AWS Skill Builder

Question 1

A company needs to look up configuration details about how a Linux-based Amazon EC2 instance was launched.

Which command should a solutions architect run on the EC2 instance to gather the system metadata?

A. curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/

B. curl http://localhost/latest/meta-data/

C. curl http://254.169.254.169/latest/meta-data/

D. curl http://192.168.0.1/latest/meta-data/

Answer 1

A. curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/

Question 2

A company needs to maintain data records for a minimum of 5 years. The data is rarely accessed after it is stored. The data must be accessible within 2 hours.

Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

A. Store the data in an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system. Access the data by using AWS Direct Connect.

B. Store the data in an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume. Create snapshots. Store the snapshots in an Amazon S3 bucket.

C. Store the data in an Amazon S3 bucket. Use an S3 Lifecycle policy to move the data to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA).

D. Store the data in an Amazon S3 bucket. Use an S3 Lifecycle policy to move the data to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval.

Answer 2

D. Store the data in an Amazon S3 bucket. Use an S3 Lifecycle policy to move the data to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval.

Correct. The storage of the data in an S3 bucket provides a cost-effective initial location for the data. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is the most cost-effective archival storage solution that meets the requirement of a 2-hour retrieval time.

For more information about how to move data between S3 storage classes automatically, see Managing your storage lifecycle.

For more information about S3 storage classes, see Using Amazon S3 storage classes.

Question 3

A company has strict data protection requirements. A solutions architect must configure security for a VPC to ensure that backend Amazon RDS DB instances cannot be accessed from the internet. The solutions architect must ensure that the DB instances are accessible from the application tier over a specified port only.

Which actions should the solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

A. Specify a DB subnet group that contains only private subnets for the DB instances.

B. Attach an elastic network interface with a private IPv4 address to each DB instance.

C. Configure AWS Shield with the VPC. Update the route tables for the subnets that the DB instances use.

D. Configure an AWS Direct Connect connection on the database port between the application tier and the backend.

E. Add an inbound rule to the database security group that allows requests from the security group of the application tier over the database port. Remove other inbound rules.

Answer 3

A. Specify a DB subnet group that contains only private subnets for the DB instances.

Correct. A private subnet is one component to use to secure the database tier. Internet traffic is not routed to a private subnet. When you place DB instances in a private subnet, you add a layer of security.

For more information about VPCs with public subnets and private subnets, see Routing.

E. Add an inbound rule to the database security group that allows requests from the security group of the application tier over the database port. Remove other inbound rules.

Correct. Security groups can restrict access to the DB instances. Security groups provide access from only the application tier on only a specific port.

For more information about security groups, see Security group basics.

Question 4

A company uses one AWS account to run production workloads. The company has a separate AWS account for its security team. During periodic audits, the security team needs to view specific account settings and resource configurations in the AWS account that runs production workloads. A solutions architect must provide the required access to the security team by designing a solution that follows AWS security best practices.

Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. Create an IAM user for each security team member in the production account. Attach a permissions policy that provides the permissions required by the security team to each user.

B. Create an IAM role in the production account. Attach a permissions policy that provides the permissions required by the security team. Add the security team account to the trust policy.

C. Create a new IAM user in the production account. Assign administrative privileges to the user. Allow the security team to use this account to log in to the systems that need to be accessed.

D. Create an IAM user for each security team member in the production account. Attach a permissions policy that provides the permissions required by the security team to a new IAM group. Assign the security team members to the group.

Answer 4

B. Create an IAM role in the production account. Attach a permissions policy that provides the permissions required by the security team. Add the security team account to the trust policy.

Correct. This solution follows security best practices by using a role to delegate permissions that consist of least-privilege access.

For more information about how to use roles to delegate permissions, see Require Human Users to Use Federation with an Identity Provider to Access AWS Using Temporary Credentials.

Question 5

A company is investigating services to manage vulnerability scans in Amazon EC2 instances and container images that the company stores in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR). The service should identify potential software vulnerabilities and categorize the severity of the vulnerabilities.

Which AWS service will meet these requirements?

A. Amazon GuardDuty

B Patch Manager, a capability of AWS Systems Manager

C. Amazon Inspector

D. AWS Config

Answer 5

C. Amazon Inspector

Correct. Amazon Inspector removes the operational overhead that is necessary to configure a vulnerability management solution. Amazon Inspector works with both EC2 instances and container images in Amazon ECR to identify potential software vulnerabilities and to categorize the severity of the vulnerabilities.

