domain name
(example.com) or subdomain name (acme.example.com) and choose how much traffic is
routed to each resource. This can be useful for a variety of purposes, including load balancing
and testing new versions of software. To configure weighted routing, you create records that
have the same name and type for each of your resources. You assign each record a relative
weight that corresponds with how much traffic you want to send to each resource. Amazon
Route 53 sends traffic to a resource based on the weight that you assign to the record as a
proportion of the total weight for all records in the group.
Incorrect options:
Failover routing policy - This routing policy is used when you want to configure active-
passive failover.
Simple routing policy - With simple routing, you typically route traffic to a single resource,
for example, to a web server for your website.
Latency routing policy - This routing policy is used when you have resources in multiple
AWS Regions and you want to route traffic to the region that provides the best latency.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/routing-policy.html
Which AWS technology/service will provide the necessary low-latency access to the end-
users?
AWS Wavelength
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS Local Zones allow you to use select AWS services, like compute and storage services,
closer to more end-users, providing them very low latency access to the applications running
locally. AWS Local Zones are also connected to the parent region via Amazon’s redundant
and very high bandwidth private network, giving applications running in AWS Local Zones
fast, secure, and seamless access to the rest of AWS services.
You should use AWS Local Zones to deploy workloads closer to your end-users for low-
latency requirements. AWS Local Zones have their connection to the internet and support
AWS Direct Connect, so resources created in the Local Zone can serve local end-users with
very low-latency communications.
Various AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Virtual
Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon FSx, Amazon Elastic
Load Balancing, Amazon EMR, Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon Relational Database
Service (RDS) are available locally in the AWS Local Zones. You can also use services that
orchestrate or work with local services such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon EKS
clusters, Amazon ECS clusters, Amazon EC2 Systems Manager, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS
CloudTrail, and AWS CloudFormation. AWS Local Zones also provide a high-bandwidth,
secure connection to the AWS Region, allowing you to seamlessly connect to the full range
of services in the AWS Region through the same APIs and toolsets.
Incorrect options:
AWS Edge Locations - An AWS Edge location is a site that CloudFront uses to cache copies
of the content for faster delivery to users at any location.
AWS Wavelength - AWS Wavelength extends the AWS cloud to a global network of 5G
edge locations to enable developers to innovate and build a whole new class of applications
that require ultra-low latency. Wavelength Zones provide a high-bandwidth, secure
connection to the parent AWS Region, allowing developers to seamlessly connect to the full
range of services in the AWS Region through the same APIs and toolsets.
AWS Direct Connect - AWS Direct Connect is a cloud service that links your network
directly to AWS, bypassing the internet to deliver more consistent, lower-latency
performance. When creating a new connection, you can choose a hosted connection provided
by an AWS Direct Connect Delivery Partner, or choose a dedicated connection from AWS—
and deploy at over 100 AWS Direct Connect locations around the world. AWS Direct
Connect provides consistently high bandwidth, low-latency access and it is generally used
between on-premises data centers and AWS network. Direct Connect is overkill for the given
requirement.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/localzones/
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-
you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers,
you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an
as-needed basis.
By using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower variable cost than you can get on your
own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud,
providers such as AWS can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower
pay-as-you-go prices.
Exam Alert:
Please check out the following six advantages of Cloud Computing. You would certainly be
asked questions on the advantages of Cloud Computing compared to a traditional on-
premises
setup:
via - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/six-advantages-of-cloud-
computing.html
Incorrect options:
Trade Capital Expense for Variable Expense - Instead of having to invest heavily in data
centers and servers before you know how you’re going to use them, you can pay only when
you consume computing resources, and pay only for how much you consume.
Increased Speed and Agility - In a cloud computing environment, new IT resources are only
a click away, which means that you reduce the time to make those resources available to your
developers from weeks to just minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the
organization since the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.
Go Global in minutes - Easily deploy your application in multiple regions around the world
with just a few clicks. This means you can provide lower latency and a better experience for
your customers at minimal cost.
Although these three options are also benefits of Cloud Computing, it is the massive
economies of scale that allow AWS to offer lower pay-as-you-go prices as usage from
hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-cloud-computing/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/six-advantages-of-cloud-
computing.html
(Correct)
You can use an AMI from a different region, but it degrades the performance of
the EC2 instance
You should use an AMI from the same region, as it improves the performance of
the EC2 instance
Explanation
Correct option:
You must use an AMI from the same region as that of the EC2 instance. The region of
the AMI has no bearing on the performance of the EC2 instance
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides the information required to launch an instance.
