CLF-C02 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Questions and Answers

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.

Enforcing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for privileged users enhances account security by requiring a second form of authentication. It reduces the risk of unauthorized access, even if credentials are compromised. Removing the root account is not possible, and creating access keys for the root account or privileged users can increase security risks rather than reduce them.

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated private network connection from on-premises data centers directly to the AWS Cloud, bypassing the public internet. This setup is ideal for reducing network costs, increasing bandwidth throughput, and providing a more consistent network experience compared to standard internet connections. Other services, such as Amazon VPC, relate to networking but do not establish a private network connection from on-premises to AWS.

Amazon Personalize is an AWS service that helps developers quickly build and deploy a custom recommendation engine with real-time personalization and user segmentation1. It uses machine learning (ML) to analyze customer data and provide relevant recommendations based on their preferences, behavior, and context.Amazon Personalize can be used for various use cases such as optimizing recommendations, targeting customers more accurately, maximizing the value of unstructured text, and promoting items using business rules1.

The other options are not suitable for providing product recommendations based on customer data. Amazon Polly is a service that converts text into lifelike speech. Amazon Comprehend is a service that uses natural language processing (NLP) toextract insights from text and documents. Amazon Rekognition is a service that uses computer vision (CV) to analyze images and videos for faces, objects, scenes, and activities.

1: Cloud Products - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

2: Recommender System – Amazon Personalize – Amazon Web Services

3: Top 25 AWS Services List 2023 - GeeksforGeeks

4: AWS to Azure services comparison - Azure Architecture Center

5: The 25+ Best AWS Cost Optimization Tools (Updated 2023) - CloudZero

6: Amazon Polly – Text-to-Speech Service - AWS

7: Natural Language Processing - Amazon Comprehend - AWS

8: Image and Video Analysis - Amazon Rekognition - AWS

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.

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.

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.

AWS Storage Gateway provides on-premises applications with low-latency access to data stored in AWS by caching frequently accessed data locally. It seamlessly integrates on-premises environments with cloud storage, enabling hybrid storage solutions. AWS DataSync is for data transfer, CloudFront is a content delivery network, and AWS Backup is for backup management, not low-latency access.

Service control policies (SCPs) are a type of organization policy that you can use to manage permissions in your organization. SCPs offer central control over the maximum available permissions for all accounts in your organization, allowing you to ensure your accounts stay within your organization’s access control guidelines2. SCPs are available only in an organization that has all features enabled2.

Cost Explorer enables visualization and analysis of AWS costs and usage over specific time periods. It provides detailed reports, trends, and forecasts for cost management. Consolidated billing and AWS Organizations are useful for billing management across accounts, while AWS Budgets helps set spending thresholds but does not provide visualization tools for cost and usage.

The reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework emphasizes building systems that can recover from failures and dynamically adjust to meet demand. This includes designing to automatically recover from failures and implementing mechanisms to manage capacity demands, avoiding manual guesswork. The other options do not align with core reliability principles, as operating in a single Availability Zone or preemptively adjusting quotas in a secondary region does not inherently improve reliability.

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.

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.

The AWS Architecture Center provides examples, best practices, and architectural blueprints for various AWS Cloud solutions. It includes whitepapers, reference architectures, and detailed diagrams to help users design secure, scalable, and reliable applications on AWS. Other services like AWS Marketplace, Service Catalog, and Trusted Advisor do not offer solution design examples.

The AWS Management Console provides a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to manage AWS services. It is user-friendly and accessible, enabling users to control and configure resources without needing to interact with AWS through code or command-line interfaces. AWS CLI and SDKs are command-line and programming tools, respectively, and do not offer a graphical interface.

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) Overview:

ACM simplifies the process of provisioning, managing, and deploying SSL/TLS certificates.

These certificates are used to secure HTTPS connections, ensuring encrypted communication between clients and servers.

How ACM Meets the Goal:

Provides free public SSL/TLS certificates.

Automates certificate renewals and deployment with services like Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon CloudFront.