Question 6

A company that processes satellite images has an application that runs on AWS. The company stores the images in an Amazon S3 bucket. For compliance reasons, the company must replicate all data once a month to an on-premises location. The average amount of data that the company needs to transfer is 60 TB.

What is the MOST cost-effective way to transfer this data?

A. Export the data monthly from the existing S3 bucket to an AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device. Ship the device to the on-premises location. Transfer the data. Return the device a week later.

B. Use S3 bucket replication to copy all objects to a new S3 bucket that uses S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage. Use an AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway to transfer the data from the new S3 bucket to the on-premises location. Delete the images from the new S3 bucket after the transfer of the data.

C. Use S3 bucket replication to copy all objects to a new S3 bucket that uses S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage. Use Amazon S3 to transfer the data from the new S3 bucket to the on-premises location. Delete the images from the new S3 bucket after the transfer of the data.

D. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution for the objects in the existing S3 bucket. Download the objects from CloudFront to the on-premises location every month.

Answer 6

A. Export the data monthly from the existing S3 bucket to an AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device. Ship the device to the on-premises location. Transfer the data. Return the device a week later.

Correct. The base price covers the device and 10 days of usage at the on-premises location. If the company returns the device within a week, the company pays the base price and the price for data transfer out of AWS.

Question 7

Which components are required to build a site-to-site VPN connection to AWS? (Select TWO.)

A. An internet gateway

B. A NAT gateway

C. A customer gateway

D. Amazon API Gateway

E. A virtual private gateway

Answer 7

C. A customer gateway

Correct. A customer gateway is required for the VPN connection to be established. A customer gateway device is set up and configured in the customer’s data center.

E. A virtual private gateway

Correct. A virtual private gateway is attached to a VPC to create a site-to-site VPN connection to AWS. You can accept private encrypted network traffic from an on-premises data center into your VPC without the need to traverse the open public internet.

Question 8

A company has an on-premises application that exports log files about users of a website. The log files range from 20 GB to 30 GB in size. A solutions architect has created an Amazon S3 bucket to store the files. The files will be uploaded directly from the application. The network connection experiences intermittent failures, and the upload sometimes fails. The solutions architect must design a solution that resolves this issue. The solution must minimize operational overhead.

Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration.

B. Copy the files to an Amazon EC2 instance in the closest AWS Region. Use S3 Lifecycle policies to copy the log files to Amazon S3.

C. Use multipart upload to Amazon S3.

D. Upload the files to two AWS Regions simultaneously. Enable two-way Cross-Region Replication between the two Regions.

Answer 8

C. Use multipart upload to Amazon S3.

Correct. You can use a multipart upload to upload larger files, such as the files in this scenario. If transmission of any part fails, you can retransmit that part without affecting other parts.

For more information about multipart uploads, see Uploading and Copying Objects Using Multipart Upload.

Question 9

A company is transitioning its Amazon EC2 based MariaDB database to Amazon RDS. The company has already identified a database instance type that will meet the company’s CPU and memory requirements. The database must provide at least 40 GiB of storage capacity and 1,000 IOPS.

Which storage configuration for the Amazon RDS for MariaDB instance is MOST cost-effective?

A. Provision 350 GiB of magnetic storage for the RDS instance.

B. Provision 50 GiB of General Purpose SSD (gp3) storage for the RDS instance.

C. Provision 334 GiB of General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage for the RDS instance.

D. Provision 50 GiB of Provisioned IOPS storage with 1,000 IOPS for the RDS instance.

Answer 9

B. Provision 50 GiB of General Purpose SSD (gp3) storage for the RDS instance.

Correct. General Purpose SSD (gp3) includes 3,000 IOPS at no additional cost independent of volume size.

For more information about EBS pricing, see Amazon EBS Pricing.

For more information about General Purpose SSD storage, see General Purpose SSD Storage.

Question 10

An application runs on two Amazon EC2 instances behind a Network Load Balancer. The EC2 instances are in a single Availability Zone.

What should a solutions architect do to make this architecture more highly available?

