CLF-C02 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Questions and Answers

According to theAWS Shared Responsibility Model, AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud, including Amazon S3. This infrastructure includes hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run AWS services.

A. Configure an S3 Lifecycle policy: Incorrect, as configuring S3 Lifecycle policies to manage object lifecycle (e.g., transitioning objects to different storage classes or deleting them after a certain period) is the customer's responsibility.

B. Activate S3 Versioning: Incorrect, as enabling S3 Versioning is a customer responsibility for managing data protection.

C. Configure S3 bucket policies: Incorrect, as setting and managing S3 bucket policies to control access is the customer's responsibility.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Amazon S3

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) distributes incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses, ensuring better application availability and fault tolerance. While ELB scales to meet traffic demands, it does not inherently scale compute resources themselves, span multiple regions, or balance traffic between internet gateways.

Savings Plans offer cost savings for predictable, steady workloads over a one or three-year term, with flexibility in instance family and size, making them suitable for critical workloads on EC2 instances that will run for a long term like three years. Spot Instances are more cost-effective but not suitable forcritical, predictable workloads due to potential interruptions. Dedicated Hosts and On-Demand Instances would be more costly.

The AWS service or feature that the company can use to group users together and apply permissions to the group is AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). AWS IAM is a service that enables users to create and manage users, groups, roles, and permissions for AWS services and resources. Users can use IAM groups to organize multiple users that have similar access requirements, and attach policies to the groups that define the permissions for the users in the group. This simplifies the management and administration of user access

Network ACLs (NACLs) are subnet-level firewalls in AWS, controlling inbound and outbound traffic for VPC subnets. They provide an additional layer of security by allowing or denying traffic based on IP protocol, source and destination IP, and port. Security groups operate at the instance level, while Traffic Mirroring and Internet Gateways do not function as firewalls at the subnet level.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a managed service that facilitates the deployment and management of applications in the AWS Cloud. It supports multiple programming languages and frameworks, allowing users to deploy web applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles deployment, capacity provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling. The other services listed, like CodeGuru, Fargate, and CodeCommit, do not provide full application deployment and management capabilities.

AWS Artifact provides on-demand access to AWS compliance reports and security documentation. It is a self-service portal where customers can download documents like SOC reports, ISO certifications, and other compliance-related materials necessary for meeting regulatory requirements. AWS Config and Trusted Advisor offer security assessments and compliance monitoring, but they do not provide direct access to compliance reports.

AWS CloudFormation allows users to define and deploy infrastructure as code, creating highly repeatable and consistent configurations across environments. It uses templates to automate the provisioning and management of resources. CodeDeploy focuses on application deployment, and Systems Manager offers operational management, but neither provides templated infrastructure deployment at the same level as CloudFormation.

AWS Enterprise Support provides strategic planning assistance, infrastructure event management, and real-time support, which are necessary for business-critical applications. Trusted Advisor and APN do not offer direct strategic support, and while AWS Professional Services can assist with complex solutions, Enterprise Support specifically includes ongoing operational support and event management.

AWS Outposts extend AWS infrastructure and services to on-premises locations, providing low-latency access to AWS resources and ensuring data residency. This service is suitable for hybrid environments that require the same AWS services and infrastructure to be available locally. Wavelength, Transit Gateway, and Ground Station do not specifically address low-latency access to on-premises resources or data residency.

The reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework includes the principle of testing recovery procedures to ensure systems can effectively recover from failures. Regular testing of recovery processes helps verify that systems are resilient and can handle potential disruptions. The other options align with different pillars like cost optimization and operational excellence.

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated, low-latency, and consistent network connection between on-premises data centers and AWS. This private connection minimizes latency and improves network stability compared to a public internet connection or VPN. AWS Direct Connect is ideal for applications requiring real-time data transfer with minimal latency.

AWS Snowball Edge offers configurations that are either storage-optimized or compute-optimized, providing flexibility for different data migration and processing needs. It supports local processing and data transfer to AWS, catering to scenarios that require heavy storage or compute resources. AWS Snowcone and DataSync do not offer these optimizations, and Storage Gateway focuses on hybrid cloud storage.

Amazon Rekognition is a machine learning service that can analyze and recognize objects, people, text, scenes, and activities in images and videos. It is specifically designed for organizing, categorizing, and searching large volumes of images based on various attributes. Amazon Transcribe is for speech-to-text, Amazon Aurora is a relational database service, and Amazon QuickSight is a business intelligence tool for data visualization.

One of the main advantages of cloud computing is the ability to trade fixed capital expenditures for variable operating expenses. By moving to the AWS Cloud, the company pays only for the resources it uses on a per-usage basis, reducing the need for large upfront investments in data center infrastructure. This benefit allows for more flexible and cost-effective spending based on actual usage. Other options, such as increased speed and agility or global reach, are also cloud benefits but do not specifically address the shift from fixed to variable expenses.

A VPC endpoint enables private connections between an Amazon VPC and AWS services, like Amazon S3, without requiring internet access. This allows secure access to S3 from an EC2 instance within the same VPC, reducing latency and improving security. VPN connections and NAT gateways do not eliminate internet traffic, and an internet gateway would expose the VPC to the public internet.

Amazon Rekognition provides machine learning capabilities to analyze images and videos, enabling the detection of objects, people, text, and scenes. It is designed specifically for image and video analysis, making it suitable for various use cases like facial recognition and content moderation. Other services like Amazon Connect, Lightsail, and Personalize do not offer image or video analysis capabilities.

AWS SDKs Overview:

AWS Software Development Kits (SDKs) provide libraries and tools for developers to interact with AWS services programmatically.

SDKs are available for multiple programming languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, and .NET.

How AWS SDKs Meet the Requirement:

Enable developers to integrate AWS services into their applications easily.

Include API clients, authentication helpers, and other utilities specific to AWS services.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. AWS CodePipeline:Automates CI/CD pipelines but does not provide libraries for development.

C. Amazon CloudWatch:Focuses on monitoring and logging; not a development toolset.

D. AWS CodeDeploy:Automates application deployment but does not include development libraries.

In the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF), theGovernanceperspective focuses on aligning IT strategy and goals with business processes, which includes managing data assets, setting up an inventory of data products, and ensuring that data cataloging and metadata management are in place. This perspective is crucial for organizing data products and services, which aligns with building a comprehensive data catalog. Other perspectives like Operations, Business, and Platform do not specifically address the management of a data catalog.

AWS Artifact Overview:

AWS Artifact is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS compliance documentation and agreements.

It includes reports such as PCI DSS, SOC, and ISO certifications.

How AWS Artifact Meets the Requirement:

The PCI DSS compliance documentation can be downloaded directly from the Artifact console.

Artifact helps customers demonstrate compliance to auditors by providing official certifications and attestations.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

B. AWS Organizations:Used for managing accounts, not compliance reports.

C. AWS Trusted Advisor:Offers best practice checks but does not provide compliance documentation.

D. AWS Support Center:Provides customer support and ticket management but not compliance documentation.

AWS Fargate and Amazon S3 are both serverless services. Fargate allows users to run containers without managing the underlying infrastructure, while S3 provides object storage without the need for provisioning or managing servers. Amazon EC2, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka, and Amazon EMR involve server management to varying degrees and are not serverless by nature.

IAM Users and Billing Permissions:

IAM users with appropriate permissions can access and view the AWS Billing console.

The root user is required only for certain account-level tasks, such as changing support plans or closing accounts.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. Change to a different AWS Support plan:Requires root user credentials.

B. Close an AWS account:Requires root user credentials.

D. Activate access to the AWS Billing console:Requires root user credentials.

To follow the principle of least privilege, the company should create an IAM user with only programmatic access since the access is limited to AWS CLI and SDKs, not the Management Console. Additionally, a custom IAM policy granting specific Amazon RDS permissions should be created and attached to this user to restrict access solely to necessary actions. Providing programmatic access only ensures adherence to security best practices by limiting access to the required interfaces.

Amazon Athena Overview:

Amazon Athena is a serverless query service that allows users to analyze data in S3 using standard SQL.

It is commonly used to query AWS Cost and Usage Reports stored in S3.

How It Works for Cost Reports:

Cost and Usage Reports are delivered in a structured format to an S3 bucket.

Athena can query these reports without requiring additional ETL processes.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. Amazon OpenSearch Service:Designed for search and log analytics, not querying structured data.

C. Amazon Aurora:A relational database service, unsuitable for querying S3 data directly.

D. AWS Glue:Used for ETL tasks but not directly for querying.

Under the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for managing the underlying infrastructure, including operating system-level updates on managed services like Amazon RDS. Customers are responsible for managing the database instance and configurations, but AWS handles OS updates for the infrastructure supporting RDS.

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that uses edge locations to cache content closer to users, reducing latency and improving performance. It supports the delivery of web content, such as videos and images, by caching copies at edge locations around the world. Amazon Kinesis, SQS, and Route 53 do not utilize edge locations for content caching.

The architecture concept of the AWS Cloud that meets the requirements of the company that wants to migrate to the AWS Cloud and needs the ability to acquire and release resources as needed is elasticity. Elasticity means that AWS customers can quickly and easily provision and scale up or down AWS resources as their demand changes, without any upfront costs or long-term commitments. AWS provides various tools and services that enable customers to achieve elasticity, such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudFormation. Elasticity helps customers optimize their performance, availability, and cost efficiency. Availability, reliability, and durability are other architecture concepts of the AWS Cloud, but they are not directly related to the ability to acquire and release resources as needed. Availability means that AWS customers can access their AWS resources and applications whenever and wherever they need them. Reliability means that AWS customers can depend on their AWS resources and applications to functioncorrectly and consistently. Durability means that AWS customers can preserve their data and objects for long periods of time without loss or corruption12

 AWS Direct Connect gives users the ability to provision a dedicated and private network connection from their internal network to AWS. AWS Direct Connect links the user’s internal network to an AWSDirect Connect location over a standard Ethernet fiber-optic cable. One end of the cable is connected to the user’s router, the other to an AWS Direct Connect router. With this connection in place, the user can create virtual interfaces directly to the AWS cloud and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), bypassing internet service providers in the network path2.

 Identity and access management is the customer’s responsibility, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. This means that the customer is responsible for managing user access to the AWS resources, using tools such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), and AWS Organizations. The customer is also responsible for securing their data in transit and at rest, using encryption, key management, and other methods. Hard drive initialization, protection of data center hardware, and security of Availability Zones are AWS’s responsibility, as they are part of the infrastructure, physical security, and network security that AWS provides to the customer12

The correct answer to the question is B because providing user access with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a customer responsibility according to the AWS shared responsibilitymodel. The AWS shared responsibility model is a framework that defines the division of responsibilities between AWS and the customer for security and compliance. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the global infrastructure, such as the regions, availability zones, and edge locations; the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run the AWS services; and the virtualization layer that separates the customer instances and storage. The customer is responsible for the security in the cloud, which includes the customer data, the guest operating systems, the applications, the identity and access management, the firewall configuration, and the encryption. IAM is an AWS service that enables customers to manage access and permissions to AWS resources and services. Customers are responsible for creating and managing IAM users, groups, roles, and policies, and ensuring that they follow the principle of least privilege. Reference: AWS Shared Responsibility Model

AWS is responsible for maintaining the physical and environmental controls of the AWS Cloud, such as power, cooling, fire suppression, and physical security1. The customer is responsible for managing the IAM user permissions, creating security group rules for outbound access, applying Amazon EC2 operating system patches, and other aspects of security in the cloud1.

Amazon RDS and Amazon EC2 are two AWS services that you can use to host and run a MySQL database. Amazon RDS is a service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. You can use Amazon RDS to launch a MySQL database instance and let Amazon RDS manage common database tasks such as backups, patching, scaling, and replication6. Amazon EC2 is a service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch a virtual server and install MySQL software on it. You have complete control over your database configuration, but you are responsible for managing and maintaining the database software and the underlying infrastructure7. Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ. None of these services can help you host and run a MySQL database.

AWS WAF is the AWS service or feature that offers HTTP attack protection to users running public-facing web applications. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps users protect their web applications from common web exploits, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and bot attacks. Users can create custom rules to define the web traffic that they want to allow, block, or count. Users can also use AWS Managed Rules, which are pre-configured rules that are curated and maintained by AWS or AWS Marketplace Sellers. AWS WAF can be integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon API Gateway, and Application Load Balancer, to provide comprehensive security for web applications. [AWS WAF Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that is ideal for applications with short-running processes and low-frequency invocation, as it only charges for the compute time consumed. Since the application is invoked only a few times a day and runs for less than 5 minutes, Lambda is the most cost-effective option. ECS, EKS, and EC2 are better suited for more persistent workloads and would be more costly in this use case.

 The perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) that connects technology and business is governance. The governance perspective focuses on the alignment of the IT strategy and processes with the business strategy and goals, as well as the management of the IT budget, risk, and compliance. The governance perspective capabilities are portfolio management, business performance management, and IT governance. The governance perspective helps organizations ensure that their cloud adoption delivers the expected business value and outcomes, and that their cloud solutions are secure, reliable, and compliant. Operations, people, and security are other perspectives of the AWS CAF, but they do not directly connect technology and business. The operations perspective focuses on the management and monitoring of the cloud resources and applications, as well as the automation and optimization of the operational processes. The people perspective focuses on the development and empowerment of the human resources, as well as the transformation of the organizational culture and structure. The security perspective focuses on the protection of the information assets and systems in the cloud, as well as the implementation of the security policies and controls.

Designing for automatic failover to healthy resources is an AWS best practice when designing AWS workloads to be operational even when there are component failures. This means that you should architect your system to handle the loss of one or more components without impacting the availability or performance of your application. You can use various AWS services and features to achieve this, such as Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudFormation, and AWS CloudFormation4.

 Spot Instances are spare Amazon EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. They are suitable for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch processing, data analysis, and testing. Spot Instances are allocated based on the current supply and demand, and can be reclaimed by AWS with a two-minute notice when the demand exceeds the supply5. Convertible Reserved Instances are a type of Reserved Instances that provide a significant discount (up to 54%) compared to On-Demand prices and a capacity reservation for Amazon EC2 instances. They are available in 1-year or 3-year terms and allow users to change the instance family, size, operating system, or tenancy during the term. Standard Reserved Instances are another type of Reserved Instances that provide a larger discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand prices and a capacity reservation for Amazon EC2 instances. They are available in 1-year or 3-year terms and do not allow users to change the instance attributes during the term. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with Amazon EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to the user’s use. They are suitable for users who have specific server-bound software licenses or compliance requirements.

To achieve high availability in the event of a natural disaster, the company should use EC2 instances in multiple AWS Regions. AWS Regions are geographically isolated areas that consist of multiple Availability Zones. Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an AWS Region that areengineered to be isolated from failures. By using EC2 instances in multiple AWS Regions, the company can ensure that its applications can continue to run even if one Region is affected by a disaster. AWS Global InfrastructureAWS Well-Architected Framework

The Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class offers automatic cost savings by moving objects between tiers based on access pattern changes. This storage class is designed for data with unknown or changing access patterns. It has two access tiers: frequent access and infrequent access. Objects are stored in the frequent access tier by default, and are moved to the infrequent access tier after 30 consecutive days of no access. If an object in the infrequent access tier is accessed, it is moved back to the frequent access tier. There are no retrieval fees in S3 Intelligent-Tiering, and no additional tiering fees when objects are moved between access tiers within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class1.