Reduces the operational overhead of managing SSL/TLS certificates.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. AWS WAF:Focuses on application-layer protection (e.g., SQL injection, cross-site scripting) but does not handle SSL/TLS encryption.

B. AWS Shield:Provides protection against DDoS attacks, not encryption.

C. Amazon VPC:Used for networking and security at the infrastructure level but does not manage SSL/TLS certificates.

Compute Savings Plans are a flexible and cost-effective way to optimize long-term compute costs of AWS Lambda functions and Amazon EC2 instances. With Compute Savings Plans, customers can commit to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1-year or 3-year termand receive a discount of up to 66% compared to On-Demand prices3. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to the customer’s use. They are suitable for customers who have specific server-bound software licenses or compliance requirements4. Reserved Instances are a pricing model that provides a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand pricing and a capacity reservation for EC2 instances. They are available in 1-year or 3-year terms and different payment options5. Spot Instances are spare EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. They are suitable for customers who have flexible start and end times, can withstand interruptions, and can handle excess capacity.

Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) allows users to respond to changes in the state of AWS resources. It can be configured to invoke an AWS Lambda function when an EC2 instance enters the “stopping” state, providing a serverless way to automate responses to changes in EC2 instance states. AWS Config, SNS, and CloudFormation do not provide direct triggering for specific instance state changes.

AWS Snowball Edge is designed for large-scale data transfer tasks, allowing companies to transport significant amounts of data (up to petabytes) from their data centers to AWS without relying on the internet. With the ability to transfer 100 TB of data securely and efficiently, Snowball Edge is the ideal choice for this use case. AWS Snowcone is for smaller transfers, and AWS Data Exchange and DataSync are not designed for physical data transport.

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.

TheRehostmigration strategy, often referred to as “lift-and-shift,” involves moving applications to the cloud with minimal or no modifications. This approach is suitable when a company wants to migrate legacy workloads to AWS without altering them. Other strategies, such asRepurchase,Replatform, andRefactor, involve making changes to the application or adopting different services, which is not aligned with the requirement to avoid modifications.

Using multiple Availability Zones within the same AWS Region meets the requirements for having instances in different locations with independent power and networking. Availability Zones are distinct physical locations within a region, each with separate power sources and networking. Edge locations are used for content delivery, and Amazon Connect and AWS Artifact locations are not relevant to EC2 deployment and infrastructure.

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect applications from SQL injection attacks and other common web exploits. By defining rules to block, allow, or monitor specific types of requests, AWS WAF provides an effective defense against SQL injection. Network ACLs and Security Groups provide network-level security but do not inspect web traffic for specific attack patterns like SQL injection.

AWS WAF Overview:

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) allows users to create rules to block or allow traffic based on IP addresses, request patterns, and other conditions.

It is ideal for blocking traffic from a specific IP address.

Why AWS WAF Meets the Requirement:

The company can create a WAF rule to block traffic from the malicious IP address.

WAF integrates with services like Amazon CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, and API Gateway.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. AWS Shield:Protects against DDoS attacks but does not allow custom IP blocking.

B. AWS Config:Monitors resource configurations but does not block IPs.

C. Amazon GuardDuty:Detects threats but does not block traffic directly.

AWS Budgets allows organizations to set custom cost and usage budgets and receive notifications when they exceed predefined thresholds. This feature helps the finance department monitor spending and manage budget forecasts effectively. AWS Cost and Usage Reports and Cost Explorer provide detailed billing data but do not include budget notifications. Consolidated billing in AWS Organizations is useful for aggregating billing across accounts but does not provide budget alerts.

A benefit of decoupling an AWS Cloud architecture is the ability to upgrade components independently. Decoupling is a way of designing systems to reduce interdependencies and minimize the impact of changes. Decoupling allows components to interact with each other through well-defined interfaces, rather than direct references. This reduces the risk of failures and errors propagating across the system, and enables greater scalability, availability, and maintainability. By decoupling an AWS Cloud architecture, the user can upgrade or modify one component without affecting the other components5.

