SOA-C02 Sample Questions Answers

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/default-bucket-encryption.html

You can set the default encryption behavior on an Amazon S3 bucket so that all objects are encrypted when they are stored in the bucket. The objects are encrypted using server-side encryption with either Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3) or AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer master keys (CMKs).

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-prevent-uploads-of-unencrypted-objects-to-amazon-s3/

How to Prevent Uploads of Unencrypted Objects to Amazon S3#

By using an S3 bucket policy, you can enforce the encryption requirement when users upload objects, instead of assigning a restrictive IAM policy to all users.

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

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

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

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

You might want to use Transfer Acceleration on a bucket for various reasons: ->Your customers upload to a centralized bucket from all over the world. ->You transfer gigabytes to terabytes of data on a regular basis across continents. ->You can't use all of your available bandwidth over the internet when uploading to Amazon S3." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/transfer-acceleration.html

Applying SCPs to an Organizational Unit:

Service Control Policies (SCPs) allow you to manage permissions for multiple AWS accounts within an organization.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Organizations.

Create an Organizational Unit (OU) if not already created.

Move the target accounts into the OU.

Create an SCP that denies the use of the specific EC2 instance family.

Attach the SCP to the OU.

This approach ensures that the policy is applied consistently across all accounts in the OU.

AWS Organizations SCPs

To send local logs from a fleet of servers to Amazon CloudWatch:

Install the Unified CloudWatch Agent: The unified CloudWatch agent is capable of collecting both logs and metrics from servers. This agent supports various operating systems and can be configured according to specific logging requirements.

Configuration of the Agent: The agent's configuration involves specifying which log files to monitor and how they should be processed. This configuration can be done manually or through the AWS Systems Manager for automated deployment across multiple servers.

Send Logs to CloudWatch: Once configured and running, the CloudWatch agent will continuously monitor the specified log files and send the log data to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, allowing you to view, search, and set alarms on log data.

This setup ensures a robust and scalable way to manage log data across a fleet of servers, leveraging AWS native services for seamless integration and management.

To review the VPC configuration of developer AWS accounts securely, the best practice is to use cross-account IAM roles with read-only access.

Create an IAM Policy with Read-Only Access:

Navigate to the IAM console in each developer account.

Create a new policy with read-only access to VPC resources. For example:

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": [

"ec2:DescribeVpcs",

"ec2:DescribeSubnets",

"ec2:DescribeRouteTables",

"ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",

"ec2:DescribeNetworkAcls"

],

"Resource": "*"

}

]

}

Save the policy.

Create a Cross-Account IAM Role:

In the IAM console, choose "Roles" and then "Create role".

Select "Another AWS account" and enter the AWS account ID of the security administrator's account.

Attach the read-only policy created in step 1 to the role.

Save the role and note the role ARN.

Assume the Role from the Security Administrator's Account:

In the security administrator's account, navigate to the IAM console.

Use the "Switch Role" option to assume the cross-account role created in the developer account using the role ARN.

The security administrator can now access the VPC configuration of the developer accounts with read-only permissions.

Cross-Account Access

Creating and Managing IAM Policies

To increase upload speeds into the S3 bucket from Europe and Australia, the SysOps administrator should use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration and multipart uploads. These methods are cost-effective and efficient.

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration:

This feature speeds up uploads by using the globally distributed edge locations of Amazon CloudFront. Data is routed to the closest edge location, which then forwards the data to the S3 bucket in the destination region.

This reduces latency and increases the upload speed for large files.

Multipart Uploads:

Multipart upload allows you to upload a single large object as a set of parts. Each part is independently uploaded and can be uploaded in parallel.

This method improves the upload efficiency and resiliency, especially for large files.

Configuration Steps:

Enable Transfer Acceleration on the S3 bucket through the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI.

Implement multipart upload in the application or scripts used for uploading files.

To increase the cache hit ratio for an Amazon CloudFront distribution, you can make several adjustments to its configuration:

Minimize Forwarding of Cookies, Query Strings, and Headers:

By default, CloudFront caches based on URL, but if it forwards headers, cookies, and query strings to the origin, it can decrease the cache hit ratio.

Navigate to your CloudFront distribution in the AWS Management Console.

In the Behaviors tab, edit the cache behavior.

Set the option to forward only the necessary cookies, query strings, and headers. This reduces the variations of objects stored in the cache.

Increase Time to Live (TTL) Settings:

Increasing the TTL allows objects to stay in the cache for a longer period, reducing the frequency of fetching data from the origin.

In the same Behaviors tab, adjust the Minimum TTL, Maximum TTL, and Default TTL settings to higher values. This ensures that content remains cached for a longer duration before it needs to be fetched again from the origin.

Cache Behavior Settings

Optimizing Cache Behavior

In cross-account Amazon S3 replication, by default, the source account retains ownership of the replicated objects in the destination bucket. This ownership can lead to access issues, such as "Access Denied" errors, when users in the destination account attempt to access these objects.

To resolve this, the replication configuration must be modified to change the ownership of the replicated objects to the destination account. This is achieved by enabling the AccessControlTranslation setting in the replication configuration, which instructs Amazon S3 to change the ownership of the replicated objects to the destination bucket owner.

Additionally, the destination bucket policy must grant the source account the necessary permissions to perform this ownership change. Specifically, the policy should allow the s3:ObjectOwnerOverrideToBucketOwner action for the source account.

By configuring the replication settings to change object ownership and updating the destination bucket policy accordingly, the destination account gains full control over the replicated objects, eliminating access issues.

To track instance memory utilization and available disk space using Amazon CloudWatch, the SysOps administrator should install and configure the CloudWatch agent on all instances.