A. Create a new VPC with two new EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone as the original EC2 instances. Create a VPC peering connection between the two VPCs

B. Replace the Network Load Balancer with an Application Load Balancer that is configured with the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group.

C. Configure Amazon Route 53 to perform health checks on the EC2 instances behind the Network Load Balancer. Add a failover routing policy.

D. Place the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group that extends across multiple Availability Zones. Designate the Auto Scaling group as the target of the Network Load Balancer.

Answer 10

D. Place the EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group that extends across multiple Availability Zones. Designate the Auto Scaling group as the target of the Network Load Balancer.

Correct. This solution extends the EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones and automatically adds capacity when additional capacity is needed.

For more information about Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, see Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling benefits.

Question 11

A company runs its website on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer that is configured as the origin for an Amazon CloudFront distribution. The company wants to protect against cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks.

Which approach should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?

A. Enable AWS Shield Advanced. List the CloudFront distribution as a protected resource.

B. Define an AWS Shield Advanced policy in AWS Firewall Manager to block cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks.

C. Deploy AWS Firewall Manager on the EC2 instances. Create conditions and rules that block cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks.

D. Set up AWS WAF on the CloudFront distribution. Use conditions and rules that block cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks.

Answer 11

D. Set up AWS WAF on the CloudFront distribution. Use conditions and rules that block cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks.

Correct. AWS WAF can detect the presence of SQL code that is likely to be malicious (known as SQL injection). AWS WAF also can detect the presence of a script that is likely to be malicious (known as cross-site scripting).

For more information about AWS WAF, see AWS WAF.

Question 12

A reporting application runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The instances run in an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. For complex reports, the application can take up to 15 minutes to respond to a request. A solutions architect is concerned that users will receive HTTP 5xx errors if a report request is in process during a scale-in event.

What should the solutions architect do to ensure that user requests will be completed before instances are terminated?

A. Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) for the target group of the instances.

B. Increase the instance size in the Application Load Balancer target group.

C. Increase the cooldown period for the Auto Scaling group to a greater amount of time than the time required for the longest running responses.

D. Increase the deregistration delay timeout for the target group of the instances to greater than 900 seconds.

Answer 12

D. Increase the deregistration delay timeout for the target group of the instances to greater than 900 seconds.

Correct. By default, the Application Load Balancer waits 300 seconds before the completion of the deregistration process, which can help in-flight requests to the target become complete. To change the amount of time that the Application Load Balancer waits, update the deregistration delay value.

For more information about deregistration delay, see Deregistration Delay.

Question 13

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) architecture for an important application on AWS. The company has determined that the recovery time objective (RTO) is 5 minutes with a minimal running instance capacity to support the application in the AWS DR site. The company needs to minimize costs for the DR architecture.

Which DR strategy will meet these requirements?

A. Warm standby

B. Pilot light

C. Multi-site active-active

D. Backup and restore

Answer 13

A. Warm standby

Correct. This solution meets the requirement for an RTO of 5 minutes with a minimal running instance. The instances run at a low capacity and can scale within minutes.

For more information about warm standby, see Plan for Disaster Recovery (DR).

B. Pilot light

Incorrect. This solution would not meet the requirement for a minimal running instance. The instances are stopped.

C. Multi-site active-active

Incorrect. Because this is an active-active environment, this solution would address the requirement for an RTO within minutes. The services are already running at full capacity within that time. However, this solution costs more than is necessary to meet the company’s requirements.

D. Backup and restore

Incorrect. This solution would not meet the requirement for a minimal running instance. The instances would need to be created, and backup and restore strategies take hours to run.

Question 14

A company is developing a chat application that will be deployed on AWS. The application stores the messages by using a key-value data model. Groups of users typically read the messages multiple times. A solutions architect must select a database solution that will scale for a high rate of reads and will deliver messages with microsecond latency.

Which database solution will meet these requirements?

A. Amazon Aurora with Aurora Replicas

B. Amazon DynamoDB with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

C. Amazon Aurora with Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached

D. Amazon Neptune with Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached

Answer 14

A. Amazon Aurora with Aurora Replicas

Incorrect. Aurora is a relational database (not a key-value database). Aurora is not likely to achieve microsecond latency consistently.

For more information about Aurora, see What is Amazon Aurora?

B. Amazon DynamoDB with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

Correct. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that supports key-value records. DAX delivers response times in microseconds.