AWS DataSync is designed for large-scale data transfers, especially involving large datasets with millions of files from on-premises to AWS. It provides fast and efficient transfer capabilities, and supports a one-time migration. AWS DMS is specific to databases, while Migration Hub is for tracking migrations, and Application Migration Service is for continuous replication rather than one-time file migrations.

AWS IAM Identity Center provides centralized access management across multiple AWS accounts, enabling organizations to manage employee access efficiently. It is specifically designed for this purpose within AWS Organizations. AWS STS provides temporary credentials but does not manage multiple account access centrally, while IAM Access Analyzer and Secrets Manager serve different purposes related to access and secret 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.

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.

AWS Organizations enables consolidated billing across multiple AWS accounts and allows for centralized management of security and compliance policies. It provides account grouping and centralized payment management, making it the optimal choice for a company requiring consolidated billing and centralized governance. AWS Cost and Usage Report only provides billing information, and AWS Config and Security Hub offer monitoring and security insights but do not handle billing consolidation.

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.

Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, AWS manages the securityofthe cloud, while customers manage securityinthe cloud. For EC2 instances, it is the customer’s responsibility to manage the guestoperating system, including patching and encrypting data stored on attached storage volumes. AWS is responsible for the underlying infrastructure, including physical security and hypervisor maintenance.

AWS WAF is the AWS service that the company should use to configure rules to identify threats and protect applications from malicious network access. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps to filter, monitor, and block malicious web requests based on customizable rules. AWS WAF can be integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon API Gateway, and Application Load Balancer. For more information, see What is AWS WAF? and How AWS WAF Works.

 AWS Organizations helps to centrally manage billing and allow controlled access to resources across AWS accounts. AWS Organizations is a service that enables the user to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that can be managed as a single unit. AWS Organizations allows the user to create groups of accounts and apply policies to them, such as service control policies (SCPs) that specify the services and actions that users and roles can access in the accounts. AWS Organizations also enables the user to use consolidated billing, which combines the usage and charges from all the accounts in the organization into a single bill.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is the AWS service or feature that is used to send both text and email messages from distributed applications. Amazon SNS is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables the user to send messages to multiple subscribers or endpoints, such as email addresses, phone numbers, HTTP endpoints, AWS Lambda functions, and more. Amazon SNS can be used to send notifications, alerts, confirmations, and reminders from applications to users or other applications4.

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.

 Pay-as-you-go pricing is the feature of the AWS Cloud that gives users the ability to pay based on current needs rather than forecasted needs. Pay-as-you-go pricing means that users only pay for theAWS services and resources they use, without any upfront or long-term commitments. This allows users to scale up or down their usage depending on their changing business requirements, and avoid paying for idle or unused capacity. Pay-as-you-go pricing also enables users to benefit from the economies of scale and lower costs of AWS as they grow their business5

Amazon Workspaces is the AWS service that provides the functionality of remotely accessing virtual desktop computers from the internet. Amazon Workspaces is a fully managed, secure desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution that allows users to provision cloud-based virtual desktops and access them from anywhere, using any supported device. Amazon Workspaces helps users reduce the complexity and cost of managing and maintaining physical desktops, and provides a consistent and secure user experience

 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.

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

The user authentication services managed by AWS are: Amazon Cognito and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). These services help users securely manage and control access to their AWS resources and applications. Amazon Cognito is a service that provides user sign-up, sign-in, and access control for web and mobile applications. Amazon Cognito supports various identity providers, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, as well as custom user pools. AWS IAM is a service that enables users to create and manage users, groups, roles, and permissions for AWS services and resources. AWS IAM supports various authentication methods, such as passwords, access keys, and multi-factorauthentication (MFA)