Install and Configure the CloudWatch Agent:

The CloudWatch agent can collect both system-level metrics (e.g., memory utilization, disk space) and application-level metrics and logs.

Install the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance and configure it to collect the necessary metrics.

Attach an IAM Role:

The EC2 instances need permissions to write logs and metrics to CloudWatch.

Attach an IAM role with the necessary permissions (e.g., CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy) to each EC2 instance.

Installing the CloudWatch Agent

Create IAM Roles to Use with the CloudWatch Agent

Step Scaling Policy:

Step scaling policies allow you to define scaling actions based on different levels of CloudWatch alarms.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2 Auto Scaling.

Select your Auto Scaling group.

Create or edit a scaling policy and choose "Step scaling."

Define different steps based on CloudWatch alarm thresholds (e.g., CPU usage or request count).

Configure larger adjustments for higher thresholds and smaller adjustments for lower thresholds.

Example Configuration:

For CPU > 80%, increase capacity by 4 instances.

For CPU > 60%, increase capacity by 2 instances.

For CPU > 40%, increase capacity by 1 instance.

Step Scaling for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

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

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

Steps:

Open AWS Budgets:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

Open the AWS Budgets dashboard.

Create a New Budget:

Click on "Create a budget".

Select "Cost budget" and click "Next".

Set Budget Details:

Enter a unique name for the budget.

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

Set the budgeted amount as specified by the finance department.

Define Filters:

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

Set Alerts:

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

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

Review and Create:

Review the configuration and click "Create budget".

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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/CloudWatch-Agent-procstat-process-metrics.html

AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO) provides a centralized interface to manage SSO access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications. AWS SSO integrates with AWS Organizations and supports SAML 2.0 identity providers, making it an ideal solution for centrally managing user access and permissions across multiple AWS accounts.

AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO):

AWS SSO allows you to manage SSO access and user permissions to all of your AWS accounts and applications.

It integrates seamlessly with AWS Organizations.

Integration with SAML 2.0 IdP:

AWS SSO supports integration with third-party SAML 2.0 identity providers.

This allows centralized management of user identities and access.

Steps to Implement:

Enable AWS SSO in your AWS Organizations management account.

Configure AWS SSO to connect with your third-party SAML 2.0 IdP.

Assign user permissions and roles for each AWS account through AWS SSO.

AWS Single Sign-On

Integrating AWS SSO with SAML 2.0 Identity Providers

To host a static website using Amazon S3 for both a domain and its subdomain, you need to create two separate buckets and configure one bucket to redirect to the other.

Steps:

Create the Main Domain Bucket:

Open the Amazon S3 console.

Create a bucket named example.com.

Enable static website hosting for the bucket and configure the index document (e.g., index.html).

Create the Subdomain Bucket:

Create another bucket named www.example.com.

In the bucket properties, enable static website hosting.

Set the website hosting configuration to redirect all requests to example.com.

Update DNS Configuration:

Open the Amazon Route 53 console.

Create an A record for example.com and www.example.com pointing to the S3 bucket.

Increasing the amount of memory for the Lambda function will help to improve the performance of the function. This is because the Lambda function is CPU-intensive and increasing the memory will give it access to more CPU resources and help it run faster. The other options (activating hyperthreading in the CPU launch options for the Lambda function, turning off the AWS managed encryption, and loading the required code into a custom layer) will not help to improve the performance of the Lambda function and are not the correct solutions for this issue.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/configuration-function-common.html#configuration-memory-console

This configuration approach will meet the requirement of encrypting all data at rest and rotating the encryption keys once each year. By creating a new AWS KMS customer managed key and enabling automatic key rotation, the encryption keys will be rotated automatically every year. By enabling RDS encryption on the database at creation time using the KMS key, all data stored in the RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ database will be encrypted at rest. This approach provide more control over key management and rotation and provide additional security benefits.

To address high I/O requirements during the bootstrap process, increasing both IOPS and throughput on the EBS volume is recommended:

Increase EBS Volume IOPS: Enhances the instance’s ability to handle multiple read and write operations per second, essential for data-heavy tasks like downloading Docker images.

Increase EBS Volume Throughput: Provides higher data transfer rates, reducing bottlenecks during intensive I/O operations.

Increasing instance size is unnecessary if the primary issue is disk I/O, and changing from Nitro-based instances would not address the underlying storage performance need.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

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

Analyze the Requirements:

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

Share the AMI securely with specific AWS accounts.

Evaluate the Options:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

Copying an AMI

Creating and Managing Keys

Sharing AMIs

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

To meet the requirement of consistent performance of 10,000 IOPS with the least cost, the SysOps administrator should use a General Purpose SSD (gp3) Amazon EBS volume:

General Purpose SSD (gp3) EBS Volume:

The gp3 volume type can be provisioned with the required IOPS without the need for additional capacity, making it a cost-effective solution compared to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes.

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

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

Create a Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

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

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Manage a database password securely and rotate it every 90 days.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure secure management and automatic rotation of the database password.

Minimize manual intervention and risk of exposing the password.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Use the AWS SecretsManager Secret resource with the GenerateSecretString property.

Secrets Manager can automatically generate a strong password.

The RotationSchedule resource defines a rotation schedule to rotate the password every 90 days.

Option B: Use the AWS SecretsManager Secret resource with the SecretString property.

Requires accepting a password as a CloudFormation parameter and does not automate password generation.

Option C: Use the AWS SSM Parameter resource.

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store can store secure strings, but it does not support automatic rotation.

Option D: Use the AWS SSM Parameter resource without secure string.

This option does not offer the security of Secrets Manager and does not support automatic rotation.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Using AWS Secrets Manager with the GenerateSecretString property and RotationSchedule resource ensures secure management and automatic rotation of the database password.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotate AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

AWS Secrets Manager provides secure storage, automatic rotation, and seamless integration with applications for accessing secrets.