The AWS service that will meet the requirements of the company that wants to create a chatbot and integrate the chatbot with its current web application is Amazon Lex. Amazon Lex is a service that helps customers build conversational interfaces using voice and text. The company can use Amazon Lex to create a chatbot that can understand natural language and respond to user requests, using the same deep learning technologies that power Amazon Alexa. Amazon Lex also provides easy integration with other AWS services, such as Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Polly, and AWS Lambda, as well as popular platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Twilio. Amazon Lex helps customers create engaging and interactive chatbots for their web applications. Amazon Kendra, Amazon Textract, and Amazon Polly are not the best services to use for this purpose. Amazon Kendra is a service that helps customers provide accurate and natural answers to natural language queries using machine learning. Amazon Textract is a service that helps customers extract text and data from scanned documents using optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning. Amazon Polly is a service that helps customers convert text into lifelike speech using deep learning. These services are more useful for different types of natural language processing and generation tasks, rather than creating and integrating chatbots.

 Amazon Rekognition is a service that provides deep learning-based image and video analysis. One of the benefits of Amazon Rekognition is the ability to detect objects that appear in pictures, such as faces, landmarks, animals, text, and scenes. This can enable applications to perform tasks such as face recognition, face verification, face comparison, face search, celebrity recognition, emotion detection, age range estimation, gender identification, facial analysis, facial expression recognition, and more. Amazon Rekognition OverviewAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

 The correct answer is C because AWS Outposts is an AWS service that enables the company to meet the requirements. AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility. AWS Outposts allows customers to run their workloads on the same hardware and software that AWS uses in its cloud, while maintaining local access and control. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that enable the company to meet the requirements. AWS Device Farm is an AWS service that enables customers to test their mobile and web applications on real devices in the AWS Cloud. AWS Fargate is an AWS service that enables customers to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters. AWS Ground Station is an AWS service that enables customers to communicate with satellites and downlink data from orbit. Reference: AWS Outposts FAQs

The correct answers are B and D because a virtual private gateway and a customer gateway are components of an AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection. A virtual private gateway is the AWS side of the VPN connection that attaches to the customer’s VPC. A customer gateway is the customer side of the VPN connection that resides in the customer’s network. The other options are incorrect because they are not components of an AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection. AWS Storage Gateway is a service that connects on-premises software applications with cloud-based storage. NAT gateway is a service that enables instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but prevents the internet from initiating a connection with those instances. Internet gateway is a service that enables communication between instances in a VPC and the internet. Reference: [What is AWS Site-to-Site VPN?]

 AWS Regions are geographic areas around the world where AWS has clusters of data centers. Each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate AZ’s within a geographic area. By hosting the customer’s data in a specific AWS Region, the company can meet the requirement of hosting the data in the customer’s country. AWS Shield is a service that provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection. Amazon S3 Object Lock is afeature that allows you to store objects using a write-once-read-many (WORM) model. You can use it to prevent an object from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed amount of time or indefinitely. Placement groups are logical grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone. Placement groups enable applications to participate in a low-latency, 10 Gbps network. None of these services or infrastructure components can help the company host the customer’s data in a different country.

 AWS CloudTrail is the service that will provide the information about the last time that a specific user accessed the AWS Management Console. AWS CloudTrail is a service that records the API calls and events made by or on behalf of your AWS account. You can use AWS CloudTrail to view, search, and download the history of AWS console sign-in events, which include the user name, date, time, source IP address, and other details of the sign-in activity. Amazon Cognito, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon GuardDuty are not services that will provide this information. Amazon Cognito is a service that provides user authentication and authorization for web and mobile applications. Amazon Inspector is a service that assesses the security and compliance of your applications running on AWS. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that monitors your AWS account and workloads for malicious or unauthorized activity.

AWS Enterprise Support is the AWS Support plan that assigns an AWS concierge agent to a company’s account. AWS Enterprise Support is the highest level of support that AWS offers, and it provides the most comprehensive and personalized assistance. An AWS concierge agent is a dedicated technical account manager who acts as a single point of contact for the company and helps to optimize the AWS environment, resolve issues, and access AWS experts. For more information, see [AWS Support Plans] and [AWS Concierge Support].

 Increased business agility is the benefit of the AWS Cloud that this scenario demonstrates. Business agility refers to the ability of a company to adapt to changing customer needs, market conditions, and competitive pressures. Moving to the AWS Cloud enables business agility by providing faster access to resources, lower upfront costs, and greater scalability and flexibility. By using the AWS Cloud, the company can launch new marketing campaigns in 3 days instead of 3 weeks, which shows that it can respond to customer feedback more quickly and efficiently. For more information, see Benefits of Cloud Computing and [Business Agility].

The company should deploy the EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones to design a highly available application. Availability Zones are isolated locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be fault-tolerant and operate independently of each other. By deploying the EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones, the company can ensure that their application can withstand the failure of an entire Availability Zone and continue to operate with minimal disruption. Deploying the EC2 instances across multiple edge locations, VPCs, or AWS accounts will not provide the same level of availability and fault tolerance as Availability Zones. Edge locations are part of the Amazon CloudFront service, which is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches and serves webcontent to users. VPCs are virtual networks that isolate the AWS resources within an AWS Region. AWS accounts are the primary units of ownership and access control for AWS resources12

 AWS Config is a service that enables users to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources. It continuously monitors and records the configuration changes of the resources and evaluates them against desired configurations and best practices. It also provides a detailed view of the resource configuration history and relationships, as well as compliance reports and notifications. AWS Config can help users maintain consistent and secure configurations, troubleshoot issues, and simplify compliance auditing. AWS Config OverviewAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

The AWS shared responsibility model describes how AWS and the customer share responsibility for security and compliance of the AWS environment. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the physical security of AWS facilities, the infrastructure, hardware, software, and networking that run AWS services. The customer is responsible for security in the cloud, which includes the configuration of security groups, the encryption of customer data on AWS, the management of AWS Lambda infrastructure, and the management of network throughput of each AWS Region. One of the customer responsibilities is to ensure that Amazon EBS volumes are backed up.

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a highly scalable, fast container management service that allows you to run, stop, and manage Docker containers on a cluster of Amazon EC2 instances or a serverless environment powered by AWS Fargate. It provides secure, reliable, and scalable operations for containers, allowing users to deploy containers in a highly secure and reliable manner. Amazon Aurora is a relational database service, Amazon Athena is an interactive query service, and Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech service. Therefore, the correct answer is Amazon ECS.

The correct answer is C because AWS Cloud computing allows customers to trade fixed expenses for variable expenses. This means that customers only pay for the resources they use, and can scale up or down as needed. The other options are incorrect because they are not advantages of AWS Cloud computing. Trade security for elasticity means that customers have to compromise on the protection of their data and applications in order to adjust their capacity quickly. Trade operational excellence for agility means that customers have to sacrifice the quality and reliability of their operations in order to respond to changing needs faster. Trade elasticity for performance means that customers have to limit their ability to scale up or down in order to achieve higher speed and efficiency. Reference: What is Cloud Computing?

The correct answers are A and B because Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS are AWS services that the company could use for the relational databases. Amazon Aurora is a relational database that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Amazon Aurora is a fully managed, scalable, and high-performance service that offers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL and up to three times the throughput of standard PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS is a service that enables users to set up, operate, and scale relational databases in the cloud. Amazon RDS supports six popular database engines: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MariaDB, and Amazon Aurora. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that the company could use for the relational databases. Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a document database that is compatible with MongoDB. Amazon Neptune is a graph database that supports property graph and RDF models. Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database. Reference: Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS

 Pay-as-you-go pricing is an AWS benefit that demonstrates the ability of users to replace upfront fixed expenses with variable expenses. With pay-as-you-go pricing, users only pay for the resources they consume, without any long-term contracts or commitments. This can lower the total cost of ownership and increase the return on investment. Pay-as-you-go pricing also provides flexibility and scalability, as users can adjust their resource usage according to their changing needs and demands. AWS Cloud Value FrameworkAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

The correct answer is B because Application Load Balancer is an AWS load balancer that will meet the requirements and take the least amount of effort to deploy. Application Load Balancer is a type of Elastic Load Balancing that operates at the application layer (layer 7) of the OSI model and routes requests to targets based on the content of the request. Application Load Balancer supports advanced features, such as path-based routing, host-based routing, and HTTP header-based routing. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS load balancers that will meet the requirements and take the least amount of effort to deploy. Network Load Balancer is a type of Elastic Load Balancing that operates at the transport layer (layer 4) of the OSI model and routes requests to targets based on the destination IP address and port. Network Load Balancer does not support path-based routing. AWS OpsWorks Load Balancer is not an AWS load balancer, but rather a feature of AWS OpsWorks that enables users to attach an Elastic Load Balancing load balancer to a layer of their stack. Custom Load Balancer on Amazon EC2 is not an AWS load balancer, but rather a user-defined load balancer that runs on an Amazon EC2 instance. Custom Load Balancer on Amazon EC2 requires more effort to deploy and maintain than an AWS load balancer. Reference: Elastic Load Balancing

 The combination of AWS services that the application can use to migrate to a microservices-based application are Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and AWS Lambda. Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queuing service that enables customers to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. The application can use Amazon SQS to send, store, and receive messages between the microservices, ensuring that each message is processed only once and in the right order. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows customers to run code without provisioning or managing servers. The application can use AWS Lambda to create and deploy microservices as functions that are triggered by events, such as messages from Amazon SQS. AWS Migration Hub, AWS AppSync, and AWS Application Migration Service are not the best services to use for migrating to a microservices-based application. AWS Migration Hub is a service that provides a single location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions. AWS AppSync is a service that simplifies the development of GraphQL APIs for real-time and offline data synchronization. AWS Application Migration Service is a service that enables customers to migrate their on-premises applications to AWS without making any changes to the applications, servers, or databases.

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With AWS Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines3.

The correct answers are A and B because Service Quotas console and AWS Trusted Advisor are AWS services or tools that can report on the quotas so that the company can improve the reliability of the application. Service Quotas console is an AWS tool that enables users to view and manage their quotas for AWS services from a central location. Users can use Service Quotas console to request quota increases, track quota usage, and set up alarms for approaching quota limits. AWS Trusted Advisor is an AWS service that provides real-time guidance to help users follow AWS best practices for security, performance, cost optimization, and fault tolerance. One of the categories of checks that AWS Trusted Advisor performs is service limits, which monitors the usage of each AWS service and alerts users when they are close to reaching the default limit. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services or tools that can report on the quotas so that the company can improve the reliability of the application. AWS Systems Manager is an AWS service that enables users to automate operational tasks, manage configuration and compliance, and monitor system health and performance. AWS Shield is an AWS service that protects users from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. AWS Cost Explorer is an AWS tool that enables users to visualize, understand, and manage their AWS costs and usage. Reference: Service Quotas, AWS Trusted Advisor FAQs

AWS Budgetsallows users to set custom cost and usage budgets and receive notifications when they exceed their thresholds. It provides detailed reports on cost and usage data for the past and current months, enabling the finance team to track and analyze spending.

AWS Budgets can automatically generate cost and usage reports, which can help the finance team plan ahead for each quarter based on historical data.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon Detective: A security service for analyzing and investigating AWS account activity for security purposes, not cost tracking.

B. AWS Pricing Calculator: A tool to estimate costs based on expected usage, not for tracking actual past usage.

D. AWS Savings Plans: An offering to save costs on AWS usage; it does not provide cost tracking or reporting features.

 AWS Shield Standard is a service that provides protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for all AWS customers at no additional charge. It automatically detects and mitigates the most common and frequently occurring network and transport layer DDoS attacks that target AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancers, Amazon CloudFront distributions, and Amazon Route 53 hosted zones. AWS Firewall Manager is a service that allows users to centrally configure and manage firewall rules across their AWS accounts and resources, such as AWS WAF web ACLs, AWS Shield Advanced protections, and Amazon VPC security groups. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and bot attacks. Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. It analyzes the behavior of the applications and checks for vulnerabilities, exposures, and deviations from best practices.

AWS Well-Architected Framework promotes AWS Cloud architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems. AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of guidelines and best practices that help the user to evaluate and improve the architecture of their applications and workloads on AWS. AWS Well-Architected Framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. Each pillar provides a set of design principles, questions, and best practices that help the user to achieve the desired outcomes for their systems.

 AWS Organizations is a service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage. With AWS Organizations, you can create a single payment method for all the AWS accounts in your organization through consolidated billing. Consolidated billing enables you to see a combined view of AWS charges incurred by all accounts in your organization, as well as get a detailed cost report for each individual AWS account associated with your organization. AWS Artifact is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS’ security and compliance reports and select online agreements. AWS Budgets is a service that enables you to plan your service usage, service costs, and instance reservations. AWS Trusted Advisor is a servicethat provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. None of these services or tools offer consolidated billing.

The company can use AWS Organizations to track the combined AWS usage costs of all of its linked accounts. AWS Organizations is a service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you can manage centrally. You can use AWS Organizations to create a consolidated billing report that shows the charges incurred by each account in your organization as well as the total charges across all accounts. You can also use AWS Organizations to apply policies and controls to your accounts to help you manage costs and security5.

The company should use AWS WAF to safeguard the website from SQL injection or cross-site scripting. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. The company can use AWS WAF to create custom rules that block malicious requests that match certain patterns, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting. AWS WAF can be applied to web applications that are behind an Application Load Balancer, Amazon CloudFront, or Amazon API Gateway. Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Trusted Advisor, and Amazon Inspector are not the best services to use for this purpose. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior across the AWS accounts and resources. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides best practice recommendations for cost optimization, performance, security, and fault tolerance. Amazon Inspector is a service that assesses the security and compliance of applications running on Amazon EC2 instances12

AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) is a service that enables applications to request temporary, limited-privilege credentials for authentication with other AWS APIs. AWS STS can be used to grant access to AWS resources to users who are federated (using IAM roles), switched (using IAM users), or cross-account (using IAM roles). AWS STS can also be used to assume a role within the same account or a different account. The credentials issued by AWS STS are short-term and have a limited scope, which can enhance the security and compliance of the application. AWS STS OverviewAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

Amazon Cognitois an AWS service that provides user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to web and mobile applications. It supports authentication for different identity providers, including social identity providers (such as Google, Facebook, and Apple), enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0, and its own user pools.

Amazon Cognito offers:

User Poolsfor managing user registration, authentication, and account recovery.

Federated Identitiesfor managing user access from external identity providers.

Why other options are not suitable:

B. AWS Config: A service for tracking resource configuration changes, not related to user authentication.

C. Amazon GuardDuty: A threat detection service, not related to user sign-up or authentication.

D. AWS Systems Manager: A service to manage AWS resources, but it does not provide user authentication.

Amazon Kendra is a service that provides a highly accurate and easy-to-use enterprise search service that is powered by machine learning. Kendra delivers powerful natural language search capabilities to your websites and applications so your end users can more easily find the information they need within the vast amount of content spread across your company. Amazon SageMaker is a service that provides a fully managed platform for data scientists and developers to quickly and easily build, train, and deploy machine learning models at any scale. Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I) is a service that makes it easy to build the workflows required for human review of ML predictions. Amazon A2I brings human review to all developers, removing the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with building human review systems or managing large numbers of human reviewers. Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. None of these services provide an enterprise search service that is powered by machine learning.

AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you protect access to your applications, services, and IT resources. This service enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle1. Amazon S3 is a storage service that does not offer automatic rotation of credentials. AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store is a service that provides secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets management2, but it does not offer automatic rotation of credentials. AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account3, but it does not store or rotate credentials.