You must specify an AMI when you launch an instance. You can launch multiple instances
from a single AMI when you need multiple instances with the same configuration.
The AMI must be in the same region as that of the EC2 instance to be launched. If the AMI
exists in a different region, you can copy that AMI to the region where you want to launch
the EC2 instance. The region of AMI has no bearing on the performance of the EC2 instance.
Incorrect options:
You can use an AMI from a different region, but it degrades the performance of the
EC2 instance
You should use an AMI from the same region, as it improves the performance of the
EC2 instance
These three options contradict the details provided earlier in the explanation, so these options
are incorrect.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-regions-availability-
zones.html
(Incorrect)
Use AWS Trusted Advisor to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share
the reserved EC2 instances amongst all units
Use AWS Organizations to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share the
reserved EC2 instances amongst all units
(Correct)
Use AWS Systems Manager to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share
the reserved EC2 instances amongst all units
Explanation
Correct option:
Use AWS Organizations to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share the
reserved EC2 instances amongst all units
AWS Organizations helps you to centrally manage billing; control access, compliance, and
security; and share resources across your AWS accounts. Using AWS Organizations, you can
automate account creation, create groups of accounts to reflect your business needs, and
apply policies for these groups for governance. You can also simplify billing by setting up a
single payment method for all of your AWS accounts. AWS Organizations is available to all
AWS customers at no additional charge.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/organizations/
Incorrect options:
Use AWS Trusted Advisor to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share the
reserved EC2 instances amongst all units - AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that
provides you real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best
practices on cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, service limits, and performance
improvement. You cannot use Trusted Advisor to share the reserved EC2 instances amongst
multiple AWS accounts.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/trusted-advisor/
Use AWS Cost Explorer to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share the
reserved EC2 instances amongst all units - AWS Cost Explorer lets you explore your AWS
costs and usage at both a high level and at a detailed level of analysis, and empowering you
to dive deeper using several filtering dimensions (e.g., AWS Service, Region, Linked
Account). You cannot use Cost Explorer to share the reserved EC2 instances amongst
multiple AWS accounts.
Use AWS Systems Manager to manage AWS accounts of all units and then share the
reserved EC2 instances amongst all units - Systems Manager provides a unified user
interface so you can view operational data from multiple AWS services and allows you to
automate operational tasks across your AWS resources. With Systems Manager, you can
group resources, like Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, or Amazon RDS
instances, by application, view operational data for monitoring and troubleshooting, and take
action on your groups of resources. You cannot use Systems Manager to share the reserved
EC2 instances amongst multiple AWS accounts.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/organizations/
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/trusted-advisor/
https://aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/
(Correct)
For a service like Amazon EC2, that falls under Infrastructure as a Service,
AWS is responsible for maintaining guest operating system
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct options:
Security and Compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. This
shared model can help relieve the customer’s operational burden as AWS operates, manages
and controls the components from the host operating system and virtualization layer down to
the physical security of the facilities in which the service operates.
AWS is responsible for Security "of" the Cloud - AWS is responsible for protecting the
infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. This infrastructure is
composed of the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run AWS Cloud services.
"For abstracted services like Amazon S3, AWS operates the infrastructure layer, the
operating system, and platforms" - For abstracted services, such as Amazon S3 and Amazon
DynamoDB, AWS operates the infrastructure layer, the operating system, and platforms, and
customers access the endpoints to store and retrieve data.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model/
Incorrect options:
For a service like Amazon EC2, that falls under Infrastructure as a Service, AWS is
responsible for maintaining guest operating system - A service such as Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is categorized as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and, as
such, requires the customer to perform all of the necessary security configuration and
management tasks. Customers are responsible for the management of the guest operating
system (including updates and security patches), any application software or utilities installed
by the customer on the instances, and the configuration of the AWS-provided firewall (called
a security group) on each instance.