To encrypt an existing Amazon RDS DB instance that is not encrypted, you cannot directly enable encryption. Instead, you need to follow these steps:

Take a Snapshot:

Open the Amazon RDS console at Amazon RDS Console.

Select the DB instance and take a snapshot.

Copy and Encrypt the Snapshot:

After the snapshot is created, select the snapshot and choose Copy Snapshot.

In the copy snapshot dialog, enable encryption and choose a KMS key.

Restore the Encrypted Snapshot:

Once the encrypted snapshot is created, select it and choose Restore Snapshot.

Provide the necessary details to create a new DB instance from the encrypted snapshot.

This process ensures that the new DB instance is encrypted at rest.

Encrypting Amazon RDS Resources

Copying an Amazon RDS Snapshot

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

Amazon CloudFront:

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

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

Creating a CloudFront Distribution:

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

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

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

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

Amazon CloudFront

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

The most operationally efficient solution is to use the organization ARN to share the AMI across all accounts within AWS Organizations.

AMI Sharing with Organization ARN: AWS allows you to share AMIs with an entire AWS Organization by specifying the organization’s ARN, simplifying access management for multiple accounts.

Efficient Management: This approach eliminates the need to share AMIs individually with each account or make them public, and it avoids the complexity of using snapshots.

Making the AMI public is not secure, and using AWS Marketplace or snapshots does not provide the operational efficiency required.

Objective:

Resolve the HTTP 403 (Access Denied) error for the public S3 static website.

Root Cause:

By default, S3 buckets are private, and public access is blocked due to the Block Public Access settings.

Additionally, a bucket policy is needed to allow public access to the objects.

Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Turn off Block Public Access:

Navigate to the Permissions tab of the S3 bucket in the AWS Management Console.

Turn off the Block Public Access settings by disabling the following:

Block public access to buckets and objects via ACLs.

Block public access to buckets and objects via bucket policies.

Step 2: Add a Bucket Policy for Public Access:

Add a policy allowing GetObject for public access:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::/*"

}

]

}

Step 3: Test Access:

Confirm that the website is accessible via the public URL.

AWS References:

Block Public Access Settings:S3 Block Public Access

Bucket Policies for Static Websites:Bucket Policy Examples

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Route 53 is not required to resolve the 403 error; the issue is with S3 bucket permissions.

Option C: Editing file permissions alone will not work; bucket permissions must also allow public access.

Option D: PutObject permissions are unnecessary for serving a static website.

Storing the credentials in AWS Secrets Manager and configuring automatic rotation with a rotation interval of 30 days is the most efficient way to meet the requirements with the least operational overhead. AWS Secrets Manager automatically rotates the credentials at the specified interval, so there is no need for an additional AWS Lambda function or manual rotation. Additionally, Secrets Manager is integrated with Amazon RDS, so the credentials can be easily used with the RDS database.

To enable automatic failover for RDS (MySQL in this case), you must configure it as a Multi-AZ deployment.

From Amazon RDS Multi-AZ documentation:

Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability and automatic failover support.

❌ Why other options are incorrect:

A: Changing engine to PostgreSQL does not help with failover.

C: Read replicas are used for scaling reads, not failover.

D: Automated backups help with point-in-time recovery, not failover.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

An I/O intensive application on an Amazon EC2 general purpose instance is experiencing performance issues.

Users report delays or failures during intensive read/write operations.

The VolumeQueueLength metric is consistently high during these periods.

Analyze the Requirements:

Address the high VolumeQueueLength, which indicates that the EBS volume is unable to handle the I/O requests efficiently.

Improve the disk I/O performance to restore full application performance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Modify the instance type to be storage optimized.

Storage optimized instances are designed for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to large data sets on local storage.

This could help, but if the issue is primarily with EBS volume performance, increasing IOPS would be a more direct solution.

Option B: Modify the volume properties by deselecting Auto-Enable Volume I/O.

Auto-Enable Volume I/O is a setting that automatically enables I/O for the EBS volume after an event such as a snapshot restore.

Deselecting this option will not address the issue of high I/O demand.

Option C: Modify the volume properties to increase the IOPS.

Increasing the IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) will directly address the high VolumeQueueLength by allowing the volume to handle more I/O operations concurrently.

This is the most effective and direct solution to improve the performance of I/O intensive tasks.

Option D: Modify the instance to enable enhanced networking.

Enhanced networking provides higher bandwidth, higher packet per second (PPS) performance, and consistently lower inter-instance latencies.

While beneficial for network performance, this does not directly impact the EBS volume’s I/O performance.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Modifying the volume properties to increase the IOPS directly addresses the high VolumeQueueLength and improves the EBS volume's ability to handle intensive read/write operations.

Amazon EBS Volume Types

Amazon EBS Volume Performance

Optimizing EBS Performance

Increasing the IOPS of the EBS volume ensures that the application can handle the required intensive read/write operations more efficiently, directly addressing the high VolumeQueueLength and restoring full performance.

To control access to Amazon EC2 instances using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager based on specific tags:

Attach an IAM Policy to Users or Groups: Create and attach an Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy to the IAM users or groups who need access to the EC2 instances. This policy should specify the permissions required to use Session Manager to start sessions with the instances.

Create an IAM Policy with Tag-Based Conditions: Create an IAM policy that includes a condition element to allow access to EC2 instances based on specific tags. This policy can be designed to grant the ssm:StartSession permission only for instances that match certain tags, as defined in the condition block of the IAM policy. Here is a sample condition block that could be used:

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"ec2:ResourceTag/YourTagName": "YourTagValue"

}

}

This ensures that only authorized users can initiate sessions with instances that have the specified tags, enhancing security and operational management.