 The correct answer is D because AWS Security Hub is a service that aggregates, organizes, and prioritizes security alerts and findings from multiple AWS services, such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, Amazon Macie, AWS Firewall Manager, and AWS IAM Access Analyzer. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that aggregate security alerts and findings from multiple AWS services. Amazon Detective is a service that helps users analyze and visualize security data to investigate and remediate potential issues. Amazon Inspector is a service that helps users find security vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices in their Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Macie is a service that helps users discover, classify, and protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. Reference: AWS Security Hub FAQs

 AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection3.

 VPC Flow Logs is the AWS service or feature that is used to troubleshoot network connectivity issues between Amazon EC2 instances. VPC Flow Logs is a feature that enables users to captureinformation about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in their VPC. VPC Flow Logs can help users monitor and diagnose network-related issues, such as traffic not reaching an instance, or an instance not responding to requests. VPC Flow Logs can be published to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose for analysis and storage.

The correct answer is C because Spot Instances are the pricing model that enables the company to run its existing custom, nonproduction workloads in the AWS Cloud quickly and cost-effectively. Spot Instances are spare Amazon EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. Spot Instances are suitable for stateless, fault-tolerant, and flexible workloads that can recover from interruptions easily. The other options are incorrect because they are not the pricing model that enables the company to run its existing custom, nonproduction workloads in the AWS Cloud quickly and cost-effectively. Reserved Instances are Amazon EC2 instances that are reserved for a specific period of time (one or three years) in exchange for a lower hourly rate. Reserved Instances are suitable for steady-state or predictable workloads that run for a long duration. On-Demand Instances are Amazon EC2 instances that are launched and billed at a fixed hourly rate. On-Demand Instances are suitable for short-term, irregular, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers that are dedicated to a single customer. Dedicated Hosts are suitable for workloads that require regulatory compliance or data isolation. Reference: Amazon EC2 Instance Purchasing Options

To maximize sustainability and minimize environmental impact, a company should apply the following design principles to AWS Cloud workloads: maximize utilization of Amazon EC2 instances and reduce the need for users to reinstall applications. Maximizing utilization of Amazon EC2 instances means that the company can optimize the performance and efficiency of their compute resources, and avoid wasting energy and money on idle or underutilized instances. The company can use features such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, and AWS Compute Optimizer to automatically adjust the number and type of instances based on demand, cost, and performance. Reducing the need for users to reinstall applications means that the company can minimize the amount of data and bandwidth required to deliver their applications to users, and avoid unnecessary downloads and updates that consume energy and resources. The company can use services such as Amazon CloudFront, AWS AppStream 2.0, and AWS Amplify to deliver their applications faster, more securely, and more efficiently to users across the globe. Minimizing utilization of Amazon EC2 instances, minimizing usage of managed services, and forcing frequent application reinstallations by users are not design principles that would maximize sustainability and minimize environmental impact. Minimizing utilization of Amazon EC2 instances would reduce the performance and efficiency of the compute resources, and potentially increase the costs and complexity of the cloud workloads. Minimizing usage of managed services would increase the operational overhead and responsibility of the company, and potentially expose them to more security and reliability risks. Forcing frequent application reinstallations by users would increase the amount of data and bandwidth required to deliver the applications to users, and potentially degrade the user experience and satisfaction.

The correct answer is B because AWS Storage Gateway is a service that should be used by the company to meet the requirements. AWS Storage Gateway is a service that connects on-premises software applications with cloud-based storage. AWS Storage Gateway supports three types of gateways: file gateway, volume gateway, and tape gateway. The tape gateway type enables users to back up and archive data to virtual tapes in AWS without changing their existing backup workflows. Users can use their existing backup applications and tape libraries to store data on virtual tapes in Amazon S3 or Amazon S3 Glacier. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that should be used by the company to meet the requirements. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a service that provides block-level storage volumes for Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a service that enables users to run, scale, and secure containerized applications on AWS. AWS Lambda is a service that enables users to run code without provisioning or managing servers. Reference: AWS Storage Gateway FAQs

AWS Technical Account Managers (TAMs) are available to customers who subscribe to either theAWS Enterprise On-RamporAWS Enterprise Supportplans. TAMs provide proactive guidance and ongoing support, assisting with architecture reviews, operational performance improvements, and business reviews. TheBasicandDeveloperSupport plans do not include access to TAMs, and whileBusiness Supportoffers enhanced technical support, it does not include TAMs either.

Reserved Instances and Savings Plans are the most cost-effective purchasing options for a compute workload that is steady, predictable, and uninterruptible. Reserved Instances provide a significant discount compared to On-Demand Instances, and Savings Plans offer flexible and consistent savings on EC2 usage. Both options require a commitment to a consistent amount of usage, in USD per hour, for a term of 1 or 3 years. On-Demand Instances are suitable for short-term, irregular, or unpredictable workloads, but they are more expensive than Reserved Instances or Savings Plans. Spot Instances are the cheapest option, but they are not suitable for uninterruptible workloads, as they can be reclaimed by AWS at any time. Dedicated Hosts and Dedicated Instances are designed for compliance and licensing requirements, not for cost optimization. They are more expensive than the other options, as they run on single-tenant hardware. References: Instance purchasing options, Amazon EC2 Pricing, 4 Ways to Purchase Amazon EC2 Instances

An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a deployable Amazon EC2 instance template that is prepackaged with software and security requirements. It provides the information required to launch an instance, which is a virtual server in the cloud. You can use an AMI to launch as many instances as you need. You can also create your own custom AMIs or use AMIs shared by other AWS users1.

An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity. Availability Zones are part of the AWS global infrastructure, which consists of AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations. Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be isolated from failures and connected by low-latency, high-throughput, and highly redundant networking. Each Availability Zone contains one or more data centers that house the servers and storage devices that run AWS services. Availability Zones enable users to design and operate fault-tolerant and high-availability applications on AWS. AWS Global InfrastructureAWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

Creating an IAM role with the required permissions and attaching the role to the EC2 instance is the most operationally efficient solution to delegate permissions. An IAM role is an entity that defines a set of permissions for making AWS service requests. An IAM role can be assumed by an EC2 instance to access other AWS resources, such as Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB, without having to store any credentials on the instance. This solution is more secure and scalable than using IAM users and their access keys. For more information, see [IAM Roles for Amazon EC2] and [Using an IAM Role to Grant Permissions to Applications Running on Amazon EC2 Instances].

Adding a department tag to each resource and configuring cost allocation tags is an action that can help you accomplish the goal of billing each department for its resource usage with the least operational overhead. Tags are simple labels consisting of a key and an optional value that you can assign to AWS resources. You can use tags to organize your resources and track your AWS costs ona detailed level. Cost allocation tags enable you to track your AWS costs on a detailed level. After you activate cost allocation tags, AWS uses the cost allocation tags to organize your resource costs on your cost allocation report, to make it easier for you to categorize and track your AWS costs2. Moving each department resource to its own VPC or its own AWS account is an action that can help you isolate and control the resources for each department, but it would incur more operational overhead than using tags. Using AWS Organizations to get a billing report for each department is an action that can help you consolidate billing and payment across multiple AWS accounts, but it would not help you bill each department for its resource usage within a single VPC.

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon Inspector automatically assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices. After performing an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity2.

 AWS offers different support plans to meet the needs of different customers. The AWS Enterprise Support plan is the highest level of support that provides customers with concierge-like service, where the main focus is helping them achieve their outcomes and find success in the cloud. One of the benefits of the AWS Enterprise Support plan is that customers get designated support from an AWS technical account manager (TAM), who provides consultative architectural and operational guidance based on their applications and use cases. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about AWS support plans and their benefits .

The correct answer is B because placing the EC2 instances in two separate Availability Zones within the same AWS Region is the best way to meet the requirement. Availability Zones are isolated locations within an AWS Region that have independent power, cooling, and networking. Users can launch their resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, in multiple Availability Zones to increase the fault tolerance and resilience of their applications. Availability Zones within the same AWS Region are connected with low-latency, high-throughput, and highly redundant networking. The other options are incorrect because they are not the best ways to meet the requirement. Placing the EC2 instances in two separate AWS Regions connected with a VPC peering connection is not the best way to meet the requirement because AWS Regions are geographically dispersed and may have higher communication latency between them than Availability Zones within the same AWS Region. VPC peering connection is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables users to route traffic between them using private IP addresses. Placing one EC2 instance on premises and the other in an AWS Region, and then connecting them by using an AWS VPN connection is not the best way to meet the requirement because on-premises and AWS Region are geographically dispersed and may have higher communication latency between them than Availability Zones within the same AWS Region. AWS VPN connection is a secure and encrypted connection between a user’s network and their VPC. Placing both EC2 instances in a placement group for dedicated bandwidth is not the best way to meet the requirement because a placement group is a logical grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone that enables users to launch instances with specific performance characteristics. A placement group does not ensure that the instances are in separate data centers, and it does not provide low-latency communication between instances in different AvailabilityZones. Reference: [Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones], [VPC Peering], [AWS VPN], [Placement Groups]

 The common stakeholders for the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) platform perspective are IT architects and engineers. The AWS CAF is a guidance that helps organizations design and travel an accelerated path to successful cloud adoption. The AWS CAF organizes thecloud adoption process into six areas of focus, called perspectives, which are business, people, governance, platform, security, and operations. Each perspective is divided into capabilities, which are further divided into skills and responsibilities. The platform perspective focuses on the provisioning and management of the cloud infrastructure and services that support the business applications. The platform perspective capabilities are design, implementation, and optimization. The stakeholders for the platform perspective are the IT architects and engineers who are responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing the cloud platform. Chief financial officers (CFOs), chief information officers (CIOs), and chief data officers (CDOs) are not the common stakeholders for the AWS CAF platform perspective. CFOs are the common stakeholders for the AWS CAF business perspective, which focuses on the value realization of the cloud adoption. CIOs are the common stakeholders for the AWS CAF governance perspective, which focuses on the alignment of the IT strategy and processes with the business strategy and goals. CDOs are the common stakeholders for the AWS CAF security perspective, which focuses on the protection of the information assets and systems in the cloud.

 The correct answers are B and D because making data-driven decisions to determine cloud architectural design and testing systems at production scale are AWS Cloud design principles. Making data-driven decisions to determine cloud architectural design means that users should collect and analyze data from their AWS resources and applications to optimize their performance, availability, security, and cost. Testing systems at production scale means that users should simulate real-world scenarios and load conditions to validate the functionality, reliability, and scalability of their systems. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS Cloud design principles. Paying for compute resources in advance means that users have to invest heavily in data centers and servers before they know how they will use them. This is not a cloud design principle, but rather a traditional IT model. Emphasizing manual processes to allow for changes means that users have to rely on human intervention and coordination to perform operational tasks and updates. This is not a cloud design principle, but rather a source of inefficiency and error. Refining operational procedures infrequently means that users have to stick to the same methods andpractices without adapting to the changing needs and feedback. This is not a cloud design principle, but rather a hindrance to innovation and improvement. Reference: AWS Well-Architected Framework

Using Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to break down a monolithic architecture into microservices is an example of a loosely coupled architecture. A loosely coupled architecture is one where the components are independent and can communicate with each other through well-defined interfaces. This allows for greater scalability, flexibility, and resilience. A tightly coupled architecture is one where the components are interdependent and rely on each other for functionality. This can lead to increased complexity, fragility, and difficulty in changing or scaling the system. Amazon ECS OverviewAWS Well-Architected Framework

 AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is a capability that allows users to automate the security updates for their operating systems and applications. It enables users to scan their instances for missing patches, define patch baselines, schedule patching windows, and monitor patch compliance. It supports Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon Lightsail instances, and on-premises servers. AWS Shield is a service that provides protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for AWS resources and services. It does not automate the security updates for operating systems and applications. Connecting to each server by using a remote desktop connection and running an update script is a manual and time-consuming solution that requires a lot of operational effort. It is not a recommended best practice for automating the security updates for operating systems and applications. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for AWS accounts and resources. It does not automate the security updates for operating systems and applications.

 The benefit of the AWS Cloud that helps companies achieve lower usage costs because of the aggregate usage of all AWS users is economies of scale. Economies of scale means that AWS can achieve lower costs and higher efficiency by operating at a massive scale and passing the savings to the customers. AWS leverages the aggregate usage of all AWS users to negotiate better prices with hardware vendors, optimize power consumption, and improve operational processes. As a result, AWS can offer lower and more flexible pricing options to the customers, such as pay-as-you-go, reserved, and spot pricing models. No need to guess capacity, ability to go global in minutes, and increased speed and agility are other benefits of the AWS Cloud, but they are not directly related to the aggregate usage of all AWS users. No need to guess capacity means that AWS customers can avoid the risk of over-provisioning or under-provisioning resources, and scale up or down as needed. Ability to go global in minutes means that AWS customers can deploy their applications and data in multiple regions around the world, and deliver them to users with high performance and availability. Increased speed and agility means that AWS customers can quickly and easily provision and access AWS resources, and accelerate their innovation and time to market.

 The operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework includes a design principle about measuring the overall efficiency of workloads in terms of business value. This principle states that you should monitor and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and set targets and thresholds that align with your business goals. You should also use feedback loops to continuously improve your processes and procedures1.

 Patch management and configuration management are controls that are the responsibility of both AWS and AWS customers, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Patch management is the process of applying updates to software and applications to fix vulnerabilities, bugs, or performance issues. Configuration management is the process of defining and maintaining the settings and parameters of systems and applications to ensure their consistency and reliability. AWS is responsible for patching and configuring the software and services that it manages, such as the AWS global infrastructure, the hypervisor, and the AWS managed services. The customer is responsible for patching and configuring the software and services that they manage, such as the guest operating system, the applications, and the AWS customer-managed services. Physical and environmental controls are the responsibility of AWS, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Physical and environmental controls are the measures that protect the physical security and availability of the AWS global infrastructure, such as power, cooling, fire suppression, and access control. AWS is responsible for maintaining these controls and ensuring the resilience and reliability of the AWS Cloud. Account structures are the responsibility of the customer, according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Account structures are the ways that customers organize and manage their AWS accounts and resources, such as using AWS Organizations, IAM users and roles, resource tagging, and billing preferences. The customer is responsible for creating and configuring these structures and ensuring the security and governance of their AWS environment. Choice of the AWS Region where data is stored is the responsibility of the customer, according to the AWS sharedresponsibility model. AWS Regions are geographic areas that consist of multiple isolated Availability Zones. Customers can choose which AWS Region to store their data and run their applications, depending on their latency, compliance, and cost requirements. The customer is responsible for selecting the appropriate AWS Region and ensuring the data sovereignty and regulatory compliance of their data.

 Amazon EventBridge is the service that the company should use to meet the requirement of invoking the Lambda function once a day at a specific time. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that allows you to easily connect your applications with data from AWS services, SaaS applications, and your own applications. You can use Amazon EventBridge to create rules that match events and route them to targets such as AWS Lambda functions, Amazon SNS topics, Amazon SQS queues, or other AWS services. You can also use Amazon EventBridge to create scheduled rules that trigger your targets at a specific time or interval, such as once a day. AWS Managed Services (AMS), AWS CodeStar, and AWS Step Functions are not services that the company should use to meet this requirement. AMS is a service that provides operational management for your AWS infrastructure and applications. AWS CodeStar is a service that provides a unified user interface for managing software development projects on AWS. AWS Step Functions is a service that coordinates multiple AWS services into serverless workflows.

 Designing loosely coupled components is a design principle that should be considered when architecting in the AWS Cloud. Loose coupling is a way of designing systems to reduce interdependencies and minimize the impact of changes. Loose coupling allows components to interact with each other through well-defined interfaces, rather than direct references. This reducesthe risk of failures and errors propagating across the system, and enables greater scalability, availability, and maintainability5.

