Question 1
As per the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, which of the following is a responsibility of AWS from a
security and compliance point of view?
Service and Communications Protection
Identity and Access Management
Patching networking infrastructure
Patching guest OS and applications
Correct option:
Patching networking infrastructure
According to the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, AWS is responsible for "Security of the Cloud". This
includes protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. This
infrastructure is composed of the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run AWS Cloud services.
Therefore, patching networking infrastructure is the responsibility of AWS.
Incorrect options:
Service and Communications Protection
Identity and Access Management
Patching guest OS and applications
The customer is responsible for security "in" the cloud. This covers things such as services and
communications protection; Identity and Access Management; and patching guest OS and applications.
Customers are responsible for managing their data including encryption options and using Identity and
Access Management tools for implementing appropriate access control policies as per their organization
requirements. Therefore, these three options fall under the responsibility of the customer according to the
AWS shared responsibility model.
Exam Alert:
Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-
model/
Question 2
Which of the following is best-suited for load-balancing HTTP and HTTPS traffic?
Network Load Balancer
,Application Load Balancer
System Load Balancer
AWS Auto Scaling
Correct option:
Application Load Balancer
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets,
such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, and Lambda functions. It can handle the varying
load of your application traffic in a single Availability Zone or across multiple Availability Zones. Elastic
Load Balancing (ELB) offers three types of load balancers that all feature the high availability, automatic
scaling, and robust security necessary to make your applications fault-tolerant.
Application Load Balancer is used for load balancing of HTTP and HTTPS traffic and provides advanced
request routing targeted at the delivery of modern application architectures, including microservices and
containers.
Incorrect options:
Network Load Balancer - Network Load Balancer is best suited for load balancing of Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) traffic where extreme
performance is required.
AWS Auto Scaling - AWS Auto Scaling monitors your applications and automatically adjusts the capacity to
maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. Using AWS Auto Scaling, it’s easy to
setup application scaling for multiple resources across multiple services in minutes. The service provides a
simple, powerful user interface that lets you build scaling plans for resources including Amazon EC2
instances and Spot Fleets, Amazon ECS tasks, Amazon DynamoDB tables and indexes, and Amazon Aurora
Replicas. Auto Scaling cannot be used for load-balancing HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
System Load Balancer - This is a made-up option and has been added as a distractor.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/
Question 3
Which of the following is the MOST cost-effective Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance
purchasing option for short-term, spiky and critical workloads on AWS Cloud?
Reserved Instance (RI)
Dedicated Host
Spot Instance
,On-Demand Instance
Correct option:
On-Demand Instance
An On-Demand Instance is an instance that you use on-demand. You have full control over its lifecycle —
you decide when to launch, stop, hibernate, start, reboot, or terminate it. There is no long-term commitment
required when you purchase On-Demand Instances. There is no upfront payment and you pay only for the
seconds that your On-Demand Instances are running. There is no need for a long-term purchasing
commitment. The price per second for running an On-Demand Instance is fixed. On-demand instances cannot
be interrupted. Therefore On-Demand instances are the best fit for short-term, spiky and critical workloads.
Incorrect options:
Spot Instance - A Spot Instance is an unused EC2 instance that is available for less than the On-Demand
price. Because Spot Instances enable you to request unused EC2 instances at steep discounts (up to 90%),
you can lower your Amazon EC2 costs significantly. Spot Instances are well-suited for data analysis, batch
jobs, background processing, and other flexible tasks that can be interrupted. These can be terminated at short
notice, so these are not suitable for critical workloads that need to run at a specific point in time.
Reserved Instance (RI) - Reserved Instances (RI) provide you with significant savings (up to 75%) on your
Amazon EC2 costs compared to On-Demand Instance pricing. Reserved Instances (RI) are not physical
instances, but rather a billing discount applied to the use of On-Demand Instances in your account. You can
purchase a Reserved Instance (RI) for a one-year or three-year commitment, with the three-year commitment
offering a bigger discount. Reserved instances (RI) cannot be interrupted. Reserved instances (RI) are not the
right choice for short-term workloads.
Dedicated Host - Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts allow you to use your eligible software licenses from
vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle on Amazon EC2 so that you get the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of
using your licenses, but with the resiliency, simplicity, and elasticity of AWS. An Amazon EC2 Dedicated
Host is a physical server fully dedicated for your use, so you can help address corporate compliance
requirement. They're not cost-efficient compared to On-Demand instances. So this option is not correct.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Question 4
Which AWS service can be used to set up billing alarms to monitor estimated charges on your AWS account?
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS CloudTrail
AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Organizations
Correct option:
, Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch can be used to create an alarm to monitor your estimated charges. When you enable the
monitoring of estimated charges for your AWS account, the estimated charges are calculated and sent several
times daily to CloudWatch as metric data. You can choose to receive alerts by email when charges have
exceeded a certain threshold. These alerts are triggered by Amazon CloudWatch and messages are sent using
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Billing metric data is stored in the US East (N.
Virginia) Region and reflects worldwide charges.
The alarm triggers when your account billing exceeds the threshold you specify. It triggers only when actual
billing exceeds the threshold. It doesn't use projections based on your usage so far in the month.
Exam Alert:
It is useful to note the difference between Amazon CloudWatch Billing vs AWS Budgets:
Amazon CloudWatch Billing Alarms: Sends an alarm when the actual cost exceeds a certain threshold.
AWS Budgets: Sends an alarm when the actual cost exceeds the budgeted amount or even when the cost
forecast exceeds the budgeted amount.
Incorrect options:
AWS CloudTrail - AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing,
and risk auditing of your AWS account. With AWS CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain
account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. Billing alarms cannot be triggered via
AWS CloudTrail.
AWS Organizations - AWS Organizations is an account management service that enables you to consolidate
multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage. Consolidated billing is a
feature of AWS Organizations. You can use the master account of your organization to consolidate and pay
for all member accounts. Billing alarms cannot, however, be triggered using Consolidated Billing.
AWS Cost Explorer - AWS Cost Explorer has an easy-to-use interface that lets you visualize, understand, and
manage your AWS costs and usage over time. AWS Cost Explorer will help analyze your data at a high level
or dive deeper into your cost and usage data using various reports (Monthly costs by AWS service, hourly
and resource Level cost). Billing alarms cannot be triggered via AWS Cost Explorer.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/
monitor_estimated_charges_with_cloudwatch.html
Question 5
The DevOps team at a Big Data consultancy has set up Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
instances across two AWS Regions for its flagship application. Which of the following characterizes this
application architecture?
Deploying the application across two AWS Regions improves agility
Deploying the application across two AWS Regions improves scalability