 Global reach is the benefit of AWS Cloud computing that provides lower latency between users and applications. Global reach 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. AWS has the largest global infrastructure of any cloud provider, with 25 geographic regions and 81 Availability Zones, as well as 216 Points of Presence in 84 cities across 42 countries. Customers can choose the optimal locations for their applications and data based on their business requirements, such as compliance, data sovereignty, and customer proximity. Agility, economies of scale, and pay-as-you-go pricing are other benefits of AWS Cloud computing, but they do not directly provide lower latency between users and applications. Agility means that AWS customers can quickly and easily provision and scale up or down AWS resources as needed, without upfront costs or long-term commitments. Economies of scale means that AWS customers can benefit from the lower costs and higher efficiency that AWS achieves by operating at a massive scale and passing the savings to the customers. Pay-as-you-go pricing means that AWS customers only pay for the AWS resources they use, without any upfront costs or long-term contracts.

 Amazon Personalize is a fully managed machine learning service that customers can use to generate personalized recommendations for their users. It can also generate user segments based on the users’ affinity for certain items or item metadata. Amazon Personalize uses the customers’ data to train and deploy custom recommendation models that can be integrated into their applications. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about Amazon Personalize and its use case.

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

The AWS services and features that are provided to all customers at no charge are VPC and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). VPC is a service that allows you to launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you define. You can create and use a VPC at no additional charge, and you only pay for the resources that you launch in the VPC, such as EC2 instances or EBSvolumes. IAM is a service that allows you to manage access and permissions to AWS resources. You can create and use IAM users, groups, roles, and policies at no additional charge, and you only pay for the AWS resources that the IAM entities access. Amazon Aurora, Amazon SageMaker, andAmazon Polly are not free services, and they charge based on the usage and features that you choose5

Deploying the application by using multiple Availability Zones is the best way to increase resilience for the application. According to the Amazon RDS User Guide, "Amazon RDS provides high availability and failover support for DB instances using Multi-AZ deployments. In a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. The primary DB instance is synchronously replicated across Availability Zones to a standby replica to provide data redundancy, eliminate I/O freezes, and minimize latency spikes during system backups."4 Deploying a copy of the application in another AWS account, using multiple VPCs, or using multiple subnets do not provide the same level of resilience as using multiple Availability Zones.

Customers share responsibility with AWS for security and compliance of AWS accounts and resources. This is part of the AWS shared responsibility model, which 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 physical and environmental controls of the AWS global infrastructure, such as power, cooling, fire suppression, and physical access. The customer is responsible for the security in the cloud, which includes the configuration and management of the AWS resources and applications, such as identity and access management, encryption, firewall, and backup. For more information, see AWS Shared Responsibility Model and AWS Cloud Security.

 AWS Enterprise Support is the AWS Support plan that includes an AWS concierge whom the company can ask for assistance. According to the AWS Support Plans page, AWS Enterprise Support provides "a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) who provides advocacy and guidance to help plan and build solutions using best practices, coordinate access to subject matter experts, and proactively keep your AWS environment operationally healthy."2 AWS Business Support, AWS Developer Support, and AWS Basic Support do not include a TAM or a concierge service.

 Cost Explorer is an AWS service or tool that can be used to forecast AWS spending. It allows users to analyze their AWS costs and usage using interactive graphs and tables. It also provides features such as filtering, grouping, and forecasting to help users plan their future spending. Amazon DevPay is an AWS service that allows developers to sell applications that are built on AWS services. It handles the billing and metering for the customers of the applications and collects payments from them. It is not a tool for forecasting AWS spending. AWS Organizations is an AWS service that allows users to centrally manage and govern their AWS accounts. It provides features such as creating groups of accounts, applying policies, and automating account creation. It is not a tool for forecasting AWS spending. AWS Trusted Advisor is an AWS service that provides best practices and recommendations to optimize the performance, security, and cost of AWS resources. It can helpusers identify opportunities to reduce their AWS costs, but it is not a tool for forecasting AWS spending

The pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that is supported by the goals of protecting AWS Cloud information, systems, and assets while performing risk assessment and mitigation tasks is security. Security is the ability to protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies. The security pillar covers topics such as identity and access management, data protection, infrastructure protection, detective controls, incident response, and compliance

 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

 AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second. You pay only for the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running. With AWS Lambda, you can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service - all with zero administration. AWS Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, code monitoring and logging

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.