AWS is responsible for training AWS and customer employees on AWS products and
services - Awareness & Training is also a shared responsibility. AWS trains AWS
employees, but a customer must train their own employees.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model/
(Correct)
Agility
High availability
(Correct)
Less costly
Storage
Explanation
Correct option:
High availability
Fault tolerance
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) automatically distributes incoming application traffic across
multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses. It can handle
the varying load of your application traffic in a single Availability Zone or across multiple
Availability Zones.
Elastic Load Balancing offers three types of load balancers that all feature the high
availability, automatic scaling, and robust security necessary to make your applications fault-
tolerant: Application Load Balancer (best suited for HTTP and HTTPS traffic), Network
Load Balancer (best suited for TCP traffic), and Classic Load Balancer.
Incorrect options:
Agility - Agility refers to new IT resources being only a click away, which means that you
reduce the time to make those resources available to your developers from weeks to just
minutes. AWS Elastic Load Balancing does not help with agility.
Less costly - AWS Elastic Load Balancing does not help with reducing costs.
Storage - AWS Elastic Load Balancing does not offer storage benefits. It is not a storage-
related service.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/
Question 56: Incorrect
Which of the following S3 storage classes takes the most time to retrieve data (also known as
first byte latency)?
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
S3 Glacier
S3 Glacier Deep Archive
(Correct)
S3 Standard
(Incorrect)
Explanation
Correct option:
"S3 Glacier Deep Archive" - S3 Glacier Deep Archive is Amazon S3’s lowest-cost storage
class and supports long-term retention and digital preservation for data that may be accessed
once or twice in a year. It is designed for customers — particularly those in highly-regulated
industries, such as the Financial Services, Healthcare, and Public Sectors — that retain data
sets for 7-10 years or longer to meet regulatory compliance requirements. S3 Glacier Deep
Archive can also be used for backup and disaster recovery use cases. It has a retrieval time
(first byte latency) of 12 to 48 hours.
Please review this illustration for S3 Storage Classes data retrieval times. You don't need to
memorize the actual numbers, just remember that S3 Glacier Deep Archive takes the most
time to retrieve
data:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/
Incorrect options:
S3 Standard - S3 Standard offers high durability, availability, and performance object
storage for frequently accessed data. S3 Standard has a retrieval time (first byte latency) of
milliseconds.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and
scale a relational database in the cloud. Read Replicas allow you to create read-only copies
that are synchronized with your master database. Read Replicas are used for improved read
performance. You can also place your read replica in a different AWS Region closer to your
users for better performance. Read Replicas are an example of horizontal scaling of
resources.
Read Replica
Overview:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/rds/features/multi-az/
Exam Alert:
Please review the differences between Multi-AZ, Multi-Region and Read Replica
deployments for
RDS:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/rds/features/multi-az/
Incorrect options:
Read Replica reduces database usage costs - RDS with Read Replicas increases the
database costs compared to the standard deployment. So this option is incorrect.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/rds/features/multi-az/
(Correct)
Penetration Testing
AWS customers can carry out security assessments or penetration tests against their AWS
infrastructure without prior approval for few common AWS services. Customers are not
permitted to conduct any security assessments of AWS infrastructure, or the AWS services
themselves.
Incorrect options:
Network Stress Testing - AWS considers "network stress test" to be when a test sends a
large volume of legitimate or test traffic to a specific intended target application. The
endpoint and infrastructure are expected to be able to handle this traffic.
AWS Secrets Manager - AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access
your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate,
manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their
lifecycle. Users and applications retrieve secrets with a call to Secrets Manager APIs,
eliminating the need to hardcode sensitive information in plain text.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/security/penetration-testing/
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
VPC Peering
A VPC peering connection is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables you to
route traffic between them privately. Instances in either VPC can communicate with each
other as if they are within the same network. You can create a VPC peering connection
between your VPCs, with a VPC in another AWS account, or with a VPC in a different AWS
Region.
VPC Peering
Overview:
via - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/peering/what-is-vpc-peering.html
Incorrect options:
Site to Site VPN - AWS Site-to-Site VPN creates a secure connection between your data
center or branch office and your AWS cloud resources. This connection goes over the public
internet. Site to Site VPN cannot be used to interconnect VPCs.
AWS Direct Connect - AWS Direct Connect creates a dedicated private connection from a
remote network to your VPC. This is a private connection and does not use the public
internet. Takes at least a month to establish this connection. Direct Connect cannot be used to
interconnect VPCs.