For workloads running 24/7 for a year, Standard Reserved Instances provide a significant discount compared to On-Demand pricing. Choosing the "All Upfront" payment option maximizes the cost savings as AWS offers the highest discount for upfront payments. Convertible Reserved Instances provide flexibility to change the instance type but usually at a slightly higher cost than Standard Reserved Instances. Compute Savings Plans offer cost savings, but in this scenario, the best optimization would be a combination of Standard Reserved Instances with All Upfront payment. Spot Instances are not suitable due to their interruptible nature.

AWS Outposts is a service that offers fully managed and configurable compute and storage racks built with AWS-designed hardware that allow you to run your workloads on premises and seamlessly connect to AWS services in the cloud. AWS Outposts is ideal for workloads that require low latency, local data processing, or local data storage. With AWS Outposts, you can use the same AWS APIs, tools, and infrastructure across on premises and the cloud to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience5. Availability Zones are isolated locations within each AWS Region that are engineered to be fault-tolerant and provide high availability. AWS Local Zones are extensions of AWS Regions that are placed closer to large population, industry, and IT centers where no AWS Region exists today. AWS Wavelength is a service that enables developers to build applications that deliver ultra-low latency to mobile devices and users by deploying AWS compute and storage at the edge of the 5G network. None of these services or features can help you host a critical application with minimum latency at a remote site that has a slow internet connection.

 According to the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, while the user is responsible for the security in the cloud. This means that AWS manages the security and maintenance of the underlying infrastructure, such as the servers, networks, and operating systems, while the user manages the security and configuration of the resources and applications that run on AWS. For AWS Lambda functions, the tasks that are the user’s responsibility are:

Establish the IAM permissions that define who can run the Lambda functions. IAM is a service that enables users to manage access and permissions for AWS resources and users. Users can create IAM policies, roles, and users to grant or deny permissions to run Lambda functions, invoke other AWS services, or access AWS resources from Lambda functions. [AWS Lambda Permissions] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

Write the code for the Lambda functions to define the application logic. Lambda functions are units of code that can be written in any supported programming language, such as Python, Node.js, Java, or Go. Users can write the code for the Lambda functions using the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), the AWS SDKs, or any code editor of their choice. Users can also use AWS Lambda Layers to share and manage common code and dependencies across multiple functions. [AWS Lambda Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS Marketplace is an online store that helps customers find, buy, and immediately start using the software and services that run on AWS. Customers can choose from a wide range of software products in popular categories such as security, networking, storage, machine learning, business intelligence, database, and DevOps. Customers can also use AWS Marketplace to purchase software as a service (SaaS) solutions that are integrated with AWS. Customers can benefit from simplified procurement, billing, and deployment processes, as well as flexible pricing options and free trials. Customers can also leverage AWS Marketplace to discover and subscribe to solutions offered by AWS Partners, such as the security software vendor mentioned in the question. References: AWS Marketplace, [AWS Marketplace: Software as a Service (SaaS)], [AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials: Module 6 - AWS Pricing, Billing, and Support]

Under the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for the security "of" the cloud, which includes the physical infrastructure, networking, and hypervisor layer. The customer, however, is responsible for security "in" the cloud, which includes managing the security of their data, patching and maintaining their guest operating system and applications, and managing identity and access. The responsibilities of shredding disk drives, preventing packet capture at the hypervisor level, and physical monitoring are handled by AWS as part of its responsibility for security "of" the cloud.

Amazon Redshiftis a fully managed data warehouse service that enables users to analyze large amounts of data quickly and cost-effectively. It is designed specifically for online analytical processing (OLAP) and is optimized for complex queries against large datasets. Amazon Redshift uses columnar storage, data compression, and massively parallel processing (MPP) to handle petabyte-scale data warehouse environments.

A. Amazon RDS: Incorrect, as it is a managed relational database service for online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, not specifically designed for data warehousing.

B. Amazon DynamoDB: Incorrect, as it is a NoSQL database service for fast and flexible data storage, not a data warehouse.

D. Amazon Aurora: Incorrect, as it is a MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database designed for high performance and availability for OLTP workloads, not data warehousing.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon Redshift

AWS Artifact is the service that will provide the information about whether a specific AWS service is compliant with specific compliance frameworks. AWS Artifact is a self-service portal that allows you to access, review, and download AWS security and compliance reports and agreements. You canuse AWS Artifact to verify the compliance status of AWS services across various regions and compliance programs, such as ISO, PCI, SOC, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and more12

 The duties that are the responsibility of a company that is using AWS Lambda are security inside of code and writing and updating of code. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers, scaling, or patching. AWS Lambda takes care of the security of the underlying infrastructure, such as the operating system, the network, and the firewall. However, the company is still responsible for the security of the code itself, such as encrypting sensitive data, validating input, and handling errors. The company is also responsible for writing and updating the code that defines the Lambda function, and choosing the runtime environment, such as Node.js, Python, or Java. AWS Lambda does not require the selection of CPU resources, as it automatically allocates them based on the memory configuration34

Understanding Amazon Snowball Edge: Amazon Snowball Edge is a data migration and edge computing device that helps in transferring large amounts of data to and from AWS.

No-Cost Activities:

Transfer into S3: AWS does not charge for transferring data from the Snowball Edge device into Amazon S3. This is part of the service to facilitate easy data migration into the AWS cloud.

Other Costs: The use of the Snowball Edge appliance for up to 10 days is included in the service fee. However, any usage beyond the 10-day period may incur additional costs.

How to Utilize Snowball Edge:

Order the Device: Use the AWS Management Console to order a Snowball Edge device.

Load Data: Transfer your data onto the Snowball Edge appliance.

Ship Back: Ship the device back to AWS, where the data will be uploaded to Amazon S3 at no additional cost.

Amazon Snowball Edge Pricing

Amazon Snowball Edge Documentation

The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) security perspective helps users achieve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their data and cloud workloads. It comprises nine capabilities that are grouped into three categories: preventive, detective, and responsive. Incident response and infrastructure protection are two of the capabilities in the responsive and preventive categories, respectively. Incident response helps users prepare for and respond to security incidents in a timely and effective manner, using tools and processes that leverage AWS features and services. Infrastructure protection helps users implement security controls and mechanisms to protect their cloud resources, such as network, compute, storage, and database, from unauthorized access or malicious attacks. References: Security perspective: compliance and assurance, AWS Cloud Adoption Framework

AWS Lambdais a serverless compute service that allows users to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. It automatically scales the application by running code only when needed, and users are charged only for the compute time consumed. This service is ideal for applications that require event-driven compute functions.

B. AWS CloudFormation: Incorrect, as it is an infrastructure-as-code service that helps users automate the deployment of AWS resources, not a serverless compute service.

C. AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Incorrect, as it is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that still involves managing servers, even though it abstracts much of the infrastructure management.

D. Elastic Load Balancing: Incorrect, as it is a service for distributing incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, not a serverless compute service.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Lambda

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)provides scalable computing capacity in the AWS Cloud, allowing customers to run virtual servers (instances) with different configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity. This flexibility is ideal for applications that require specific infrastructure configurations, such as custom marketing and order-processing applications.

A. AWS Lambda: Incorrect, as it is a serverless compute service that automatically manages the computing resources needed to run code but does not offer the flexibility of choosing different instance types.

B. Amazon Cognito: Incorrect, as it is used for user authentication and authorization, not for deploying applications.

C. Amazon Athena: Incorrect, as it is an interactive query service for analyzing data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon EC2

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for security of the cloud, while customers are responsible for security in the cloud. This means that AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs AWS services, such as hardware, software, networking, and facilities. Customers are responsible for managing their data, classifying their assets, and using IAM tools to apply the appropriate permissions. For abstracted services, such as Amazon DynamoDB, AWS operates the infrastructure layer, the operating system, and platforms, and provides customers with public endpoints to store and retrieve data. Customers are responsible for classifying their data, managing their encryption options, and configuring their access permissions. References: Shared Responsibility Model, Security and compliance in Amazon DynamoDB, [AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials: Module 2 - Security in the Cloud]

TheAWS Developer Forumsare always free to use, regardless of the user's AWS Support plan. They provide a platform for users to ask questions, share knowledge, and collaborate with the AWS community.

A. AWS Developer Support: Incorrect, as it is a paid support plan option.

C. Programmatic case management: Incorrect, as this feature is available only with certain AWS Support plans (Business and Enterprise).

D. AWS Technical Account Manager (TAM): Incorrect, as a TAM is provided only under the AWS Enterprise Support plan, which is a paid support option.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Support Plans

AWS Direct Connect is a cloud service solution that makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can establish private connectivity between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which in many cases can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections12. References: 1: Dedicated Network Connection - AWS Direct Connect - AWS, 2: What is AWS Direct Connect? - AWS Direct Connect

According to theAWS Shared Responsibility Model, the customer is responsible for managing the guest operating system (including patches and updates) and any applications that they run on their Amazon EC2 instances.

Why other options are not suitable:

B. Control physical access to an AWS data center: AWS is responsible for the physical security of its data centers.

C. Control access to AWS underlying hardware: AWS manages the hardware infrastructure.

D. Patch a host operating system that is deployed on Amazon S3: Amazon S3 is a managed storage service, and AWS manages the underlying infrastructure, including the operating system.

AWS Trusted Advisor provides checks and recommendations across various categories, including cost optimization, security, and performance. Access to all Trusted Advisor checks is available with AWS Business Support, ensuring the company can follow AWS best practices comprehensively. The Developer Support plan offers limited Trusted Advisor checks, and AWS Health Dashboard provides insights into service health but not specific best practice recommendations.

AWS recommends using tags to organize resources effectively and to activate cost allocation tags to enable detailed tracking of costs by categories such as department, environment, and application. This approach provides the granularity needed for tracking and managing AWS costs accurately. AWS Cost Management and Billing tools provide insights but do not inherently categorize costs without tags.

Amazon S3 is a service that provides durable storage for static content and infinitely scalable data storage infrastructure at the lowest cost. Amazon S3 is an object storage service that allows you to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the internet. Amazon S3 offers industry-leading scalability, availability, and performance, as well as 99.999999999% (11 9s) of durability and multi-AZ resilience. Amazon S3 also provides various storage classes that offer different levels of performance and cost optimization, such as S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA), S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3One Zone-IA), and S3 Glacier456. Amazon S3 is ideal for storing static content, such as images, videos, documents, and web pages, as well as building data lakes, backup and archive solutions, big data analytics, and machine learning applications456. References: 4: Cloud Storage on AWS, 5: Object Storage - Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) - AWS, 6: Amazon S3 Documentation

According to theAWS Shared Responsibility Model, customers are responsible for managing their data, classifying their assets, and using AWS's identity and access management tools to apply the appropriate permissions. Implementingmulti-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM user accountsis a customer responsibility to enhance the security of their accounts and protect against unauthorized access.

A. Apply security patches for Amazon S3 infrastructure devices: Incorrect, as AWS is responsible for managing and patching the underlying infrastructure, including storage devices.

B. Provide physical security for AWS data centers: Incorrect, as AWS is responsible for the physical security of its data centers.

C. Install operating system updates on Lambda@Edge: Incorrect, as AWS manages the underlying infrastructure for Lambda@Edge, including operating system updates.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

AnIAM useris created when the company needs to provide unique credentials (username and password) to individuals who need access to the AWS Management Console or programmatic access (using access keys) to AWS services.

B. When the company creates AWS access credentials for individuals: Correct, as an IAM user is created to provide credentials for specific individuals.

D. When the company needs to add users to IAM groups: Correct, as IAM users can be added to groups to apply permissions and policies at a group level.

A. When an application that runs on Amazon EC2 instances requires access to other AWS services: Incorrect, as an IAM role is more appropriate for applications running on EC2 to assume temporary credentials.

C. When the company creates an application that runs on a mobile phone that makes requests to AWS: Incorrect, as using Cognito or a role with temporary credentials is more suitable.

E. When users are authenticated in the corporate network and want to be able to use AWS without having to sign in a second time: Incorrect, as this use case typically involves IAM roles combined with AWS Single Sign-On (SSO).

AWS Cloud References:

IAM Users and Groups

IAM Roles

The correct answer is B and C. EC2 Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) snapshots are two AWS services that provide disaster recovery solutions for Amazon EC2 instances.

EC2 AMIs are preconfigured templates that contain the software configuration and data required to launch an EC2 instance. You can create AMIs from your running EC2 instances and use them to launch new instances in the same or different AWS Regions. This way, you can quickly recover your EC2 instances in case of a disaster that affects your primary Region or Availability Zone1.

Amazon EBS snapshots are incremental backups of your Amazon EBS volumes. You can create snapshots of your volumes and store them in Amazon S3, which is a highly durable and scalable storage service. You can use snapshots to restore your volumes to a previous point in time or to create new volumes from snapshots. Snapshots can also be copied across AWS Regions, enabling you to recover your data in another Region in case of a disaster2.

The other options are not directly related to disaster recovery for EC2 instances:

EC2 Reserved Instances are a pricing model that allows you to reserve EC2 capacity for a specific period of time and receive a discount on the hourly charge. Reserved Instances do not provide any disaster recovery benefits, as they are only a billing option3.

AWS Shield is a managed service that protects your AWS resources from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. AWS Shield provides basic protection for all AWS customers at no additional charge, and advanced protection for customers who need higher levels of detection and mitigation. AWS Shield does not provide any disaster recovery benefits, as it is only a security service4.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors your AWS account and workloads for malicious or unauthorized activity. Amazon GuardDuty analyzes various data sources, such as AWS CloudTrail, Amazon VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs, to identify potential threats and alert you via Amazon CloudWatch Events or AWS Lambda. Amazon GuardDuty does not provide any disaster recovery benefits, as it is only a monitoring service5.

Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility and help to reduce your costs by up to 66%. These plans automatically apply to EC2 instance usage regardless of instance family, size, AZ, Region, OS or tenancy, and also apply to Fargate or Lambda usage. For example, with Compute Savings Plans, you can change from C4 to M5 instances, shift a workload from EU (Ireland) to EU (London), or move a workload from EC2 to Fargate or Lambda at any time and automatically continue to pay the Savings Plans price.

https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/compute-pricing/

AWS Artifact is a self-service portal that provides on-demand access to AWS security and compliance reports and select online agreements. Users can download reports such as AWS ISO certifications, PCI reports, SOC reports, and GDPR DPA, and review and accept agreements such as BAA and NDA. AWS Artifact helps users to understand and meet compliance requirements for various standards and regulations that apply to AWS services and infrastructure. AWS Artifact is the best resource for a user to find compliance-related information and reports about AWS, whereas the other options are not

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources. You can use IAM to create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources. IAM is always provided at nocharge12. References: 1: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) - Amazon Web Services (AWS), 2: Which aws service is always provided at no charge? - Brainly.in

Understanding AWS Compute Optimizer: AWS Compute Optimizer is a service that analyzes the configuration and utilization metrics of your AWS resources. It provides recommendations to help you select the optimal configurations for your workloads.

Why AWS Compute Optimizer for Rightsizing:

Resource Recommendations: It provides specific recommendations to rightsize your EC2 instances by suggesting instance types that match your actual usage patterns.

Cost Efficiency: By optimizing instance sizes, you can reduce costs associated with over-provisioned resources.

Performance Improvement: Ensures that you are using instances that provide the required performance without over-allocating resources.

How to Implement AWS Compute Optimizer:

Enable AWS Compute Optimizer: In the AWS Management Console, navigate to AWS Compute Optimizer and enable it for your account.