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.

 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.

 Access to all AWS resources will be denied if a newly created IAM user has no IAM policy attached and logs in and attempts to view the AWS resources in the account. IAM policies are the way to grant permissions to IAM users, groups, and roles to access and manage AWS resources. By default, IAM users have no permissions, unless they are explicitly granted by an IAM policy. Therefore, a newly created IAM user without any IAM policy attached will not be able to view or perform anyactions on the AWS resources in the account. Access to the AWS billing services and AWS CLI will also be denied, unless the user has the necessary permissions.

 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 answers are B and E because AWS Online Tech Talks and AWS Classroom Training are options that AWS makes available for customers who want to learn about security in the cloud in an instructor-led setting. AWS Online Tech Talks are live, online presentations that cover a broad range of topics at varying technical levels. AWS Online Tech Talks are delivered by AWS experts and feature live Q&A sessions with the audience. AWS Classroom Training are in-person or virtual courses that are led by accredited AWS instructors. AWS Classroom Training offer hands-on labs, exercises, and best practices to help customers gain confidence and skills on AWS. The other options are incorrect because they are not options that AWS makes available for customers who want to learn about security in the cloud in an instructor-led setting. AWS Trusted Advisor is an AWS service that provides real-time guidance to help customers follow AWS best practices for security, performance, cost optimization, and fault tolerance. AWS Blog is an AWS resource that provides news, announcements, and insights from AWS experts and customers. AWS Forums are AWS resources that enable customers to interact with other AWS users and get feedback and support. Reference: AWS Online Tech Talks, AWS Classroom Training

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 Abuse team is the AWS group or team that the company should notify if it suspects that its AWS resources are being used for illegal activities. AWS Abuse team is a dedicated team that handles reports of abuse, such as spam, phishing, malware, denial-of-service attacks, and unauthorized access, involving AWS resources. The company can contact the AWS Abuse team byfilling out the [Report Abuse of AWS Resources form] or sending an email to abuse@amazonaws.com. The company should provide as much information as possible, such as the source and destination IP addresses, timestamps, log files, and screenshots, to help the AWS Abuse team investigate and take appropriate actions. For more information, see [Reporting Abuse] and [AWS Acceptable Use Policy].

Security of the cloud refers to the security of the cloud infrastructure that runs all the AWS services. This includes the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that AWS operates and manages. AWS is responsible for protecting the security of the cloud as part of the AWS shared responsibility model. Availability of AWS services such as Amazon EC2 refers to the ability of the services to be up and running and to meet the expected performance. Availability is part of the reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework and is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer . Implementation of password policies for IAM users refers to the security of the customer data and applications in the cloud. This includes the configuration and management of IAM user permissions, encryption keys, security group rules, network ACLs, and other aspects of access management. The customer is responsible for protecting the security in the cloud as part of the AWS shared responsibility model. Security of customer environments by using AWS Network Firewall partners refers to the security of the customer data and applications in the cloud. AWS Network Firewall is a managed service that provides network protection for Amazon VPCs. It allows customers to use AWS Marketplace partners to implement firewall rules and policies. The customer is responsible for protecting the security in the cloud as part of the AWS shared responsibility model .

 The ability to deploy to AWS on a global scale is a cloud benefit that AWS offers to its users. AWS has a global infrastructure that consists of AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations. Users can choose from multiple AWS Regions around the world to deploy their applications and data closer to their end users, while also meeting their compliance and regulatory requirements. Users can also leverage AWS services, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the performance and availability of their global applications. AWS also provides tools and guidance to help users optimize their global deployments, such as AWS Well-Architected Framework, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS Migration Hub. AWS Global Infrastructure [AWS Cloud Value Framework] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS Systems Manager is a service that enables users to centralize and automate the management of their AWS resources. It provides a unified user interface to view operational data, such as inventory, patch compliance, and performance metrics. It also allows users to automate common and repetitive tasks, such as patching, backup, and configuration management, across all of their Amazon EC2 instances1. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides best practices and recommendations to optimize the performance, security, and cost of AWS resources2. AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates the deployment of code and applications to Amazon EC2 instances or other compute services3. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a service that simplifies the deployment andmanagement of web applications using popular platforms, such as Java, PHP, and Node.js4.