For more information about DynamoDB, see What is Amazon DynamoDB?

For more information about DAX, see In-Memory Acceleration with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX).

C. Amazon Aurora with Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached

Incorrect. Aurora is a relational database (not a key-value database). Aurora is not likely to achieve microsecond latency consistently, even with ElastiCache.

For more information about Aurora, see What is Amazon Aurora?

For more information about ElastiCache for Memcached, see What is Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached?

D. Amazon Neptune with Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached

Incorrect. Neptune is a graph database that is optimized for working with highly connected data. Neptune is not optimized for simple key-value data.

For more information about Neptune, see What Is Amazon Neptune?

Question 15

A media company is designing a new application for graphic rendering. The application requires up to 400 GB of storage for temporary data that is discarded after the frames are rendered. The application requires approximately 40,000 random IOPS to perform the rendering.

What is the MOST cost-effective storage option for this rendering application?

A. A storage optimized Amazon EC2 instance with instance store storage

B. A storage optimized Amazon EC2 instance with a Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume

C. A burstable Amazon EC2 instance with a Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume

D. A burstable Amazon EC2 instance with Amazon S3 storage over a VPC endpoint

Answer 15

A. A storage optimized Amazon EC2 instance with instance store storage

Correct. Storage optimized instances are designed for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to very large datasets on local storage. These instances are optimized to provide applications with tens of thousands of low-latency, random IOPS. The instance store has no additional cost.

For more information about storage optimized instances, see Storage Optimized Instances.

For more information about instance stores, see Amazon EC2 Instance Store.

B. A storage optimized Amazon EC2 instance with a Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume

Incorrect. Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) EBS volumes can deliver more than the 40,000 IOPS that are required in the scenario. However, this solution is not as cost-effective as an instance store because Amazon EBS adds cost to the hourly instance rate. This solution provides persistence of data beyond the lifecycle of the instance, but persistence is not required in this use case.

For more information about Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) EBS volumes, see Provisioned IOPS SSD Volumes.

For more information about pricing for Amazon EBS, see Amazon EBS Pricing.

C. A burstable Amazon EC2 instance with a Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume

Incorrect. Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) EBS volumes are engineered to maximize the throughput of data that can be sent to and from a volume, not the random IOPS. Consequently, this solution does not meet the IOPS requirement. Additionally, Amazon EBS adds cost to the hourly instance rate. This solution provides persistence of data beyond the lifecycle of the instance, but persistence is not required in this use case.

For more information about Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) EBS volumes, see Throughput Optimized HDD and Cold HDD Volumes.

For more information about pricing for Amazon EBS, see Amazon EBS Pricing.

D. A burstable Amazon EC2 instance with Amazon S3 storage over a VPC endpoint

Incorrect. Amazon S3 (object storage) is not the most suitable solution for rapidly changing data that is required for the scratch volume space. Block storage is appropriate for the read/write functionality to work smoothly.

For more information about usage patterns for Amazon S3, see Performance Design Patterns for Amazon S3.

Question 16

A company has an application that runs on a large general purpose Amazon EC2 instance type that is part of an EC2 Auto Scaling group. The company wants to reduce future costs associated with this application. After the company reviews metrics and logs in Amazon CloudWatch, the company notices that this application runs randomly a couple of times a day to retrieve and manage data. According to CloudWatch, the maximum runtime for each request is 10 minutes, the memory use is 4 GB, and the instances are always in the running state.

Which solution will reduce costs the MOST?

A. Deploy the application on a large burstable EC2 instance.

B. Refactor the application code to run as an AWS Lambda function.

C. Containerize the application by using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Host the container on EC2 instances.

D. Use AWS Instance Scheduler to start and stop the instances based on the runtimes in the logs.

Answer 16

A. Deploy the application on a large burstable EC2 instance.

Incorrect. This solution would keep the EC2 instance in the running state 24 hours a day. This solution would not reduce costs.

For more information about EC2 costs, see Amazon EC2 On-Demand Pricing.

B. Refactor the application code to run as an AWS Lambda function.

Correct. Lambda is a fully managed service that would automatically scale when necessary and would be highly available. A solution that deploys the application as a Lambda function reduces costs the most.

For more information about Lambda, see What Is AWS Lambda?

C. Containerize the application by using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Host the container on EC2 instances.