Review Recommendations: After a period of monitoring, review the recommendations provided for your EC2 instances.

Implement Changes: Follow the suggestions to resize or change instance types based on the recommendations, ensuring you balance cost savings with performance needs.

AWS Compute Optimizer

The correct answers are A and D because network infrastructure and virtualization of infrastructure and physical security of hardware are AWS responsibilities according to the AWS shared responsibility model. The AWS shared responsibility model is a framework that defines the division of responsibilities between AWS and the customer for security and compliance. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the global infrastructure, such as the regions, availability zones, and edge locations; the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run the AWS services; and the virtualization layer that separates the customer instances and storage. The customer is responsible for the security in the cloud, which includes the customer data, the guest operating systems, the applications, the identity and access management, the firewall configuration, and the encryption. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS responsibilities according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Security of application data, guest operatingsystems, and credentials and policies are customer responsibilities according to the AWS shared responsibility model. Reference: [AWS Shared Responsibility Model]

By implementingAWS CloudTrail, a company is adhering to the AWS Cloud design principle ofactivating traceability. AWS CloudTrail provides detailed logs of all API calls made in an AWS account, which helps monitor, troubleshoot, and detect unusual activity, thereby improving security and compliance. This supports the principle of "activating traceability" by enabling continuous monitoring and auditing of all actions and changes within the AWS environment.

B. Use serverless compute architectures: Incorrect, as this principle encourages the use of managed services that handle infrastructure, such as AWS Lambda, and is not directly related to CloudTrail.

C. Perform operations as code: Incorrect, as this principle emphasizes the use of code and automation for infrastructure management.

D. Go global in minutes: Incorrect, as this principle relates to the global deployment of applications and services.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Well-Architected Framework

AWS CloudTrail

Users can change their own IAM user password using:

AWS Management Console: The graphical interface allows users to navigate to the "My Security Credentials" page and change their password.

AWS Command Line Interface (CLI): Users with the appropriate permissions can use theaws iam change-passwordcommand to change their password.

Why other options are not suitable:

B. AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS): Used for creating and managing encryption keys, not for managing user passwords.

D. AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM): Used for resource sharing between accounts, not for password management.

E. AWS Secrets Manager: A service for securely storing and managing secrets, not for changing IAM user passwords.

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all ofthe services offered in the AWS Cloud, such as data centers, hardware, software, networking, and facilities1. This includes the configuration of infrastructure devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers2. Customers are responsible for managing their data, applications, operating systems, security groups, and other aspects of their AWS environment1. Therefore, options A, B, and D are customer responsibilities, not AWS responsibilities. References: 1: AWS Well-Architected Framework - Elasticity; 2: Reactive Systems on AWS - Elastic

TheAWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)currently supports multiple programming languages, includingPythonandTypeScript. These languages allow developers to define cloud infrastructure using familiar programming constructs. Python and TypeScript are among the first languages supported by AWS CDK, which also supports Java, C#, and JavaScript. This enables developers to use their existing programming skills and tools to define cloud infrastructure in code.

B. Swift: Incorrect, as Swift is not currently supported by AWS CDK.

D. Ruby: Incorrect, as Ruby is not currently supported by AWS CDK.

E. PHP: Incorrect, as PHP is not currently supported by AWS CDK.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)

Amazon QuickSightis a scalable, serverless, machine learning-powered business intelligence (BI) service built for the cloud. It allows users to create and publish interactive dashboards with insights powered by machine learning, such as anomaly detection and forecasting. This makes it the best option for creating interactive BI dashboards that require machine learning insights.

A. AWS Glue Studio: Incorrect, as it is an ETL (extract, transform, load) tool for preparing and transforming data, not for creating BI dashboards.

C. Amazon Redshift: Incorrect, as it is a data warehousing service that can be used with BI tools but is not specifically designed for creating and publishing dashboards.

D. Amazon Athena: Incorrect, as it is an interactive query service for analyzing data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL, not for creating BI dashboards.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon QuickSight

AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of platform-specific tools for developers that let them integrate AWS service features directly into their applications. AWS SDKs provide libraries, code samples, documentation, and other resources to help developers write code that interacts with AWS APIs. AWS SDKs support various programming languages, such as Java, Python, Ruby, .NET, Node.js, Go, and more. AWS SDKs make it easier for developers to access AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, and more, from their applications. AWS SDKs also handle tasks such as authentication, error handling, retries, and data serialization, so developers can focus on their application logic.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed file server that supports Microsoft workloads and file systems, including the SMB protocol. It provides features such as user quotas, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory integration. Amazon EFS is a fully managed file system that supports the NFS protocol, not SMB. Amazon FSx for Lustre is a fully managed file system that supports high-performance computing workloads, not Microsoft workloads. Amazon EBS is a block storage service that does not provide a file system or SMB support. References: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre, Amazon EFS, Amazon EBS

Amazon SageMakeris a fully managed service that provides every developer and data scientist with the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning (ML) models quickly. It offers integrated Jupyter notebooks for data exploration, pre-built algorithms, and automatic model tuning to optimize hyperparameters.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon Personalize: A managed machine learning service that provides personalized recommendations, but does not offer the full suite of ML tools for building, training, and deploying models.

B. Amazon Comprehend: A natural language processing (NLP) service, not a general-purpose ML model building and deployment service.

C. Amazon Forecast: A managed service specifically for creating accurate forecasts using machine learning, not for general-purpose ML model development.

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is a fully managed, scalable, and serverless NFS (Network File System) file system specifically designed for use with AWS services and on-premises resources. It enables companies to create and configure file systems that can be accessed from multiple Amazon EC2instances simultaneously, making it ideal for use cases that require shared file storage for AWS compute services.

Why Amazon EFS Fits the Requirements:

Managed Service: Amazon EFS is a fully managed file storage service that simplifies the process of setting up and managing NFS file systems.

Scalability and Elasticity: EFS automatically scales to accommodate the storage needs of applications, without the need to provision or manage storage capacity.

NFS Compatibility: Amazon EFS natively supports the NFSv4 protocol, making it compatible with a wide range of applications and workloads that require NFS access.

Integration with AWS Compute Services: EFS integrates seamlessly with Amazon EC2 and other AWS services, providing a shared file storage solution across multiple instances and services within the AWS cloud environment.

Why Other Options Do Not Fit:

A. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS): While EBS provides block-level storage that can be attached to individual EC2 instances, it is not a file system, nor does it provide managed NFS file storage capabilities. EBS is designed for single-instance access rather than shared file access across multiple instances.

B. AWS Storage Gateway Tape Gateway: Tape Gateway is designed for archival purposes and allows companies to store virtual tape backups in Amazon S3 or Glacier. It does not support NFS file storage and is not intended for regular compute access.

C. Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval: Amazon S3 Glacier is optimized for data archiving and long-term storage of infrequently accessed data, but it does not provide NFS file system capabilities, nor is it suitable for high-performance access needs associated with compute services.

For more details, you can refer to theAWS Cloud Practitioner Essentialscontent, specifically the modules onStorage Serviceswhere Amazon EFS is covered as the managed NFS file storage solution offered by AWS.

TheAWS Pricing Calculatoris a web-based tool that allows customers to estimate their monthly AWS costs by configuring and projecting the costs of different AWS services. The calculator is specifically designed to help customers plan their AWS spending based on their specific architecture and usage patterns. The other options are not correct because:

B. Calculate historical AWS costs: This is incorrect as the AWS Pricing Calculator does not track or calculate historical costs. For historical costs, AWS Cost Explorer is used.

C. Provide in-depth information about AWS pricing strategies: While the AWS Pricing Calculator provides cost estimations, it does not provide detailed insights into AWS pricing strategies.

D. Provide users with access to their monthly bills: This is incorrect; AWS Billing and Cost Management provides access to actual billing information.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Pricing Calculator

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)is a scalable, fully managed, shared file storage service that is accessible from multiple Amazon EC2 instances. EFS is designed to provide highly available and durable file storage that can be mounted across multiple instances, making it ideal for shared file access.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. AWS Direct Connect: A network service to establish a dedicated network connection to AWS, not a file-sharing solution.

B. AWS Snowball Edge: A data transfer device for migrating data to and from AWS, not for ongoing file sharing.

C. AWS Backup: A service for centralized backup management, not for sharing files between EC2 instances.

Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, all within a developer-friendly environment. CloudFront enables companies to deploy an application close to end users by caching the application’s content at edge locations that are geographically closer to the users. This reduces the network latency and improves the user experience. CloudFront also integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF, to provide a secure and scalable solution for delivering applications12. References:

What Is Amazon CloudFront? - Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront Features - Amazon CloudFront

AWS Trusted Advisor is the service that can meet these requirements. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that helps you optimize your AWS environment by providing recommendations based on AWS best practices. Trusted Advisor continuously evaluates your AWS resources and services across five categories: cost optimization, performance, service limits, fault tolerance, and security. You can view the recommendations on the Trusted Advisor console or access them programmatically using the Trusted Advisor API. You can also set up notifications and alerts for any changes in the status of your checks. Trusted Advisor can help you improve your AWS environment by reducing costs, enhancing performance, increasing security, and ensuring reliability12. The other services are not designed to provide best practice recommendations in five categories. AWS Shield is a service that protects your AWS resources from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. AWS WAF is a service that helps you protect your web applications from common web exploits. AWS Service Catalog is a service that enables you to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS34 . References: AWS Trusted Advisor, Achieve operational excellence with AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, [AWS Service Catalog]

Amazon EC2 instance store provides temporary block-level storage for your EC2 instance. This storage is located on disks that are physically attached to the host computer. Instance store is ideal for temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, scratch data,and other temporary content. It can also be used to store temporary data that you replicate across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers. An instance store consists of one or more instance store volumes exposed as block devices. The size of an instance store as well as the number of devices available varies by instance type and instance size. The virtual devices for instance store volumes are ephemeral[0-23]. Instance types that support one instance store volume have ephemeral0. Instance types that support two or more instance store volumes have ephemeral0, ephemeral1, and so on. Instance store pricing Instance store volumes are included as part of the instance’s usage cost. The data on an instance store volume persists even if the instance is rebooted. However, the data does not persist if the instance is stopped, hibernated, or terminated. When the instance is stopped, hibernated, or terminated, every block of the instance store volume is cryptographically erased. Therefore, do not rely on instance store volumes for valuable, long-term data. If you need to retain the data stored on an instance store volume beyond the lifetime of the instance, you need to manually copy that data to more persistent storage, such as an Amazon EBS volume, an Amazon S3 bucket, or an Amazon EFS file system. There are some events that can result in your data not persisting throughout the lifetime of the instance. The following table indicates whether data on instance store volumes is persisted during specific events, for both virtualized and bare metal instances1. References: Amazon EC2 instance store - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

All Upfront Reserved Instances offer the most cost-effective solution for a workload that will run continuously for one year without interruption. By paying upfront, the user receives the maximum discount over the On-Demand pricing model. Partial Upfront Reserved Instances and Dedicated Instances are more expensive than All Upfront Reserved Instances. On-Demand Instances are not cost-effective for continuous long-term workloads due to their higher hourly rates.

AWS re:Post is a no-cost platform for AWS users to join community groups, ask questions, find answers, and read community-generated articles about best practices. AWS re:Post is a social media platform that connects AWS users with each other and with AWS experts. Users can create posts, comment on posts, follow topics, and join groups related to AWS services, solutions, and use cases. AWS re:Post also features live event feeds, community stories, and AWS Hero profiles. AWSre:Post is a great way to learn from the AWS community, share your knowledge, and get inspired. References:

AWS re:Post

Join the Conversation

AWS Transit Gateway is a network transit hub that you can use to interconnect your VPCs and on-premises networks through a central gateway. AWS Transit Gateway simplifies and scales the connectivity between your on-premises networks and AWS, as you only need to create and manage a single connection from the central gateway to each on-premises network, rather than individual connections to each VPC. You can also use AWS Transit Gateway to connect to other AWS services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, and AWS PrivateLink12. AWS Transit Gateway supports thousands of VPCs per gateway, and enables you to peer Transit Gateways across AWS Regions3.

The other options are not AWS services or features that can simplify and scale the connectivity between on-premises networks and hundreds of VPCs using AWS Direct Connect. VPC endpoints enable private connectivity between your VPCs and supported AWS services, but do not support on-premises networks4. Amazon Route 53 is a DNS service that helps you route internet traffic to your resources, but does not provide network connectivity5. AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you securely store and manage secrets, such as database credentials and API keys, but does not relate to network connectivity

AWS Organizationsis a service that helps users centrally manage and govern multiple AWS accounts. With AWS Organizations, a company can consolidate billing and receive a single bill for all AWS accounts under an organization, making it easier for the finance team to track costs.

Why other options are not suitable:

B. AWS Trusted Advisor: Provides real-time guidance to help optimize AWS resources, not for consolidated billing.

C. Cost Explorer: A tool for visualizing and managing AWS costs and usage, but it does not consolidate billing.

D. AWS Budgets: Allows setting custom budgets and alerts but does not consolidate billing across accounts.

The ability to scale resources up and down based on application load is tied to the advantage of "Stop guessing capacity." This feature allows users to scale resources automatically to match the demand, thereby avoiding over-provisioning or under-provisioning of resources. "Go global in minutes," "Benefit from massive economies of scale," and "Trade fixed expense for variable expense" are other advantages of cloud computing, but they do not specifically address scaling resources up and down based on load.

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, while the customer is responsible for the security in the cloud. This means that AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud, such as the global network, the hardware, the software, and the facilities. The customer is responsible for properly configuring the security of the provided service, such as the guest operating system, the application software, the data, and the network traffic. For abstracted services, such as Amazon RDS, AWS operates the infrastructure layer, the operating system, and the database software, while the customer is responsible for managing their data, classifying their assets, and using IAM tools to apply the appropriate permissions12.

Therefore, the tasks that are the customer’s responsibility are:

Perform client-side data encryption: The customer is responsible for encrypting their data before sending it to AWS, and decrypting it after receiving it from AWS. This ensures that the data is protected in transit and at rest. AWS provides various encryption options, such as AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS CloudHSM, and AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)3.

Configure IAM credentials: The customer is responsible for creating and managing IAM users, groups, roles, and policies that control the access to AWS resources and services. IAM credentials include user names, passwords, access keys, and permissions4.

The tasks that are not the customer’s responsibility are:

Establish the global infrastructure: AWS is responsible for building and maintaining the global network of regions, availability zones, and edge locations that provide low latency, high availability, and fault tolerance for the AWS Cloud5.

Secure edge locations: AWS is responsible for protecting the physical security of the edge locations, which are sites that deliver cached content to end users with improved performance6.

Patch Amazon RDS DB instances: AWS is responsible for applying patches and updates to the operating system and the database software of the Amazon RDS DB instances, which are managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora. References:

Shared Responsibility Model - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Shared responsibility model - Amazon Web Services: Risk and Compliance

Encryption - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

What Is IAM? - AWS Identity and Access Management

Global Infrastructure - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon CloudFront Features - Content Delivery Network (CDN)

[What Is Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)? - Amazon Relational Database Service]

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open source software development framework that allows you to model and provision your cloud infrastructure using familiar programming languages such as TypeScript, Python, Java, and .NET. AWS CDK enables you to use the expressive power of your favorite language to define your cloud resources, such as compute, storage, network, and application services. AWS CDK also provides a library of high-level constructs that represent AWS services and best practices. AWS CDK uses AWS CloudFormation in the background to deploy your resources in a safe and repeatable manner12. References:

AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) – TypeScript and Python are Now Generally Available

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) - Introduction to DevOps on AWS

Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)is a managed database service that simplifies the setup, operation, and scaling of relational databases in the AWS Cloud. It supports several SQL-based databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and MariaDB, while automating common administrative tasks such as backups, patch management, and scaling. This significantly reduces the operational overhead compared to managing databases on Amazon EC2 instances, which would require manual management of the operating system, database software, backups, and maintenance.