By implementing these policies, you ensure that only the appropriate personnel have the controlled access required, based on the specific business needs and security guidelines.

Understand the Problem:

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

Analyze the Requirements:

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

Evaluate the Options:

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

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

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

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

Option C: Enable termination protection on the CloudFormation stack.

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

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

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

Select the Best Solution:

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

AWS CloudFormation Deletion Policy

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

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious or unauthorized behavior to help protect your AWS accounts and workloads. It analyzes events from AWS CloudTrail, Amazon VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs to identify unexpected and potentially unauthorized or malicious activity within your AWS environment.

GuardDuty uses machine learning models to detect anomalies in API usage behavior, such as unusual API calls, suspicious logins, or access from unexpected locations. It provides detailed findings that can be reviewed in the GuardDuty console, allowing for prompt investigation and response.

Enabling GuardDuty requires minimal setup and provides continuous monitoring without the need for complex configurations, making it the most operationally efficient solution for detecting unusual API usage behavior.

When using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) to encrypt an Amazon SQS queue, any service—like Amazon EventBridge—that attempts to publish messages to that queue must have the appropriate KMS permissions to perform encryption operations using the customer managed key (CMK).

To allow EventBridge to send messages to an encrypted SQS queue, it needs permissions to:

kms:Encrypt – This allows EventBridge to encrypt the message data before writing it to the SQS queue.

kms:DescribeKey – This is required so EventBridge can validate and retrieve metadata about the KMS key being used.

These actions are sufficient and minimal for the service to encrypt messages using the key.

Therefore, Option A provides the exact permissions required in the KMS key policy's Action section for EventBridge to continue publishing to the encrypted SQS queue.

Reference Extract from AWS Documentation:

When a customer managed CMK is used with an encrypted resource like an SQS queue, AWS services that write to that resource (such as EventBridge writing to SQS) must be granted kms:Encrypt and kms:DescribeKey permissions in the key policy.

To stop EC2 instances in a development environment when they are not in use, you can create a CloudWatch alarm based on CPU utilization.

Create CloudWatch Alarm:

Navigate to the CloudWatch console.

Select "Alarms" and click on "Create Alarm".

Choose the EC2 instance metric for CPU utilization.

Set the condition to trigger the alarm when the average CPU utilization is less than 5% for a continuous 30-minute period.

The issue of "request timed out" when pinging the public IP address of the EC2 instance could be due to the Network ACL (NACL) inbound rules.

Check NACL Inbound Rules:

Network ACLs act at the subnet level and can explicitly allow or deny traffic to or from a subnet.

Ensure that the NACL associated with the subnet containing the EC2 instance has inbound rules that allow ICMP traffic (which is used for ping).

Example rule to allow inbound ICMP traffic:

Rule Number: 100

Type: ICMP

Protocol: 1

Port Range: N/A (ICMP doesn't use ports)

Source: 0.0.0.0/0 (or specific IP range)

Allow/Deny: ALLOW

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

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

Steps:

Add Permission to Lambda Function:

Open the AWS Lambda console.

Select your Lambda function.

Choose "Configuration" and then "Permissions".

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

Example policy:

json

Copy code

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"Service": "events.amazonaws.com"

},

"Action": "lambda:InvokeFunction",

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

"Condition": {

"ArnLike": {

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

}

}

}

]

}

Verify the EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console.

Select the rule that targets your Lambda function.

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

When setting up an AWS managed VPN connection and creating a customer gateway resource, if the customer gateway device resides behind a NAT device, you should use the public IP address of the NAT device. This is because the VPN connection from AWS will be established to the public IP address that AWS can reach.

Identify the Public IP Address of the NAT Device:

Determine the public IP address assigned to the NAT device in front of the customer gateway.

Create Customer Gateway Resource:

Navigate to the VPC console in the AWS Management Console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Customer Gateways" and then click "Create Customer Gateway".

Enter a name for the customer gateway.

For the "IP Address", enter the public IP address of the NAT device.

Configure VPN Connection:

Create a VPN connection by navigating to the "VPN Connections" section and clicking "Create VPN Connection".

Select the created customer gateway and complete the VPN setup wizard.

Update Routing and Configuration:

Ensure that the routing configurations on both the AWS side and the on-premises side are updated to route traffic through the VPN connection.

Configure the customer gateway device (behind the NAT) to accept traffic from the NAT device and route it appropriately.

AWS Managed VPN Connections

Customer Gateway Resource

Using Amazon S3 Block Public Access as a centralized way to limit public access. Block Public Access settings override bucket policies and object permissions. Be sure to enable Block Public Access for all accounts and buckets that you don't want publicly accessible.

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/secure-s3-resources/#:~:text=Using%20Amazon%20S3%20Block%20Public,don 't%20want%20publicly%20accessible.

To maintain a documented trail of any changes made to the security groups and receive notifications, AWS Config is the best solution.

AWS Config:

AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations.

You can set up AWS Config to record changes to your security groups.

Setting Up AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console and choose "Set up AWS Config."

Select the resource types you want to record (in this case, security groups).

Specify an Amazon S3 bucket to store configuration snapshots and history files.

Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic for notifications about configuration changes.

Subscribe the SysOps administrator's email address to the SNS topic.

AWS Config

Setting Up AWS Config

If a user is unable to connect to an EC2 instance via RDP, the issue could be related to network ACLs or route table configurations.

Network ACL Blocking Traffic:

A network ACL (NACL) associated with the bastion's subnet might be blocking traffic on port 3389 (RDP).

Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Network ACLs.