Incorrect. This solution would not reduce costs because this solution would still require EC2 instances to be in the running state beyond the run duration of each request.

For more information about Amazon EKS, see Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service.

D. Use AWS Instance Scheduler to start and stop the instances based on the runtimes in the logs.

Incorrect. This solution would not be appropriate because the request times are unpredictable. This solution would create scenarios where the application would not be available because instance launches are not correctly scheduled. This solution would also incur unnecessary costs because the company would be charged on an hourly basis for the EC2 instances instead of on the basis of exact runtimes.

For more information about AWS Instance Scheduler, see Instance Scheduler on AWS.

Question 17

A company is developing a new mobile version of its popular web application in the AWS Cloud. The mobile app must be accessible to internal and external users. The mobile app must handle authorization, authentication, and user management from one central source.

Which solution meets these requirements?

A. IAM roles

B. IAM users and groups

C. Amazon Cognito user pools

D. AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS)

Answer 17

A. IAM roles

Incorrect. An IAM role is an IAM entity that is assumable by an IAM user. An IAM role has permissions policies that define what the entity can and cannot do. However, an IAM role does not control access to an application.

For more information about IAM roles, see IAM roles.

B. IAM users and groups

Incorrect. You can use IAM users and groups to control who is authenticated and authorized to use an AWS service. However, users and groups do not control access to an application.

For more information about IAM users, see IAM users.

For more information about IAM groups, see IAM groups.

C. Amazon Cognito user pools

Correct. Amazon Cognito provides authentication, authorization, and user management for your web and mobile apps. Users can sign in directly with a user name and password, or through a trusted third party.

For more information about Amazon Cognito, see What is Amazon Cognito?

D. AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS)

Incorrect. You can use AWS STS to create and provide trusted users with temporary security credentials that can control access to your AWS resources. However, AWS STS does not control access to an application.

For more information about temporary security credentials, see Temporary security credentials in IAM.

Question 18

A company asks a solutions architect to implement a pilot light disaster recovery (DR) strategy for an existing on-premises application. The application is self contained and does not need to access any databases.

Which solution will implement a pilot light DR strategy?

A. Back up the on-premises application, configuration, and data to an Amazon S3 bucket. When the on-premises application fails, build a new hosting environment on AWS and restore the application from the information that is stored in the S3 bucket.

B. Recreate the application hosting environment on AWS by using Amazon EC2 instances and stop the EC2 instances. When the on-premises application fails, start the stopped EC2 instances and direct 100% of application traffic to the EC2 instances that are running in the AWS Cloud.

C. Recreate the application hosting environment on AWS by using Amazon EC2 instances. Direct 10% of application traffic to the EC2 instances that are running in the AWS Cloud. When the on-premises application fails, direct 100% of application traffic to the EC2 instances that are running in the AWS Cloud.

D. Back up the on-premises application, configuration, and data to an Amazon S3 bucket. When the on-premises application fails, rebuild the on-premises hosting environment and restore the application from the information that is stored in the S3 bucket.

Answer 18

A. Back up the on-premises application, configuration, and data to an Amazon S3 bucket. When the on-premises application fails, build a new hosting environment on AWS and restore the application from the information that is stored in the S3 bucket.

Incorrect. This is a backup and restore DR strategy. Backup and restore DR strategies typically have the lowest cost but highest recovery time. A solution that manually rebuilds the hosting infrastructure on AWS could take hours.

B. Recreate the application hosting environment on AWS by using Amazon EC2 instances and stop the EC2 instances. When the on-premises application fails, start the stopped EC2 instances and direct 100% of application traffic to the EC2 instances that are running in the AWS Cloud.

Correct. This is a pilot light DR strategy. This solution recreates an existing application hosting environment in an AWS Region. This solution turns off most (or all) resources and uses the resources only during tests or when DR failover is necessary. RPO and RTO are usually 10s of minutes.

A pilot light strategy simplifies recovery at the time of a disaster because the core infrastructure requirements are all in place. A pilot light strategy also minimizes the ongoing cost of DR by minimizing the active resources.

For more information about the pilot light DR strategies, see Disaster Recovery Options in the Cloud.

C. Recreate the application hosting environment on AWS by using Amazon EC2 instances. Direct 10% of application traffic to the EC2 instances that are running in the AWS Cloud. When the on-premises application fails, direct 100% of application traffic to the EC2 instances that are running in the AWS Cloud.