A. Amazon EC2 instances: Incorrect, as this would involve more operational overhead, including manual management of the database server.

C. Amazon DynamoDB: Incorrect, as it is a NoSQL database service, not suitable for migrating SQL-based databases.

D. OpenSearch: Incorrect, as it is used for search and analytics workloads, not for hosting SQL-based databases.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon RDS

VPC Flow Logs is a feature that enables you to capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC. Flow log data can be published to the following locations: Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. You can use VPC Flow Logs to monitor network traffic, diagnose security issues, troubleshoot connectivity problems, and perform network forensics1. References:

Logging IP traffic using VPC Flow Logs - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

Spot Instances offer the lowest cost for Amazon EC2 and are suitable for non-production workloads like development and testing where occasional unavailability is acceptable. Spot Instances take advantage of unused EC2 capacity at a reduced cost, making them ideal for environments that can tolerate interruptions. Reserved or On-Demand Instances would be more expensive for this scenario, and Dedicated Hosts are not cost-effective for non-production environments.

Understanding S3 Intelligent-Tiering: S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed to optimize costs by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective access tier based on changing access patterns. It is ideal for data with unknown or unpredictable access patterns.

Why S3 Intelligent-Tiering is Cost-Effective:

Automatic Tiering: Moves data between two access tiers (frequent and infrequent access) based on changing access patterns, optimizing storage costs without performance impact.

No Retrieval Fees: Unlike other storage classes, there are no retrieval fees in Intelligent-Tiering, making it cost-effective for data with unpredictable access patterns.

Monitoring and Automation: Automatically monitors access patterns and transitions data, reducing the need for manual intervention.

When to Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering:

Unpredictable Access Patterns: Ideal for datasets where the access frequency cannot be determined or changes frequently.

Cost Optimization: For organizations looking to minimize storage costs without sacrificing performance or requiring manual intervention to move data between tiers.

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows you to model and provision your AWS resources using templates. You can define your infrastructure as code and automate the creation and update of your resources. AWS CloudFormation also supports nested stacks, change sets, and rollback features to help you manage complex and dynamic environments34. References:

AWS CloudFormation

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Guide

Global reach is a cloud computing advantage that a company can apply when it uses AWS Regions to increase application availability to users in different countries. Global reach refers tothe ability to deploy applications and services in multiple geographic locations around the world, and to serve customers with low latency and high performance. AWS has the largest and most reliable global infrastructure of any cloud provider, with 25 Regions and 81 Availability Zones across the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East123. By using AWS Regions, a company can choose the best location for its application based on customer proximity, compliance requirements, and disaster recovery strategies23. References: 1: AWS Global Infrastructure - Amazon Web Services (AWS), 2: Regions and Availability Zones - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, 3: AWS Infrastructure: Regions and Availability Zones Explained

Loose coupling is a design principle that involves reducing dependencies between application components so that they can operate independently. This approach ensures that the failure of one component does not affect the availability of the others, thereby improving the application's fault tolerance and resilience. Disposable resources, automation, and rightsizing are valuable principles in cloud architecture, but they do not directly address the requirement of remaining available despite the failure of an individual component like loose coupling does.

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)is a scalable object storage service that allows users to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time from anywhere on the web. S3 provides the ability to make objects (files) publicly accessible via a public URL, which allows users to download files directly. S3 is highly durable, scalable, and secure, making it an ideal service for storing files that need to be accessed publicly.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon Redshift: A data warehouse service designed for complex queries and analytics, not for storing and publicly sharing files.

B. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS): Provides block storage for use with EC2 instances, but does not support public URLs or direct file access from the web.

C. Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS): A managed file storage service for use with EC2 instances, not designed for public access via URLs.

AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of platform-specific building tools for developers. It allows developers to access AWS services from application code using familiar programming languages. It provides pre-built components and libraries that can be incorporated into applications, as well as tools to debug, monitor, and optimize performance2. References: What is SDK? - SDK Explained - AWS

AnApplication Load Balancer (ALB)is the best choice for distributing incoming HTTP/HTTPS traffic evenly across multiple Amazon EC2 instances. It operates at theapplication layer (Layer 7 of the OSI model) and is specifically designed to handle HTTP and HTTPS traffic, which is ideal for web applications.

Here is why the ALB is the correct choice:

Layer 7 Load Balancing: The ALB works at the application layer and provides advanced routing capabilities based on content. It can inspect the incoming HTTP requests and make decisions on how to route traffic to various backend targets, which include Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or Lambda functions. This is particularly useful for web applications where you need to make routing decisions based on HTTP headers, paths, or query strings.

HTTP and HTTPS Support: The ALB natively supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols, making it the ideal load balancer for web-based applications. It can efficiently manage and route these types of traffic and handle tasks such as SSL/TLS termination.

Health Checks: The ALB can continuously monitor the health of the registered EC2 instances and only route traffic to healthy instances. This ensures high availability and reliability of the web application.

Path-based and Host-based Routing: The ALB can route traffic based on the URL path or host header. This feature allows the same load balancer to serve multiple applications hosted on different domains or subdomains.

Integration with Auto Scaling: The ALB can integrate seamlessly with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling. As the number of EC2 instances increases or decreases, the ALB automatically includes the new instances in its traffic distribution pool, ensuring even distribution of incoming requests.

WebSocket Support: It also supports WebSocket and HTTP/2 protocols, which are essential for modern web applications that require real-time, bidirectional communication.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling: This service is used to automatically scale the number of EC2 instances up or down based on specified conditions. However, it does not provide load balancing capabilities. It works well with load balancers but does not handle the distribution of incoming traffic by itself.

C. Gateway Load Balancer: This is designed to distribute traffic to virtual appliances like firewalls, IDS/IPS systems, or deep packet inspection systems. It operates at Layer 3 (Network Layer) and is not ideal for distributing HTTP/HTTPS traffic to EC2 instances.

D. Network Load Balancer: This load balancer operates at Layer 4 (Transport Layer) and is designed to handle millions of requests per second while maintaining ultra-low latencies. It is best suited for TCP, UDP, and TLS traffic but does not provide advanced Layer 7 routing features required for HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

AWS Application Composer is a service that allows users to visually design and build serverless applications. Users can drag and drop components, such as AWS Lambda functions, Amazon API Gateway endpoints, Amazon DynamoDB tables, and Amazon S3 buckets, to create aserverless application architecture. Users can also configure the properties, permissions, and dependencies of each component, and deploy the application to their AWS account with a few clicks. AWS Application Composer simplifies the design and configuration of serverless applications, and reduces the need to write code or use AWS CloudFormation templates. References: AWS Application Composer, AWS releases Application Composer to make serverless ‘easier’ but initial scope is limited

AVPC (Virtual Private Cloud)in AWS is a logically isolated network that you define in the AWS Cloud. Within a VPC, you can create subnets, route tables, network gateways, and more.

D. Internet Gateway: An internet gateway is a component that allows communication between resources in a VPC and the internet.

E. Subnet: A subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. Subnets can be public or private and are essential for organizing resources within a VPC.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon API Gateway: Used for creating and managing APIs, not a direct component of a VPC.

B. Amazon S3 buckets and objects: Amazon S3 is a storage service; its resources are globally accessible and not confined to a VPC.

C. AWS Storage Gateway: A hybrid cloud storage service, not a core component of a VPC.

Amazon CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator are two AWS services that make use of global edge locations. Edge locations are AWS sites that are deployed worldwide in major cities and places with a high population. Edge locations are used to cache data and reduce latency for end-user access1.

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. Amazon CloudFront uses a global network of over 200 edge locations and 13 regional edge caches to cache your content closer to your viewers, improving performance and reducing costs23.

AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that improves the availability and performance of your applications with local or global users. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route user traffic to the optimal endpoint based on health, performance, and policies. AWS Global Accelerator uses over 100 edge locations to bring your application endpoints closer to your users, reducing networkhops and improving user experience45. References: 1: AWS for the Edge - Amazon Web Services (AWS), 2: Content Delivery Network (CDN) - Amazon CloudFront - AWS, 3: Amazon CloudFront Documentation, 4: AWS Global Accelerator - Amazon Web Services, 5: AWS Global Accelerator Documentation

Amazon EC2 Spot Instancesoffer spare AWS compute capacity at a significantly reduced cost compared to On-Demand Instances. Spot Instances are ideal for fault-tolerant and flexibleworkloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch jobs, data processing, or large-scale computations. These instances may be interrupted by AWS if there is a demand for capacity, but they provide the best cost optimization for workloads that can handle such interruptions.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon Macie: A data security and privacy service, not relevant to running batch jobs.

B. Amazon Neptune: A graph database service, not relevant to compute optimization.

D. Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances: Provide flexible compute capacity but at a higher cost than Spot Instances, which are more suitable for cost optimization.

 Amazon Neptune is a fully managed graph database service on AWS. A graph database is a type of database that stores and queries data as a network of nodes and edges, representing entities and relationships. Graph databases are useful for applications that deal with highly connected data, such as social networks, recommendation engines, fraud detection, and knowledge graphs45. Amazon Neptune is a fast, reliable, and scalable graph database service that supports two popular graph models: property graphs and RDF. Amazon Neptune also supports two open standards for querying graphs: Apache TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL. Amazon Neptune handles the heavy lifting of managing the database, such as provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, encryption, and replication456. References: 4: Managed Graph Database - Amazon Neptune - AWS, 5: Amazon Neptune – A Fully Managed Graph Database Service, 6: Working with AWS Neptune. Neptune is a fully-managed graph … - Medium

TheReliabilitypillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework focuses on the ability of a system to recover from failures and disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or network issues. This includes the ability to automatically recover from service interruptions and implement mechanisms that anticipate, respond to, and prevent failures.

A. Security: Incorrect, as it focuses on protecting information, systems, and assets while delivering business value.

B. Performance efficiency: Incorrect, as it focuses on using IT and computing resources efficiently.

C. Operational excellence: Incorrect, as it focuses on operations in the cloud, including monitoring and managing systems.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Well-Architected Framework - Reliability Pillar

AWS CloudTrailis a service that enables governance, compliance, and operational and risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail logs provide a history of AWS API calls for your account, including those made by the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command-line tools, and other AWS services. In this case, AWS CloudTrail will help the administrator identify which user deleted the resources by reviewing the event history that records details such as which user performed the action, the time of the action, and which resources were affected.

B. Amazon Inspector: Incorrect, as it is a security assessment service that helps identify vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices, not for tracking user activity.

C. Amazon GuardDuty: Incorrect, as it is a threat detection service that monitors malicious activity and unauthorized behavior, not specifically for tracking changes made by users.

D. AWS Trusted Advisor: Incorrect, as it provides best practices and guidance for cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, and performance, not for logging user actions.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS CloudTrail

 The AWS service or feature that the company should use to categorize and track AWS usage cost based on business categories is cost allocation tags. Cost allocation tags are key-value pairs that users can attach to AWS resources to organize and track their AWS costs. Users can use cost allocation tags to filter and group their AWS costs by categories such as project, department, environment, or application. Users can also use cost allocation tags to generate detailed billing reports that show the costs associated with each tag3. AWS Organizations, AWS Security Hub, and AWS Cost and Usage Report are other AWS services or features that can help users with different aspects of their AWS usage, such as managing multiple accounts, monitoring security issues, or analyzing billing data, but they do not enable users to categorize and track AWS costs based on business categories.

 The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices and guidelines for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. The framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, performance efficiency, reliability, security, and cost optimization. The security pillar covers the AWS shared responsibility model, which defines the security and compliance responsibilities of AWS and the customers. You can learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Framework from [this whitepaper] or [this digital course].

The solution that achieves the goal of having Amazon EC2 instances share the same geographic area but use multiple independent underlying power sources is to use EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones in the same AWS Region. An Availability Zone is a physically isolated location within an AWS Region that has its own power, cooling, and network connectivity. An AWS Region is a geographical area that consists of two or more Availability Zones. By using multiple Availability Zones, users can increase the fault tolerance and resilience of their applications, as well as reduce latency for end users3. Using EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone, multiple AWS Regions, or the same edge location and the same AWS Region would not meet the requirement of having multiple independent power sources.

Moving to the AWS Cloud offers several advantages, including increased speed and agility, which allows users to experiment, innovate, and iterate faster by using the global AWS infrastructure. Additionally, AWS offers massive economies of scale due to its large customer base, leading to lower pay-as-you-go prices. AWS does not assume all responsibilities for the security of infrastructure and applications; it follows a shared responsibility model. Also, not all AWS services can be implemented in seconds, and physical hardware cannot be moved from a user’s data center to the AWS Cloud.

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, while customers are responsible for the security in the cloud. This means that AWS is responsible for the physical servers, networking, and operating system that run DynamoDB, while customers are responsible for the security of their data and access to the database. Customers need to manage database access permissions, such as creating and managing AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and roles, and using encryption and key management options to protect their data123. References: 1: Shared Responsibility Model - Amazon Web Services (AWS), 2: Security in Amazon DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB, 3: AWS Shared Responsibility Model - Introduction to DevOps …

AWS Migration Hub is a service that provides a single location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions. It allows you to choose the AWS and partner migration tools that best fit your needs, while providing visibility into the status of migrations across your portfolio of applications1. AWS Migration Hub supports migration status updates from the following tools: AWS Application Migration Service, AWS Database Migration Service, CloudEndure Migration, Server Migration Service, and Migrate for Compute Engine1.

The other options are not correct for the following reasons:

AWS Application Discovery Service is a service that helps you plan your migration projects by automatically identifying servers, applications, and dependencies in your on-premises data centers2. It does not track the progress of application migrations, but rather provides information to help you plan and scope your migrations.

AWS Application Migration Service is a service that helps you migrate and modernize applications from any source infrastructure to AWS with minimal downtime and disruption3. It is one of the migration tools that can send status updates to AWS Migration Hub, but it is not the service that provides a single location to track the progress of application migrations.

AWS Service Catalog is a service that allows you to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS4. It does not track the progress of application migrations, but rather helps you manage the provisioning and governance of your IT services.

1: What Is AWS Migration Hub? - AWS Migration Hub

2: What Is AWS Application Discovery Service? - AWS Application Discovery Service

3: App Migration Tool - AWS Application Migration Service - AWS

4: What Is AWS Service Catalog? - AWS Service Catalog

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. AWS Config can help you determine when an EBS volume was removed from an EC2 instance by providing a timeline of configuration changes and compliance status. AWS Trusted Advisor, Amazon Timestream, and Amazon QuickSight do not provide the same level of configuration tracking and auditing as AWS Config. Source: AWS Config

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With AWS Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines. This can help you simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting1.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources for your users. You use IAM to control who can use your AWS resources (authentication) and what resources they can use and in what ways (authorization). IAM is always available free of charge to users4.