VPC Endpoint - A VPC endpoint enables you to privately connect your VPC to supported
AWS services and VPC endpoint services powered by AWS PrivateLink without requiring an
internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect connection. You
cannot connect two VPCs using a VPC endpoint.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/peering/what-is-vpc-peering.html
(Correct)
Use AWS Lambda to send log data from EC2 instance as well as on-premises
servers to CloudWatch Logs
Use CloudTrail for the EC2 instance and CloudWatch Logs for the on-premises
servers
(Incorrect)
Use CloudWatch Logs for the EC2 instance and CloudTrail for the on-premises
servers
Explanation
Correct option:
Use CloudWatch Logs for both the EC2 instance and the on-premises servers
You can use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to monitor, store, and access your log files from
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, AWS CloudTrail, Route 53, and
other sources such as on-premises servers.
CloudWatch Logs enables you to centralize the logs from all of your systems, applications,
and AWS services that you use, in a single, highly scalable service. You can then easily view
them, search them for specific error codes or patterns, filter them based on specific fields, or
archive them securely for future analysis.
Incorrect options:
Use AWS Lambda to send log data from EC2 instance as well as on-premises servers to
CloudWatch Logs
AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for
the compute time you consume. Lambda cannot be used to centralize the logs from EC2
instances and on-premises servers.
Use CloudWatch Logs for the EC2 instance and CloudTrail for the on-premises servers
Use CloudTrail for the EC2 instance and CloudWatch Logs for the on-premises servers
AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and
risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and
retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides
event history of your AWS account activity, including actions taken through the AWS
Management Console, AWS SDKs, command-line tools, and other AWS services.
CloudTrail cannot be used to centralize the server logs for EC2 instances or on-premises
servers, so both these options are incorrect.
References:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/logs/WhatIsCloudWatchLogs.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/logs/AgentReference.html
(Incorrect)
AWS CloudFormation
(Correct)
AWS CodeDeploy
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators an easy way to create and
manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in an orderly
and predictable fashion.
You can use the AWS CloudFormation sample templates or create your own templates to
describe your AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters,
required to run your application. This provides a single source of truth for all your resources
and helps you to standardize infrastructure components used across your organization,
enabling configuration compliance and faster troubleshooting.
via - https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/
Incorrect options:
AWS Directory Service - AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also
known as AWS Managed Microsoft AD, enables your directory-aware workloads and AWS
resources to use managed Active Directory in the AWS Cloud. It is not used to deploy
resources.
Amazon LightSail - Amazon Lightsail is designed to be the easiest way to launch and
manage a virtual private server with AWS. It is not best suited when deploying more complex
resources, while CloudFormation can.
AWS CodeDeploy - AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates code deployments to any
instance, including EC2 instances and instances running on-premises. Unlike
CloudFormation, it does not deal with infrastructure configuration and orchestration.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/
Which AWS database service is the right fit for this requirement?
DynamoDB global tables replicate data automatically across your choice of AWS Regions
and automatically scale capacity to accommodate your workloads. With global tables, your
globally distributed applications can access data locally in the selected regions to get single-
digit millisecond read and write performance. DynamoDB offers active-active cross-region
support that is needed for the company.
Incorrect options:
Amazon Aurora with multi-master cluster - Amazon Aurora (Aurora) is a fully managed
relational database engine that's compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. With some
workloads, Aurora can deliver up to five times the throughput of MySQL and up to three
times the throughput of PostgreSQL without requiring changes to most of your existing
applications. In a multi-master cluster, all DB instances have read/write capability. Currently,
all DB instances in a multi-master cluster must be in the same AWS Region. You can't enable
cross-Region replicas from multi-master clusters.
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for MYSQL - Amazon Relational
Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational
database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-
consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching and
backups. It frees you to focus on your applications so you can give them the fast
performance, high availability, security and compatibility they need. RDS does not support
active-active configuration with cross-region support.
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/features/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/aurora-multi-master.html
(Incorrect)
(Correct)
Explanation
Correct option:
S3 One Zone-IA is for data that is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when
needed. Unlike other S3 Storage Classes which store data in a minimum of three Availability
Zones (AZs), S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single AZ and costs 20% less than S3
Standard-IA. S3 One Zone-IA offers the same high durability, high throughput, and low
latency of S3 Standard, with a low per GB storage price and per GB retrieval fee. Although
S3 One Zone-IA offers less availability than S3 Standard but that's not an issue for the given
use-case since the thumbnails can be regenerated easily.