Check the inbound and outbound rules for the NACL associated with the subnet. Ensure that port 3389 is allowed.

Route Table Missing Route to Internet Gateway:

The subnet's route table may not have a route to the internet gateway, which is necessary for internet connectivity.

Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Route Tables.

Check the route table associated with the subnet. Ensure there is a route with destination 0.0.0.0/0 pointing to the internet gateway (igw-xxxxxxxx).

Ensuring proper configuration of network ACLs and route tables will enable the required internet connectivity for RDP access.

Network ACLs

Route Tables

If EC2 instances in one region (eu-central-1) need to access a database in another (us-east-1), and the database must remain only in us-east-1, the most operationally efficient solution is a VPC peering connection.

From the VPC Peering documentation:

Inter-Region VPC peering enables routing of traffic between VPCs in different AWS Regions using private IP addresses, without VPN or additional hardware.

Also:

You must manually update security group rules to allow traffic from the peered VPC.

So:

Create the VPC peering

Add the private IP range of the remote EC2 instances to the inbound rules of the database’s security group

The kubeconfig file is a configuration file used to store cluster authentication information, which is required to make requests to the Amazon EKS cluster API server. The kubeconfig file will need to be configured on the SysOps administrator's machine in order for kubectl to be able to communicate with the cluster API server.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/running-a-kubernetes-job-in-amazon-eks-on-aws-fargate-using-aws-stepfunctions/

To prevent accounts from leaving an AWS Organization, an SCP that denies the LeaveOrganization action should be applied to the root organizational unit (OU).

Service Control Policy (SCP): By denying LeaveOrganization, member accounts are restricted from leaving the organization.

Root OU Application: Applying this policy at the root level ensures that no account in the organization can bypass it.

The RemoveAccountFromOrganization action pertains to removing an account by the organization’s management account rather than preventing member accounts from leaving. AWS Config’s account-part-of-organizations rule does not enforce this restriction but only monitors it.

Using AWS CloudFormation stack sets allows you to manage CloudWatch alarms across multiple accounts efficiently:

Create Stack Set: Use a CloudFormation template that defines the required CloudWatch alarms and configures them to publish alerts to an SNS topic.

Specify SNS Topic: Ensure the SNS topic is located in the logging account and has the necessary permissions set to receive publications from all accounts in the organization.

Deploy Across Organization: Implement the stack set across all accounts, ensuring centralized management and standardized deployment.

AWS Documentation Reference:

Learn more about deploying resources with CloudFormation StackSets: Working with AWS CloudFormation StackSets.

Amazon CloudWatch does not collect memory utilization and disk space metrics from EC2 instances by default. To monitor these metrics, you need to:

Install and Configure the CloudWatch Agent:The unified CloudWatch agent enables you to collect internal system-level metrics, including memory utilization and disk space, from Amazon EC2 instances.

Attach an IAM Role to the Instances:The EC2 instances require an IAM role that grants permissions to write metrics to CloudWatch. This role should have the necessary policies attached to allow the CloudWatch agent to function correctly.

By following these steps, you can effectively monitor memory and disk space metrics on your EC2 instances in compliance with AWS best practices.

To address the issue of a fully utilized EBS volume causing application errors, the most efficient solution is to dynamically resize the existing EBS volume and extend the file system. AWS EBS supports Elastic Volumes, allowing you to increase volume size without detaching or stopping the instance.

Steps:

Modify the EBS Volume:

Navigate to the Amazon EC2 console.

Select the EBS volume attached to the instance.

Choose "Modify Volume" and increase the size as needed.

Confirm the modification.

Extend the File System:

Connect to the EC2 instance.

Use the lsblk command to identify the volume and partition.

If necessary, use the growpart command to extend the partition.

Depending on the file system:

For XFS: sudo xfs_growfs -d /mount-point

For ext4: sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1

This approach minimizes downtime and avoids the need for creating new volumes or stopping the instance.

Increasing DB Instance Size:

Increasing the instance size provides more CPU and memory resources, which can help handle higher loads.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the DB instance.

Modify the instance to increase its size.

Apply the changes during the next maintenance window or immediately if it is a critical issue.

Monitoring Performance:

After resizing, monitor the instance during the next report run to ensure that it handles the load effectively.

Modifying an Amazon RDS DB Instance

To ensure all EC2 instances upload build artifacts through a single IP address:

A: Move all of the EC2 instances behind a NAT gateway. Provide the IP address of the NAT gateway to the third-party service for the allow list. A NAT gateway enables instances in a private subnet to connect to services outside AWS (such as a third-party service) but prevents the internet from initiating connections with those instances. Using a NAT gateway standardizes all outgoing traffic to use a single IP address. More information on NAT gateways can be found in AWS documentation NAT Gateways.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The web application experiences performance degradation during random periods of increased traffic.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a scalable solution to handle varying traffic loads.

Maintain application performance during traffic spikes.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Monitor application latency with CloudWatch alarm and increase instance size.

Manually resizing instances is not efficient for handling random traffic spikes.

Option B: Use EventBridge rule to add EC2 instance to ALB.

This approach is not as efficient as Auto Scaling for dynamic traffic management.

Option C: Deploy to an Auto Scaling group with target tracking scaling policy.

Automatically adjusts the number of instances based on traffic demand.

Ensures consistent application performance by scaling in response to traffic changes.

Option D: Deploy to an Auto Scaling group with scheduled scaling policy.

Suitable for predictable traffic patterns but not for random traffic spikes.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Using an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy ensures the application scales dynamically based on traffic, maintaining performance.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

Auto Scaling with a target tracking policy provides a robust solution for handling random traffic increases by dynamically adjusting the number of instances.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The threat of ransomware encrypting and holding company data hostage.

