Timed Mode Set 1 – AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

Question 1

What is the best way to improve performance on DynamoDB by distributing the workload evenly and using the provisioned throughput efficiently?

Answer 1

Use partition keys with HIGH-cardinality attributes, which have a large number of distinct values for each item.

Question 2

Is High or Low cardinality better for DDB performance?

Answer 2

the more distinct partition key values your workload accesses, the more those requests will be spread across the partitioned space.

HIGH Cardinality

Question 3

What is more efficient for checking on files added to S3 to be converted by Glue (ETL) ?

-Configure a AWS Glue crawler to run on a schedule to check for new files in the S3 bucket every hour and convert them to Parquet format

OR

-Set up an S3 Event Notification to track every S3 PUT event and invoke the ETL job in AWS Glue through Amazon SQS

Answer 3

Set up S3 event notification is more efficient… NOT scheduled job.

Question 4

What type of storage is Provisioned IOPS volumes, EBS SSDs (io1)?

Answer 4

Provisioned IOPS are HOT storage (frequently accessed)

Question 5

In Aurora, when there is a need to connect directly to a specific instance, what should be used?

Answer 5

CUSTOM endpoint is used for connecting to specific instances.

Question 6

Which of the following metrics are available in CloudWatch by DEFAULT?

-Disk Swap space
-Disk Reads
-Disk space utilization

Answer 6

Disk Reads on an EC2 are by default included in CW.

Question 7

Which of the following metrics require a CUSTOM CloudWatch metric?

-Disk Reads
-Disk Swap space
-Disk space utilization

Answer 7

Disk Swap space and Disk space utilization are both NOT available by default in CW and require custom metrics.

Disk Reads are DEFAULT.

Question 8

What is the most common example of “cold” AWS storage service?

Answer 8

When you hear COLD storage, think S3.

Question 9

What happens to messages in an SQS queue after the consumer has processed the message?

Answer 9

The messages in the SQS queue will continue to exist, until you delete that message.

Question 10

What is a way to speed up a cloudfront user authentication process or other Cloudfront processes?

Answer 10

Lambda@Edge - allows your Lambda functions to execute the authentication process in AWS locations closer to the users.

Question 11

If users are experiencing HTTP 504 errors when trying to access a CF distribution, what is a common solution to alleviate this?

Answer 11

Set up an origin failover

Question 12

Does RDS events capture data-modifying events (INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE) ?

Answer 12

No RDS does not capture data-modifying related events from your RDS instance

Question 13

What do you need to do to capture data-modifying events from your RDS instance?

Answer 13

Create a native function or a stored procedure that invokes a Lambda function.

Question 14

What information does RDS events capture?

Answer 14

Operational info:
-DB instance events
-DB parameter group events
-DB security group events
-DBsnapshot events.

They do NOT capture data-modifying events.

Question 15

What needs to be done to monitor threads and processes on an RDS DB instance, which includes CPU and MEM %?

Answer 15

Enhanced Monitoring needs to be enabled.

CPU% and MEM% are NOT available by default in RDS monitoring

Question 16

What is the difference between Blue/green deployment and Canary deployment?

Answer 16

-B/G is deploying all at once, Canary is incremental.
-B/G requires more resources than Canary.
-Canary is LESS risk than B/G

Question 17

What EC2 will be terminated FIRST in an ASG?

Answer 17

The EC2 instance launched from the oldest launch template.

Question 18

When configuring NAT GW for EC2s in a PRIVATE subnet, what kind of subnet does the NAT GW go into, public or private?

Answer 18

Private.

Question 19

What is used to authenticate to an RDS db via an auth token?

Answer 19

IAM DB Authentication is best used to allow access to RDS DBs.

Question 20

What is DynamoDB Streams?

Answer 20

DDB streams is a flow of info about changes to items in a table. This feature MUST be enabled.

Question 21

What other AWS service does DDB streams tightly integrate with?

Answer 21

AWS Lambda. You can create lambda triggers that respond to DDB streams

Question 22

What service is used to consolidate data from multiple AWS accounts into a single account?

Answer 22

Lake Formation.

Question 23

What is the service best used to view security reports and other AWS compliance-related info?

Answer 23

AWS Artifact provides on-demand access to AWS’ security and compliance reports and select online agreements.

Question 24

How do you set up an origin failover (CloudFront)?

Answer 24

To setup an origin failover in CF - create an origin group with two origins