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) is a managed and automated service that helps you migrate your databases from your on-premises or cloud environment to AWS, either as a one-time migration or as a continuous replication. AWS DMS supports migration between 20-plus database and analytics engines, such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon S3. AWS DMS also provides schema conversion and validation tools, as well as monitoring and security features. AWS DMS is a cost-effective and reliable solution for database migration, as you only pay for the compute resources and additional log storage used during the migration process, and you can minimize the downtime and data loss with Multi-AZ and ongoing replication12

To migrate a PostgreSQL database from on-premises to Amazon RDS using AWS DMS, you need to perform the following steps:

Create an AWS DMS replication instance in the same AWS Region as your target Amazon RDS PostgreSQL DB instance. The replication instance is a server that runs the AWS DMS replication software and connects to your source and target endpoints. You can choose the instance type, storage, and network settings based on your migration requirements3

Create a source endpoint that points to your on-premises PostgreSQL database. You need to provide the connection details, such as the server name, port, database name, user name, and password. You also need to specify the engine name as postgres and the SSL mode as required4

Create a target endpoint that points to your Amazon RDS PostgreSQL DB instance. You need to provide the connection details, such as the server name, port, database name, user name, and password. You also need to specify the engine name as postgres and the SSL mode as verify-full.

Create a migration task that defines the migration settings and options, such as the replication instance, the source and target endpoints, the migration type (full load, full load and change data capture, or change data capture only), the table mappings, the task settings, and the task monitoring role. You can also use the AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) to convert your source schema to the target schema and apply it to the target endpoint before or after creating the migration task.

Start the migration task and monitor its progress and status using the AWS DMS console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS DMS API. You can also use AWS CloudFormation to automate the creation and execution of the migration task.

The other options are not suitable for migrating a PostgreSQL database from on-premises to Amazon RDS. Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool is a tool that helps you assess your readiness for cloud adoption based on six dimensions: business, people, process, platform, operations, and security. It does not perform any database migration tasks. AWS Migration Hub is a service that helps you track and manage the progress of your application migrations across multiple AWS and partner services, such as AWS DMS, AWS Application Migration Service, AWS Server Migration Service, and CloudEndure Migration. It does not perform any database migration tasks itself, but rather integrates with other migration services. AWS Application Migration Service is a service that helps you migrate your applications from your on-premises or cloud environment to AWS without making any changes to the applications, their architecture, or the migrated servers. It does not support database migration, but rather replicates your servers as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and launches them as EC2 instances on AWS.

 AWS Database Migration Service, What is AWS Database Migration Service?, Working with an AWS DMS replication instance, Creating source and target endpoints for PostgreSQL, [Creating a target endpoint for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL], [Creating a migration task for AWS DMS], [AWS Schema Conversion Tool], [Starting a migration task for AWS DMS], [AWS CloudFormation], [Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool], [AWS Migration Hub], [AWS Application Migration Service]

To meet the goals for sustainability impact, the company should follow the best practices of scaling infrastructure with user load and eliminating creation and maintenance of unused assets. Scalinginfrastructure with user load means adjusting the capacity of the infrastructure to match the demand of the users, which can reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the system. Eliminating creation and maintenance of unused assets means avoiding the waste of resources and money on assets that are not needed or used, which can also improve the environmental and economic efficiency of the system3.

Changing AWS Support plans is a task that must be performed by using the AWS account root user credentials. The root user is the email address that you used to sign up for AWS. It has complete access to all AWS services and resources in the account. You should use the root user only to perform a few account and service management tasks, such as changing AWS Support plans, closing the account, or changing the account name or email address. Making changes to AWS production resources, accessing AWS Cost and Usage Reports, and granting auditors access to an AWS account for a compliance audit are tasks that can be performed by using IAM users or roles, which are entities that you create in AWS to delegate permissions to access AWS services and resources.

AWS IAM Access Analyzer is an AWS service that helps customers identify and review the resources in their AWS account that are shared with an external entity, such as another AWS account, a root user, an organization, or a public entity. AWS IAM Access Analyzer uses automated reasoning, a form of mathematical logic and inference, to analyze the resource-based policies in the account and generate comprehensive findings that show the access level, the source of the access, the affected resource, and the condition under which the access applies. Customers can use AWS IAM Access Analyzer to audit their shared resources, validate their access policies, and monitor any changes to the resource sharing status. References: AWSIAM Access Analyzer, Identify and review resources shared with external entities, How AWS IAM Access Analyzer works

 S3 Glacier Deep Archive is Amazon S3’s lowest-cost storage class and supports long-term retention and digital preservation for data that may be accessed once or twice in a year. It is designed forcustomers — particularly those in highly-regulated industries, such as the Financial Services, Healthcare, and Public Sectors — that retain data sets for 7-10 years or longer to meet regulatory compliance requirements. Customers can store large amounts of data at a very low cost, and reliably access it with a wait time of 12 hours3.

AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of a customer’s AWS account. AWS CloudTrail allows customers to track user activity and API usage across their AWS infrastructure. AWS CloudTrail can also provide a history of EC2 instance events, such as launch, stop, terminate, and reboot. Cost Explorer is a tool that enables customers to visualize, understand, and manage their AWS costs and usage over time. Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. AWS Secrets Manager helps customers protect secrets needed to access their applications, services, and IT resources.

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Polly’s Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech1. Amazon Polly supports dozens of languages and a wide range of natural-sounding voices. You can customizeand control the speech output by using lexicons and SSML tags. You can also store and redistribute the speech output in standard audio formats like MP3 and OGG2.

Amazon Transcribe is a service that converts speech to text, enabling you to create text transcripts from audio or video files. It can recognize multiple speakers, different languages, accents, dialects, and background noises. It can also add punctuation and formatting to the transcripts. Amazon Transcribe is useful for applications such as subtitling, captioning, transcription, and voice search.

Amazon Rekognition is a service that provides image and video analysis using computer vision and deep learning. It can detect objects, faces, text, scenes, activities, and emotions in images and videos. It can also perform face recognition, face comparison, face search, celebrity recognition, and facial analysis. Amazon Rekognition is useful for applications such as security, social media, e-commerce, and media and entertainment.

Amazon Textract is a service that extracts text and data from scanned documents using optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning. It can identify the contents of fields in forms and tables, as well as the relationships between them. It can also preserve the layout and structure of the original document. Amazon Textract is useful for applications such as data entry, document management, compliance, and analytics.

 Amazon QuickSight Q is a natural language query feature that lets you ask questions about your data using everyday language and get answers in seconds. You can type questions such as “What are the total sales by region?” or “How did marketing campaign A perform?” and get answers in the form of relevant visualizations, such as charts or tables. You can also use Q to drill down into details, filter data, or perform calculations. Q uses machine learning to understand your data and your intent, and provides suggestions and feedback to help you refine your questions.

AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it easy to prepare and load data for analytics. AWS Glue can discover data sources, transform data, and make it available for analysis by using data catalogs and workflows. Amazon Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud that enables customers to analyze data using standard SQL and existing business intelligence tools. Amazon Redshift can also integrate with other AWS services to visualize and transform data. Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides a simple, scalable, fully managed elastic NFS file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence service that makes it easy to deliver insights to everyone in an organization. Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB) is a fully managed ledger database that provides a transparent, immutable, and cryptographically verifiable transaction log owned by a central trusted authority.

 Realigning teams to focus on products and value streams, and using agile methods to rapidly iterate and evolve are tasks that the company should perform to meet the requirements of becoming more responsive to customer inquiries and feedback, according to the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). AWS CAF organizes guidance into six areas of focus, called perspectives: business, people, governance, platform, security, and operations. Each perspective is divided into capabilities, which describe the skills and processes to execute the transition effectively. The people perspective helps you prepare your organization for cloud adoption, and includes capabilities such as organizational change management, staff skills and readiness, and organizational alignment. The business perspective helps you align IT strategy with business strategy, and includes capabilities such as business case development, value proposition, and product ownership. Creating new value propositions with new products and services is a task that belongs to the business perspective, but it is not directly related to the requirement of becoming more responsive to customer inquiries and feedback. Using a new data and analytics platform to create actionable insights is a task that belongs to the platform perspective, which helps you design, implement, and optimize the architecture of the AWS environment. However, it is also not directly related to the requirement of becoming more responsive to customer inquiries and feedback. Migrating and modernizing legacy infrastructure is a task that belongs to the operations perspective, which helps you enable, run, use, operate, and recover IT workloads to the level agreed upon with your business stakeholders.However, it is also not directly related to the requirement of becoming more responsive to customer inquiries and feedback.

Amazon S3 is the AWS service that offers object storage. Object storage is a technology that stores and manages data in an unstructured format called objects. Each object consists of the data, metadata, and a unique identifier. Object storage is ideal for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as photos, videos, email, web pages, sensor data, and audio files1. Amazon S3 provides industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance for object storage2.

Amazon RDS is the AWS service that offers relational database storage. Relational database storage is a technology that stores and manages data in a structured format called tables. Each table consists of rows and columns that define the attributes and values of the data. Relational database storage is ideal for storing structured or semi-structured data, such as customer records, inventory, transactions, and analytics3.

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is the AWS service that offers file storage. File storage is a technology that stores and manages data in a hierarchical format called files and folders. Each file consists of the data and metadata, and each folder consists of files or subfolders. File storage is ideal for storing shared data that can be accessed by multiple users or applications, such as home directories, content repositories, media libraries, and configuration files4.

Amazon DynamoDB is the AWS service that offers NoSQL database storage. NoSQL database storage is a technology that stores and manages data in a flexible format called documents or key-value pairs. Each document or key-value pair consists of the data and metadata, and can have different attributes and values depending on the schema. NoSQL database storage is ideal for storing dynamic or unstructured data that requires high performance, scalability, and availability, such as web applications, social media, gaming, and IoT.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances let you take advantage of unused EC2 capacity in the AWS cloud. Spot Instances are available at up to a 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. You can use Spot Instances for various stateless, fault-tolerant, or flexible applications such as big data, containerized workloads, CI/CD, web servers, high-performance computing (HPC), and other test & development workloads. Spot Instances are well-suited for massively parallel computations, as they can provide large amounts of compute capacity at a low cost, and can be interrupted with a two-minute notice3

AWS Control Tower is a service that provides an easy way to set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment. It automates the creation of accounts, organizational units, policies, and best practices based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework. AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On) is a service that enables users to centrally manage access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications using a single sign-on experience. AWS Systems Manager is a service that provides operational management for AWS resources and applications. AWS Config is a service that enables users to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources.

 B is correct because Reserved Instances are the instance purchasing option that offers the most cost-effective way to use Amazon EC2 instances for a stable production workload that will run for 1 year, as they provide significant discounts compared to On-Demand Instances in exchange for a commitment to use a specific amount of computing power for a period of time. A is incorrect because Dedicated Hosts are the instance purchasing option that allows customers to use physical servers that are fully dedicated to their use, which is more expensive and less flexible than Reserved Instances. C is incorrect because On-Demand Instances are the instance purchasing option that allows customers to pay for compute capacity by the hour or second with no long-term commitments, which is more suitable for short-term, variable, and unpredictable workloads. D is incorrect because Spot Instances are the instance purchasing option that allows customers to bid on spare Amazon EC2 computing capacity, which is more suitable for flexible, scalable, and fault-tolerant workloads that can tolerate interruptions.

 Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, all within a developer-friendly environment. CloudFront can cache web server content in edge locations, which are located closer to the end users, toimprove the web service’s performance globally2.

 Amazon Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. You can start with just a few hundred gigabytes of data and scale to a petabyte or more. This enables you to use your data to acquire new insights for your business and customers. Amazon Redshift is a relational database management system (RDBMS), so it is compatible with other RDBMS applications. You can use standard SQL to query the data.

 Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is a service that provides a scalable and elastic file system for Linux-based workloads. It can be mounted on multiple Amazon EC2 instances across different Availability Zones within a region, allowing applications to access a common set of files1. AWS Backup is a service that provides a centralized and automated way to back up data across AWS services. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a service that provides persistent block storage volumes for Amazon EC2 instances. AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized is a device that provides a petabyte-scale data transport and edge computing solution.

AWS Auto Scaling is the AWS service that allows users to optimize the number of EC2 instances based on the usage pattern, as it automatically adjusts the capacity to maintain steady and predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. Spot Instances are a way to reduce the cost ofEC2 instances by bidding on unused EC2 capacity, but they are not suitable for applications that require steady and reliable performance. Reserved Instances are a way to reduce the cost of EC2 instances by committing to a certain amount of usage for a period of time, but they are not flexible to adjust to the usage pattern. AWS CloudFormation is a way to automate the creation and management of AWS resources, but it does not optimize the number of EC2 instances based on the usage pattern. These concepts are explained in the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course3.

 Network ACLs (network access control lists) are an optional layer of security for your VPC that act as a firewall for controlling traffic in and out of one or more subnets. You can use network ACLs to allow or deny traffic based on protocol, port, or source and destination IP address. Network ACLs are stateless, meaning that they do not track the traffic that flows through them. Therefore, you must create rules for both inbound and outbound traffic.

A network access control list (network ACL) is a feature that acts as a firewall for controlling traffic in and out of one or more subnets in a virtual private cloud (VPC). Network ACLs can be configured with rules that allow or deny traffic based on the source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols1. AWS Security Hub is a service that provides a comprehensive view of the security posture of AWS accounts and resources2. Security groups are features that act as firewalls for controlling traffic at the instance level3. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits4.

AWS Business Support is the most cost-effective AWS Support plan that provides chat access to a cloud support engineer 24/7. AWS Business Support also offers phone and email support, as well as a response time of less than one hour for urgent issues. AWS Business Support does not include access to infrastructure event management, which is a feature of AWS Enterprise Support. AWS Enterprise Support is more expensive and provides additional benefits, such as a technical account manager, a support concierge, and a response time of less than 15 minutes for critical issues. AWS Developer Support and AWS Basic Support do not provide chat access to a cloud support engineer. AWS Developer Support provides email support and a response time of less than 12 hours for general guidance issues. AWS Basic Support provides customer service and account support, as well as access to forums and documentation1

Amazon Macie is a fully managed service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to help you detect, classify, and better protect your sensitive data stored in the AWS Cloud1. Macie can automatically discover and scan your Amazon S3 buckets for sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), financial information, healthcare information, intellectual property, and credentials1. Macie also provides you with a dashboard that shows the type, location, and volume of sensitive data in your AWS environment, as well as alerts and findings on potential security issues1.

The other options are not suitable for identifying sensitive data in AWS. Amazon Inspector is a service that helps you find security vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices in your Amazon EC2 instances2. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that helps you manage access to your AWS resources by creating users, groups, roles, and policies3. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that helps youmonitor and troubleshoot your AWS resources and applications by collecting metrics, logs, events, and alarms4.

1: What Is Amazon Macie? - Amazon Macie

2: What Is Amazon Inspector? - Amazon Inspector

3: What Is IAM? - AWS Identity and Access Management

4: What Is Amazon CloudWatch? - Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon Athena is a serverless, interactive analytics service that allows users to run SQL queries on data stored in Amazon S3. It is ideal for occasional queries on large datasets, as it does not require any server provisioning, configuration, or management. Users only pay for the queries they run, based on the amount of data scanned. Amazon Athena supports various data formats, such as CSV, JSON, Parquet, ORC, and Avro, and integrates with AWS Glue Data Catalog to create and manage schemas. Amazon Athena also supports querying data from other sources, such as on-premises or other cloud systems, using data connectors1.

Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse service that allows users to run complex analytical queries on petabyte-scale data. However, it requires users to provision and maintain clusters of nodes, and pay for the storage and compute capacity they use. Amazon Redshift is more suitable for frequent and consistent queries on structured or semi-structured data2.

Amazon Kinesis is a platform for streaming data on AWS, enabling users to collect, process, and analyze real-time data. It is not designed for querying data stored in Amazon S3. Amazon Kinesis consists of four services: Kinesis Data Streams, Kinesis Data Firehose, Kinesis Data Analytics, and Kinesis Video Streams3.