Need to protect an Amazon S3 bucket.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure that data in the S3 bucket is protected against unauthorized encryption or deletion.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Deny Post, Put, and Delete on the bucket.

Denying these actions would prevent any uploads or modifications to the bucket, making it unusable.

Option B: Enable server-side encryption on the bucket.

Server-side encryption protects data at rest but does not prevent the encryption of data by ransomware.

Option C: Enable Amazon S3 versioning on the bucket.

S3 versioning keeps multiple versions of an object in the bucket. If a file is overwritten or encrypted by ransomware, previous versions of the file can still be accessed.

Option D: Enable snapshots on the bucket.

Amazon S3 does not have a snapshot feature; this option is not applicable.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Enabling Amazon S3 versioning is the best solution as it allows access to previous versions of objects, providing protection against ransomware encryption by retaining prior, unencrypted versions.

Amazon S3 Versioning

Best Practices for Protecting Data with Amazon S3

Enabling S3 versioning ensures that previous versions of objects are preserved, providing a safeguard against ransomware by allowing recovery of unencrypted versions of data.

Using the interface endpoint, applications in your on-premises data center can easily query S3 buckets over AWS Direct Connect or Site-to-Site VPN. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/choosing-your-vpc-endpoint-strategy-for-amazon-s3/

To centrally manage Security Hub across an organization, AWS allows you to delegate a member account as the Security Hub administrator. This enables centralized configuration and security insights without directly using the management account, which is a best practice.

Delegating a Non-Management Account: AWS recommends using a designated Security Hub administrator account (different from the management account) for central security configurations.

Security Hub Central Configuration: Configuring Security Hub in this manner ensures that security findings from all member accounts are consolidated and manageable from the designated administrator account.

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

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

Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

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

Steps to Implement:

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

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

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

Route 53 Resolver Endpoints

Creating an Outbound Endpoint

The S3 bucket is being used as the origin for a CloudFront distribution. To serve content via CloudFront:

You must point the DNS record to the CloudFront domain name (e.g., d11111abcdef8.cloudfront.net)

Not directly to the S3 bucket, even if that's the origin

From CloudFront with S3 static website hosting:

To use CloudFront to serve your content, update your DNS settings so your domain name (CNAME) points to your CloudFront distribution.

To enable an Amazon EC2 instance in a private subnet to access Amazon S3 via a gateway endpoint, the following configurations are essential:

Route Table Configuration:The route table associated with the private subnet must have a route that directs traffic destined for Amazon S3 to the S3 gateway endpoint. This ensures that requests to S3 are routed internally within the AWS network, without traversing the internet.

Security Group Configuration:The security group attached to the EC2 instance must allow outbound traffic to Amazon S3. This can be achieved by adding an outbound rule that permits traffic to the prefix list associated with Amazon S3. Prefix lists are managed sets of CIDR blocks for AWS services, and using them simplifies the management of security group rules.

By ensuring both the route table and security group are correctly configured, the EC2 instance in the private subnet can access Amazon S3 without requiring internet access, thus maintaining the isolation of the private subnet.

To automatically remediate security groups that allow unrestricted SSH access, the following configuration is recommended:

AWS Config Managed Rule (restricted-ssh):This rule checks whether security groups disallow unrestricted incoming SSH traffic. If a security group allows SSH access from 0.0.0.0/0 or ::/0, it is considered noncompliant.

AWS Systems Manager Automation Runbook (AWS-DisableIncomingSSHOnPort22):This runbook removes rules that allow unrestricted incoming SSH traffic on TCP port 22 for specified security groups. By associating this runbook with the AWS Config rule, noncompliant security groups can be automatically remediated without manual intervention.

This setup ensures that any security group violating the SSH access policy is promptly corrected, enhancing the security posture of the EC2 instances.

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

Compute Savings Plans:

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

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

Payment Options:

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

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

1-Year Term:

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

AWS Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

AWS Config can be used to monitor and enforce compliance of AWS resource configurations, including security group rules.

Steps:

Activate AWS Config Rule:

Open the AWS Config console.

Choose "Rules" and then "Add rule".

Search for and select the restricted-ssh managed rule.

Configure the rule to monitor all security groups for compliance.

Set Up Automatic Remediation:

In the AWS Config console, associate the restricted-ssh rule with the AWS-DisablePublicAccessForSecurityGroup Systems Manager Automation runbook.

This runbook will automatically remove any inbound SSH rule that allows traffic from 0.0.0.0/0.

Set Up Notifications:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console.

Create a new rule to monitor AWS Config compliance changes.

Configure the rule to send notifications to an Amazon SNS topic whenever the restricted-ssh rule is noncompliant.

Subscribe the SysOps team to the SNS topic to receive notifications.

When running CloudWatch Synthetics canaries in a private VPC, they require access to:

CloudWatch API (for canary configuration and control) – via interface endpoint

Amazon S3 (to store canary artifacts and logs) – via gateway endpoint

VPC DNS for name resolution – both DNS resolution and hostnames must be enabled

From CloudWatch Synthetics VPC setup documentation:

If your VPC has no internet access, you must configure VPC endpoints and VPC DNS settings for canaries to run successfully.

It's a best practice to use aws s3 commands (such as aws s3 cp) for multipart uploads and downloads, because these aws s3 commands automatically perform multipart uploading and downloading based on the file size. By comparison, aws s3api commands, such as aws s3api create-multipart-upload, should be used only when aws s3 commands don't support a specific upload need, such as when the multipart upload involves multiple servers, a multipart upload is manually stopped and resumed later, or when the aws s3 command doesn't support a required request parameter. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/s3-multipart-upload-cli/

To securely manage and rotate the credentials for an Amazon RDS database created by a CloudFormation template, you should use AWS Secrets Manager. The AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource can be used to create a secret, and the resolve:secretsmanager dynamic reference can be used to retrieve the secret.