Incorrect. This is a warm standby DR strategy. This solution recreates an existing application hosting environment in an AWS Region. This solution serves a portion of live traffic. With this DR strategy, RPO and RTO are usually a few minutes. However, costs are higher because this solutions runs resources continuously.

D. Back up the on-premises application, configuration, and data to an Amazon S3 bucket. When the on-premises application fails, rebuild the on-premises hosting environment and restore the application from the information that is stored in the S3 bucket.

Incorrect. This is a backup and restore DR strategy. Backup and restore DR strategies typically have the lowest cost but highest recovery time. A solution that manually rebuilds the hosting infrastructure on premises and downloads the data that a company has backed up could take hours or days.

Question 19

A company is deploying a new application that will consist of an application layer and an online transaction processing (OLTP) relational database. The application must be available at all times. However, the application will have unpredictable traffic patterns. The company wants to pay the minimum for compute costs during these idle periods.

Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost effectively?

A. Run the application on Amazon EC2 instances by using a burstable instance type. Use Amazon Redshift for the database.

B. Deploy the application and a MySQL database to Amazon EC2 instances by using AWS CloudFormation. Delete the instances at the beginning of the idle periods

C. Deploy the application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. Use Amazon RDS for MySQL for the database.

D. Run the application in containers with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) on AWS Fargate. Use Amazon Aurora Serverless for the database.

Answer 19

A. Run the application on Amazon EC2 instances by using a burstable instance type. Use Amazon Redshift for the database.

Incorrect. EC2 burstable instances offer burstable capability without scaling. However, this solution does not minimize cost during the periods of inactivity and is not the most cost-effective option. Additionally, an Amazon Redshift database is not the most suitable solution for OLTP. Amazon Redshift is specifically designed for online analytic processing (OLAP).

For more information about Amazon Redshift, see What Is Amazon Redshift?

B. Deploy the application and a MySQL database to Amazon EC2 instances by using AWS CloudFormation. Delete the instances at the beginning of the idle periods.

Incorrect. Although infrastructure as code (IaC) helps with availability, this solution does not meet the requirement of always being available. Additionally, this solution offers no way to keep the database data after the database is deleted.

For more information about CloudFormation, see What Is AWS CloudFormation?

C. Deploy the application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. Use Amazon RDS for MySQL for the database.

Incorrect. With this solution, at least one instance and a database will run during the periods of inactivity. This solution does not minimize cost during the periods of inactivity. This solution is not the most cost-effective option.

For more information about Auto Scaling groups, see What Is Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling?

D. Run the application in containers with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) on AWS Fargate. Use Amazon Aurora Serverless for the database.

Correct. When Amazon ECS uses Fargate for compute, it incurs minimal costs when the application is idle. Aurora Serverless also incurs no compute costs when it is idle.

For more information about Fargate, see AWS Fargate Pricing.

For more information about Aurora Serverless, see Amazon Aurora Serverless.

Question 20

A company is deploying a new database on a new Amazon EC2 instance. The workload of this database requires a single Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume that can support up to 20,000 IOPS.

Which type of EBS volume meets this requirement?

A. Throughput Optimized HDD

B. Provisioned IOPS SSD

C. General Purpose SSD

D. Cold HDD

Answer 20

A. Throughput Optimized HDD

Incorrect. A Throughput Optimized HDD EBS volume is an HDD-backed storage device that is limited to 500 IOPS for each volume.

For more information about Throughput Optimized HDD EBS volumes, see Hard disk drives (HDD).

B. Provisioned IOPS SSD

Correct. A Provisioned IOPS SSD EBS volume provides up to 64,000 IOPS for each volume.

For more information about Provisioned IOPS SSD EBS volumes, see Solid state drives (SSD).

C. General Purpose SSD

Incorrect. A General Purpose SSD EBS volume is limited to 16,000 IOPS for each volume.

For more information about General Purpose SSD EBS volumes, see Solid state drives (SSD).

D. Cold HDD

Incorrect. A Cold HDD volume provides low-cost magnetic storage that defines performance in terms of throughput rather than IOPS. Cold HDD volumes are a good fit for large, sequential cold-data workloads.

For more information about Cold HDD EBS volumes, see Amazon EBS Cold HDD Volumes.