Amazon RDS is a relational database service that provides six database engines: Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database, and SQL Server. It simplifies database administration tasks such as backup, patching, scaling, and replication. However, it is not optimized for querying data stored in Amazon S3. Amazon RDS is more suitable for transactional workloads that require high performance and availability4.

 Refine operation procedures frequently is one of the design principles of the operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It means that users should continuously review and validate their operational processes to ensure that they are effective and that staff are familiar with them. It also means that users should identify and address any gaps or issues in their processes, and incorporate feedback and lessons learned from operational events5. Perform operations as code is another design principle of the operational excellence pillar, which means that users should automate and script their operational tasks to reduce human error and enable consistent and repeatable execution. Make frequent, small, reversible changes is a design principle of the reliability pillar, which means that users should deploy changes in small increments that can be easily tested and rolled back if necessary. Structure the company to support business outcomes is a design principle of the performance efficiency pillar, which means that users should align their organizational structure and culture with their business goals and cloud strategy.

Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost storage class in the cloud. It is designed for long-term data archiving that is rarely accessed. It offers a retrieval time of 12 hours and a durability of 99.999999999% (11 9’s). It is ideal for data that must be retained for 7 years or longer to meet regulatory compliance requirements.

AWS Budgets is a tool that allows users to set AWS spending targets and track costs against those targets. Users can create budgets for various dimensions, such as service, linked account, tag, and more. Users can also receive alerts when the actual or forecasted costs exceed or are projected to exceed the budgeted amount. AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Report, and Savings Plans are other AWS tools or features that can help users manage and optimize their AWS costs, but they do not enable users to set and track spending targets .

Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It is a fully managed, serverless database that does not require provisioning, patching, or backup. It offers built-in security, backup and restore, and in-memory caching3. Amazon RDS is a relational database service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. However, it is not a key-value NoSQL database, and it is not serverless, as it requires you to choose an instance type and size4. Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. However, it is also not a key-value NoSQL database, and it is not serverless, as it requires you to choose an instance type and size. Amazon MemoryDB for Redis is a Redis-compatible, durable, in-memory database service that delivers ultra-fast performance and multi-AZ reliability for the most demanding applications. However, it is also not a key-value NoSQL database, and it is not serverless, as it requires you to choose a node type and size.

A security group is a virtual firewall that can be associated with an Amazon EC2 instance to control the inbound and outbound traffic for the instance. You can specify which protocols, ports, and source or destination IP ranges are allowed or denied by the security group. A network ACL is a stateless filter that can be associated with a subnet to control the traffic to and from the subnet, but it is not associated with an EC2 instance4. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications or APIs against common web exploits that may affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. VPC route tables are used to determine where network traffic is directed within a VPC or to an internet gateway, virtual private gateway, NAT device, VPC peering connection, or VPC endpoint.

AWS Shield Advanced is a service that provides high levels of detection and near-real-time (NRT) mitigation against large and sophisticated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on applications running on AWS. AWS Shield Advanced also provides you with 24x7 access to the AWS DDoS Response Team (DRT) and protection against DDoS attacks of any size or duration1. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that provides threat detection for your AWS accounts and workloads, but itdoes not offer DDoS protection3. Amazon Inspector is a service that helps you improve the security and compliance of your applications deployed on AWS by automatically assessing them for vulnerabilities and deviations from best practices. Amazon Macie is a service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover and protect your sensitive data in AWS.

Amazon EC2 is a service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch and manage virtual servers, known as instances, that run on the AWS infrastructure. Users are responsible for maintaining the underlying operating system of the instances, as well as any applications or software that run on them. Amazon DynamoDB is a service that provides a fully managed NoSQL database that delivers fast and consistent performance at any scale. Users do not need to manage the underlying operating system or the database software. Amazon S3 is a service that provides scalable and durable object storage in the cloud. Users do not need to manage the underlying operating system or the storage infrastructure. AWS Lambda is a service that allows users to run code without provisioning or managing servers. Users only need to upload their code and configure the triggers and parameters. AWS Lambda takes care of the underlying operating system and the execution environment.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances are instances that use spare EC2 capacity that is available at up to a 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. You can use Spot Instances for various stateless, fault-tolerant, or flexible applications such as big data, containerized workloads, high-performance computing (HPC), and test & development workloads. Spot Instances are ideal for workloads that can be interrupted, such as batch image rendering applications1. On-Demand Instances are instances that let you pay for compute capacity by the hour or second (minimum of 60 seconds) with no long-term commitments. This frees you from the costs and complexities of planning, purchasing, and maintaining hardware and transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs2. Reserved Instances are instances that provide you with a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand Instance pricing. In exchange, you select a term and make an upfront payment to reserve a certain amount of compute capacity for that term3. Dedicated Instances are instances that run in a VPC on hardware that’s dedicated to a single customer. Your Dedicated Instances are physically isolated at the host hardware level from instances that belong to other AWS accounts4.

A is correct because Amazon Lex is the AWS service that helps users build conversational interfaces into applications using voice and text. B is incorrect because Amazon Transcribe is the AWS service that helps users convert speech to text. C is incorrect because Amazon Comprehend is the AWS service that helps users analyze text using natural language processing. D is incorrect because Amazon Timestream is the AWS service that helps users collect, store, and process time series data.

The scenario represents the operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which focuses on running and monitoring systems to deliver business value and continually improve supporting processes and procedures1. Security, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and reliability are the other four pillars of the framework1.

The architecture deployment model that the company should use to meet this requirement is A. Multi-Region.

A multi-region deployment model is a cloud computing architecture that distributes an application and its data across multiple geographic regions. A multi-region deployment model enables a company to achieve global reach, high availability, disaster recovery, and performance optimization.By deploying an application inmultiple regions, a company can serve customers from the nearest region, reduce latency, increase redundancy, and comply with data sovereignty regulations12.

A single-region deployment model is a cloud computing architecture that runs an application and its data within a single geographic region. A single-region deployment model is simpler and cheaper than a multi-region deployment model, but it has limited scalability, availability, and performance.A single-region deployment model may notbe suitable for a company that wants to deploy an application globally, as it may face challenges such as network latency, regional outages, or regulatory compliance12.

A multi-AZ (Availability Zone) deployment model is a cloud computing architecture that distributes an application and its data across multiple isolated locations within a single region. An Availability Zone is a physically separate location within an AWS Region that has independent power, cooling, and networking.A multi-AZ deployment model enhances the availability and durability of an application by providing redundancy and fault tolerance within a region34.

A single-AZ deployment model is a cloud computing architecture that runs an application and its data within a single Availability Zone. A single-AZ deployment model is the simplest and most cost-effective option, but it has no redundancy or fault tolerance.A single-AZ deployment model may not be suitable for a company that wants to deploy an application globally, as it may face challenges such as network latency, regional outages, or regulatory compliance34.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is a tool that helps organizations understand how cloud adoption transforms the way they work, and it provides structure to identify and address gaps in skills and processes. Applying the AWS CAF in your organization results in an actionable plan that helps you prepare the cloud environment, enable your staff with new skills, and migrate your applications. AWS Pricing Calculator is a tool that helps you estimate the cost of AWS services for your use cases and compare the cost of different AWS service configurations. AWS Well-Architected Framework is a tool that helps you review and improve your cloud-based architectures and better understand the business impact of your design decisions. AWS Budgets is a tool that helps you plan your service usage, service costs, and instance reservations, and track how close your plan is to your budgeted amount.

 The AWS Cloud offers many benefits, such as:

Trade variable expenses for capital expenses: You can pay only for the resources you use, instead of investing in fixed costs upfront. This reduces the risk and complexity of planning and managing your IT infrastructure4

Deploy globally in minutes: You can leverage the global infrastructure of AWS to deploy your applications and data in multiple regions and availability zones. This enables you to reach your customers faster, improve performance, and increase reliability5

 The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) helps organizations understand how cloud adoption transforms the way they work, and it provides structure to identify and address gaps in skills and processes. The AWS CAF organizes guidance into six areas of focus, called perspectives. Each perspective reflects a different stakeholder viewpoint with its own distinct responsibilities, skills, and attributes. The Security Perspective helps you structure the selection and implementation of security controls that meet your organization’s needs2.

On-Demand Instances are the default pricing model for Amazon EC2 instances. They allow users to pay for compute capacity by the second, with no long-term commitments or upfront payments. They are suitable for applications with short-term, irregular, or unpredictable workloads that cannot beinterrupted3. Savings Plans are a pricing model that offer significant savings on Amazon EC2 and AWS Fargate usage, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1-year or 3-year term. Spot Instances are a pricing model that offer spare Amazon EC2 compute capacity at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices, but they can be interrupted by AWS with a two-minute notice when the demand exceeds the supply. Reserved Instances are a pricing model that offer up to 75% discount compared to On-Demand prices, in exchange for a commitment to use a specific instance type and size in a specific region for a 1-year or 3-year term.

AWS Trusted Advisor is an online tool that provides you real time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices, including security and performance. It can help you monitor for misconfigured security groups that are allowing unrestricted access to specific ports. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that monitors your AWS resources and the applications you run on AWS. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for maliciousactivity and unauthorized behavior. AWS Health Dashboard provides relevant and timely information to help you manage events in progress, and provides proactive notification to help you plan for scheduled activities.

Amazon Cognito is a service that provides user authentication and authorization for web and mobile applications. You can use Amazon Cognito to enable users to sign in directly with a user name and password, or through a third-party provider, such as Facebook, Google, or Amazon. You can also use Amazon Cognito to manage user profiles, preferences, and security settings3

Amazon Lightsail is an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers you everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan. Whether you’re new to the cloud or looking to get on the cloud quickly with AWS infrastructure you trust, we’ve got you covered. Lightsail provides the simplest way for the company to establish a website on AWS.

Amazon Aurora is a fully managed MySQL-compatible database that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases. Amazon Aurora is part of the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) family, which means it inherits the benefits of a fully managed service, such as automated backups, patches, scaling, monitoring, and security. Amazon Aurora also offers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL, as well as high availability, durability, and fault tolerance with up to 15 read replicas, cross-Region replication, and self-healing storage. Amazon Aurora is compatible with the latest versions of MySQL, as well as PostgreSQL, and supports various features and integrations that enhance its functionality and usability123

 Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS, AWS — Amazon Aurora Overview

Network ACLs are a feature that provide a layer of security at the subnet level by acting as a firewall to control traffic in and out of one or more subnets. Network ACLs can be configured with rules that allow or deny traffic based on the source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols5. Security groups are a feature that provide a layer of security at the instance level by acting as a firewall to control traffic to and from one or more instances. Security groups can be configured with rules that allow or deny traffic based on the source and destination IP addresses, ports, protocols, and security groups. NAT gateways are a feature that enable instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but prevent the internet from initiating a connection with those instances. Route tables are a feature that determine where network traffic from a subnet or gateway is directed.

 This is a design principle of the operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Performing operations as code means using scripts, templates, or automation tools to perform routine tasks, such as provisioning, configuration, deployment, and monitoring. This reduces human error, increases consistency, and enables faster recovery from failures. You can learn more about the operational excellence pillar from this whitepaper or this digital course.

The approach that will achieve the goal of designing a reliable web application that is hosted on Amazon EC2 is to spread EC2 instances across more than one Availability Zone. An Availability Zone is a physically isolated location within an AWS Region that has its own power, cooling, and network connectivity. By spreading EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones, users can increase the fault tolerance and availability of their web applications, as well as reduce latency for end users2. Launching large EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone, spreading EC2 instances across more than one security group, or using an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from AWS Marketplace are not sufficient to ensure reliability, as they do not provide redundancy or resilience in case of an outage in one Availability Zone.

 The trade of infrastructure expenses for operating expenses is one of the benefits of the AWS Cloud. By moving to the AWS Cloud, the company can avoid the upfront costs of purchasing and maintaining on-premises infrastructure, such as servers, storage, network, and software. Instead, the company can pay only for the AWS resources and services that they use, as they use them. This reduces the risk and complexity of planning and managing IT infrastructure, and allows the company to focus on innovation and growth. Increased speed to market, massive economies of scale, and the ability to go global in minutes are also benefits of the AWS Cloud, but they are not the best ones to describe this scenario. Increased speed to market means that the company can launch new products and services faster by using AWS services and tools. Massive economies of scale means that the company can benefit from the lower costs and higher performance that AWS achieves by operating at a large scale. The ability to go global in minutes means that the company can deploy their applications and data in multiple regions and availability zones around the world to reach their customers faster and improve performance and reliability5

Amazon EC2 is an AWS service that provides scalable, secure, and resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon EC2 allows customers to launch and manage virtual servers, called instances, that run a variety of operating systems and applications. Customers have full control over the configuration and management of their instances, including the guest operating system. Therefore, customers are responsible for updating and patching the guest operating system on their EC2 instances, as well as any other software or utilities installed on the instances. AWS provides tools and services, such as AWS Systems Manager and AWS OpsWorks, to help customers automate and simplify the patching process. References: Shared Responsibility Model, Shared responsibility model, [Amazon EC2]

 Amazon Cognito is a service that provides identity management for mobile and web applications, allowing users to sign up, sign in, and access AWS resources with different identity providers. AWS Security Hub is a service that provides a comprehensive view of the security posture of AWS accounts and resources. AWS Shield is a service that provides protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits.

 AWS Personal Health Dashboard and AWS Service Health Dashboard are two AWS services that can help the company to verify that underlying AWS services and general AWS infrastructure are operating normally. AWS Personal Health Dashboard provides a personalized view into the performance and availability of the AWS services you are using, as well as alerts that are automatically triggered by changes in the health of those services. In addition to event-based alerts, Personal Health Dashboard provides proactive notifications of scheduled activities, such as any changes to the infrastructure powering your resources, enabling you to better plan for events that may affect you. These notifications can be delivered to you via email or mobile for quick visibility, and can always be viewed from within the AWS Management Console. When you get an alert, it includes detailed information and guidance, enabling you to take immediate action to address AWS events impacting your resources3. AWS Service Health Dashboard provides a general status of AWS services, and the Service health view displays the current and historical status of all AWS services. This page shows reported service events for services across AWS Regions. You don’t need to sign in or have an AWS account to access the AWS Service Health Dashboard – Service health page. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds for specific services or regions to receive notifications about service events4. References: Gettingstarted with your AWS Health Dashboard – Your account health, Introducing AWS Personal Health Dashboard

 Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store and cache service that delivers sub-millisecond response times to applications. You can use ElastiCache as a primary data store for your applications, or as a cache to improve the performance of your existing databases. ElastiCache supports two popular open-source in-memory engines: Redis and Memcached5.

Amazon Personalize is a service that provides real-time personalized recommendations based on the user’s behavior, preferences, and context. It can also incorporate metadata such as product color and brand to generate more relevant recommendations. Amazon Comprehend is a natural language processing (NLP) service that can analyze text for entities, sentiments, topics, and more. Amazon Forecast is a service that provides accurate time-series forecasting based on machine learning. Amazon SageMaker Studio is a web-based integrated development environment (IDE) for machine learning.

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database service that can deliver consistent, single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. DynamoDB can automatically scale throughput capacity to meet the demands of the database workload, without requiring any manual intervention. DynamoDB is ideal for NoSQL applications that need high performance, availability, and scalability. DynamoDB also offers features such as encryption at rest, point-in-time recovery, global tables, and in-memory caching. References: What is NoSQL?, Amazon DynamoDB, [AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials: Module 4 - Databases in the Cloud]