Define Secrets Manager Resource in CloudFormation Template:

Add an AWS::SecretsManager::Secret resource to the CloudFormation template to store the database credentials.

Reference the Secret in RDS Resource:

Use the resolve:secretsmanager dynamic reference to retrieve the secret when creating the AWS::RDS::DBInstance resource.

Example CloudFormation Template:

MyDatabaseSecret:

Type: AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Properties:

Name: MyDatabaseSecret

GenerateSecretString:

SecretStringTemplate: '{"username": "admin"}'

GenerateStringKey: "password"

PasswordLength: 16

ExcludeCharacters: '"@/\\'

MyRDSInstance:

Type: AWS::RDS::DBInstance

Properties:

DBInstanceIdentifier: MyRDSInstance

Engine: mysql

MasterUsername: !Sub '{{resolve:secretsmanager:MyDatabaseSecret:SecretString:username}}'

MasterUserPassword: !Sub '{{resolve:secretsmanager:MyDatabaseSecret:SecretString:password}}'

DBInstanceClass: db.t2.micro

AllocatedStorage: 20

AWS::SecretsManager::Secret

Dynamic References

To allow the EC2 instance in the private subnet to establish a secure connection to an external web server, follow these steps:

Modify Security Group:

Add an outbound rule to the security group of the EC2 instance with the following parameters:

Type: HTTPS

Destination: 0.0.0.0/0

This allows outbound HTTPS traffic to the internet.

 Group EC2 Instances Using Resource Groups:

Resource groups help organize and manage AWS resources based on tags and other criteria.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Resource Groups.

Create resource groups for similar EC2 instances based on tags or other criteria.

AWS Resource Groups

 Create a Schedule in Patch Manager:

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates the process of patching managed instances.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to Systems Manager and select Patch Manager.

Create a patch baseline if not already created.

Create a schedule for patching and specify the resource group as the target.

To allow the Lambda function to access both the new RDS database in a private subnet and the internet, the Lambda function needs to be reconfigured for VPC access with a NAT gateway setup.

Reconfigure Lambda for VPC Access:

Attach the Lambda function to the private subnets where the RDS instance is located.

Add NAT gateways to the public subnets to allow outbound internet access from the private subnets.

NAT Gateway:

NAT gateways allow instances in private subnets to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but they prevent the internet from initiating connections with those instances.

Steps to Implement:

Create NAT gateways in the public subnets.

Update the route tables of the private subnets to route internet-bound traffic through the NAT gateways.

Ensure the Lambda function has the necessary IAM role permissions to access the VPC and RDS.

Configuring a Lambda Function to Access Resources in a VPC

NAT Gateways

The simplest and most efficient solution to ensure that EC2 instances are restarted when CPU utilization exceeds 80% is to use Amazon CloudWatch alarms:

Create a CloudWatch Alarm: Navigate to the CloudWatch dashboard in the AWS Management Console and create a new alarm. Set the alarm to monitor the CPU utilization metric of the EC2 instances.

Set the Alarm Condition: Configure the alarm to trigger when the CPU utilization exceeds 80%. You can specify this threshold in the alarm settings.

Configure Alarm Actions: In the actions settings of the alarm, select the option to reboot the instance. This action ensures that the instance is automatically restarted whenever the alarm condition is met, without the need for manual intervention or additional scripts.

This method leverages AWS's native capabilities, minimizing operational overhead and eliminating the need for external tools or custom scripts.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/distributor-working-with-packages-deploy.html

To ensure that all Amazon EC2 Windows instances have a third-party agent installed and updated automatically, the SysOps administrator can use AWS Systems Manager Distributor and State Manager.

Create a Systems Manager Distributor Package:

Distributor is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that allows you to package and distribute software across your instances.

Create a Distributor package for the third-party agent.

AWS Systems Manager Distributor

Create a Systems Manager State Manager Association:

State Manager is a capability of AWS Systems Manager that automates the process of keeping your Amazon EC2 instances in a defined state.

Create a State Manager association to run the AWS-ConfigureAWSPackage document. Populate the details of the third-party agent package.

Specify instance tags based on the appropriate tag value for Windows with a schedule of 1 day to ensure the agent is updated periodically.

Generate a policy by using AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer. AWS CloudTrail is a service that records all API calls made on your account. You can use this data to generate a policy with AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer that only allows the permissions that the application requires. This will ensure that the application only has the necessary permissions and will protect the company from any unauthorized access.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/what-is-access-analyzer.html#what-is-access-analyzer-policy-generation

 Lambda Function to Rotate IAM Access Keys:

A Lambda function can be used to automate the rotation of IAM access keys based on their age.

Steps:

Write a Lambda function that checks the age of IAM access keys.

The function should rotate keys that are at least 30 days old.

Deploy the Lambda function.

 Amazon EventBridge Rule:

EventBridge can trigger the Lambda function periodically and when a new key is created.

Steps:

Create an EventBridge rule that triggers the Lambda function on a schedule (e.g., daily) and on IAM key creation events.

Rotating Access Keys for IAM Users, Amazon EventBridge

 AWS Config Managed Rule for S3 Logging:

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

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Config.

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

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

AWS Config Managed Rules

 Using AWS Lambda for Remediation:

Create a Lambda function that enables logging on S3 buckets.

Steps:

Write a Lambda function in Python or Node.js to enable logging.

Configure the function to trigger on non-compliant buckets.

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

Enable DynamoDB Streams:

Navigate to the DynamoDB console.

Select your table and enable DynamoDB Streams.