As the thumbnails are rarely used but need to be rapidly accessed when required, so S3 One
Zone-IA is the best choice for this use-case.
Exam Alert:
Please review this detailed comparison on S3 Storage Classes as you can expect a few
questions on this aspect of
S3:
via - https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/
Incorrect options:
Use S3 Standard to store the thumbnails - S3 Standard offers high durability, availability,
and performance object storage for frequently accessed data. As described above, S3 One
Zone-IA is a better fit than S3 Standard, hence using S3 standard is ruled out for the given
use-case.
Use S3 Glacier to store the thumbnails - S3 Glacier is a secure, durable, and low-cost
storage class for data archiving. Although Glacier is cheaper than One Zone-IA, however the
retrieval time ranges from a minute to hours, so this option is also ruled out for the given use-
case.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/
(Correct)
AWS Budgets
AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation
Correct option:
AWS Pricing Calculator lets you explore AWS services and create an estimate for the cost of
your use cases on AWS. You can model your solutions before building them, explore the
price points and calculations behind your estimate, and find the available instance types and
contract terms that meet your needs. This enables you to make informed decisions about
using AWS. You can plan your AWS costs and usage or price out setting up a new set of
instances and services. AWS Pricing Calculator can be accessed at https://calculator.aws/#/.
AWS also offers a complimentary service called Migration Evaluator (Formerly TSO Logic)
to create data-driven business cases for AWS Cloud planning and migration.
Incorrect options:
AWS Trusted Advisor - AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations that help you
follow AWS best practices. Trusted Advisor evaluates your account by using checks. These
checks identify ways to optimize your AWS infrastructure, improve security and
performance, reduce costs, and monitor service quotas. This service cannot be used to
compare the cost of running the IT infrastructure on-premises vs AWS Cloud.
AWS Cost Explorer - AWS Cost Explorer has an easy-to-use interface that lets you
visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. AWS Cost Explorer
includes a default report that helps you visualize the costs and usage associated with your top
five cost-accruing AWS services, and gives you a detailed breakdown of all services in the
table view. The reports let you adjust the time range to view historical data going back up to
twelve months to gain an understanding of your cost trends. AWS Cost Explorer cannot be
used to compare the cost of running the IT infrastructure on-premises vs AWS Cloud.
AWS Budgets - AWS Budgets gives the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when
your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount. You can also
use AWS Budgets to set reservation utilization or coverage targets and receive alerts when
your utilization drops below the threshold you define. Budgets can be created at the monthly,
quarterly, or yearly level, and you can customize the start and end dates. You can further
refine your budget to track costs associated with multiple dimensions, such as AWS service,
linked account, tag, and others. AWS Budgets cannot be used to compare the cost of running
the IT infrastructure on-premises vs AWS Cloud.
Reference:
https://calculator.aws/#/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/how-aws-pricing-works/aws-pricingtco-
tools.html
https://aws.amazon.com/migration-evaluator/
Question 65: Incorrect
Data encryption is automatically enabled for which of the following AWS services? (Select
two)?
Amazon Redshift
Amazon S3 Glacier
(Correct)
(Correct)
(Incorrect)
Amazon S3 Glacier - Amazon S3 Glacier (S3 Glacier), is a storage service optimized for
infrequently used data, or "cold data. Data at rest stored in S3 Glacier is automatically server-
side encrypted using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) with keys maintained
by AWS.
AWS Storage Gateway - AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that gives
you on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage. All data transferred between the
gateway and AWS storage is encrypted using SSL (for all three types of gateways - File,
Volume and Tape Gateways).
Incorrect options:
Amazon EBS volumes - Amazon EBS volumes are not encrypted, by default. You can
configure your AWS account to enforce the encryption of the new EBS volumes and
snapshot copies that you create.
Amazon Redshift - Encryption is an optional setting in Amazon Redshift. When you enable
encryption for a cluster, the data-blocks and system metadata are encrypted for the cluster
and its snapshots.
Amazon EFS drives - Encryption is not a default setting, but an optional configuration for
EFS drives. Amazon EFS supports two forms of encryption for file systems, encryption of
data in transit and encryption at rest.