Add a Global Table Region:

With Streams enabled, go to the Global Tables tab.

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

Automatic Replication:

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

DynamoDB Global Tables

Enabling DynamoDB Streams

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The company has a stateless application on 10 EC2 On-Demand Instances in an Auto Scaling group.

At least 6 instances are needed to meet service requirements.

The goal is to maintain uptime cost-effectively.

Analyze the Requirements:

Maintain a minimum of 6 instances to meet service requirements.

Optimize costs by using a mix of instance types.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Use a Spot Fleet with an On-Demand capacity of 6 instances.

Spot Fleets allow you to request a combination of On-Demand and Spot Instances.

Ensuring a minimum of 6 On-Demand Instances guarantees the required capacity while leveraging lower-cost Spot Instances to meet additional demand.

Option B: Update the Auto Scaling group with a minimum of 6 On-Demand Instances and a maximum of 10 On-Demand Instances.

This option ensures the minimum required capacity but does not optimize costs since it only uses On-Demand Instances.

Option C: Update the Auto Scaling group with a minimum of 1 On-Demand Instance and a maximum of 6 On-Demand Instances.

This does not meet the requirement of maintaining at least 6 instances at all times.

Option D: Use a Spot Fleet with a target capacity of 6 instances.

This option relies entirely on Spot Instances, which may not always be available, risking insufficient capacity.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Using a Spot Fleet with an On-Demand capacity of 6 instances ensures the necessary uptime with a cost-effective mix of On-Demand and Spot Instances.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances

Spot Fleet Documentation

Using a Spot Fleet with a combination of On-Demand and Spot Instances offers a cost-effective solution while ensuring the required minimum capacity for the application.

For routing based on the user's geographic location to comply with data residency requirements, the best solution is to use Amazon Route 53 geolocation routing policy. This policy allows you to configure DNS responses based on the geographic location of the user, ensuring that requests are directed to specific AWS Regions that align with the company’s data residency requirements. Option C is correct. The AWS Route 53 documentation provides details on implementing geolocation routing policies Amazon Route 53 Geolocation Routing.

Enabling the organizational view in AWS Health will allow the SysOps administrator to consolidate the alerts from each account’s Personal Health Dashboard. It will also provide the administrator with a single view of all the accounts in the organization, allowing them to easily monitor the health of all the accounts in the organization.

Root user usage is strongly discouraged in AWS best practices, and cannot be restricted using identity-based IAM policies, because the root user has inherent and unalterable permissions. However, within an AWS Organization, Service Control Policies (SCPs) can be used to put maximum permission boundaries on even the root user in member accounts.

From the AWS Organizations User Guide:

SCPs affect all users and roles in attached accounts, including the root user.

If you attach an SCP that explicitly denies access to specific actions, even the root user is denied.

So, to prevent the root user from performing EC2 actions, you would:

Use the organization's management account

Create an SCP with a Deny on ec2:* actions for Principal: "arn:aws:iam::*:root"

Attach the SCP to member accounts

❌ Why other options are incorrect:

A. IAM policies cannot control root user access – Root is not governed by IAM identity-based policies.

C. AWS Config is a monitoring tool, not a preventive security control mechanism. It tracks what happened, not blocks it.

D. Amazon Inspector detects vulnerabilities; it does not prevent or deny actions by any user, including root.

Update AWS Account Name:

The AWS account name can only be changed by the root user of the account.

Steps:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console using the root user credentials.

Navigate to the "My Account" page.

Update the account name field and save the changes.

Updating the AWS Account Name

To ensure that EC2 instances in private subnets can access the internet for software updates while complying with the security policy that requires instances to be in private subnets, you should use a NAT gateway. A NAT gateway allows instances in private subnets to initiate outbound traffic to the internet but prevents the internet from initiating connections to those instances.

Steps:

Create a NAT Gateway:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "NAT Gateways".

Choose "Create NAT Gateway".

Select the public subnet where you want to create the NAT gateway.

Choose an Elastic IP address for the NAT gateway.

Choose "Create a NAT Gateway".

Update the Route Table for Private Subnets:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Route Tables".

Select the route table associated with your private subnets.

Choose the "Routes" tab and then "Edit routes".

Add a route with the destination 0.0.0.0/0 and the target as the NAT gateway ID.

Save the changes.

This setup ensures that instances in private subnets can access the internet via the NAT gateway in the public subnet.

To automate the execution of a Python script every night efficiently:

Convert Python Script to Lambda:

Create an AWS Lambda function and upload the Python script.

Ensure the function has the necessary IAM permissions to perform the required maintenance tasks.

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

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the Amazon CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Choose Create Distribution and select Web.

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

Configure Distribution Settings:

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

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

Update DNS Configuration:

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

Monitor Performance:

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

Amazon CloudFront Overview

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

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

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

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

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

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

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

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

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

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

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

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

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

Here are the steps to update an existing AWS CloudFormation stack:

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

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

Choose "Replace current template" and upload the updated CloudFormation template from the Amazon S3 bucket named "cloudformation-bucket"

In the "Parameter" section, update the EC2 instance type to us-east-t2.nano and add the IP address range 192.168.100.0/30 for SSH access.

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

In the "Capabilities" section, check the checkbox for "IAM Resources"

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

Once the update is complete, navigate to the stack and click on the "Stack options" button, and select "Prevent updates to prevent accidental deletion"

To get the value of the Prodlnstanceld , navigate to the "Outputs" tab in the CloudFormation stack and find the key "Prodlnstanceld". The value corresponding to it is the value that you need to enter in the text box below.

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation service role to deploy updates.

You can refer to the AWS CloudFormation documentation for more information on how to update and manage stacks: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

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

}

]

}

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

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

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

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

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

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

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