 Amazon Redshift Serverless is the AWS service that will meet the requirements of the company that wants to move its data warehouse application to the AWS Cloud and run and scale its analyticsservices without needing to provision and manage data warehouse clusters. Amazon Redshift Serverless is a new feature of Amazon Redshift, which is a fully managed data warehouse service that allows customers to run complex queries and analytics on large volumes of structured and semi-structured data. Amazon Redshift Serverless automatically scales the compute and storage resources based on the workload demand, and customers only pay for the resources they consume. Amazon Redshift Serverless also simplifies the management and maintenance of the data warehouse, as customers do not need to worry about choosing the right cluster size, resizing the cluster, or distributing the data across the nodes. Amazon Redshift provisioned data warehouse, Amazon Athena, and Amazon S3 are not the best services to meet the requirements of the company. Amazon Redshift provisioned data warehouse requires customers to choose the number and type of nodes for their cluster, and manually resize the cluster if their workload changes. Amazon Athena is a serverless query service that allows customers to analyze data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL, but it is not a data warehouse service that can store and organize the data. Amazon S3 is a scalable object storage service that can store any amount and type of data, but it is not a data warehouse service that can run complex queries and analytics on the data.

 The correct answer is B because security groups are AWS features that act as instance-level firewalls to control inbound and outbound access. Security groups are virtual firewalls that can be attached to one or more Amazon EC2 instances. Users can configure rules for security groups to allow or deny traffic based on protocols, ports, and source or destination IP addresses. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS features that act as instance-level firewalls to control inbound and outbound access. Network access control list is an AWS feature that acts as a subnet-level firewall to control inbound and outbound access. 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. Virtual private gateways are AWS features that enable users to create a secure and encrypted connection between their VPC and their on-premises network. Reference: Security Groups for Your VPC

 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.

 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

The correct answers to the questions are B and E because reliability and operational excellence are pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. 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 AWS Well-Architected Framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. Each pillar has a set of design principles that describe the characteristics of a well-architected system. Reliability is the pillar that focuses on the ability of a system to recover from failures and meet business and customer demand. Operational excellence is the pillar that focuses on the ability of a system to run and monitor processes that support business outcomes and continually improve. The other options are incorrect because they are not pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Availability, scalability, and responsive design are important aspects of cloud architecture, but they are not separate pillars in the framework. Availability and scalability are related to the reliability and performance efficiency pillars, while responsive design is related to the customer experience and user interface. Reference: AWS Well-Architected Framework

Outbound data transfers without acceleration and compute resources that are currently in use are the factors that affect costs in the AWS Cloud. Outbound data transfers without acceleration refer to the amount of data that is transferred from AWS to the internet, without using any service that can optimize the speed and cost of the data transfer, such as AWS Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFront. Outbound data transfers are charged at different rates depending on the source and destination AWS Regions, and the volume of data transferred. Compute resources that are currently in use refer to the AWS services and resources that provide computing capacity, such as Amazon EC2 instances, AWS Lambda functions, or Amazon ECS tasks. Compute resources are charged based on the type, size, and configuration of the resources, and the duration and frequency of their usage.

Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an AWS Region that are engineered to be isolated from failures. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security, and is connected to other Availability Zones in the same Region by a low-latency network. Therefore, the correct answers are A and D. You can learn more about Availability Zones and their characteristics

Cost optimization is the pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that focuses on the return on investment of moving into the AWS Cloud. Cost optimization means that users can achieve the desired business outcomes at the lowest possible price point, while maintaining high performance and reliability. Cost optimization can be achieved by using various AWS features and best practices, such as pay-as-you-go pricing, right-sizing, elasticity, reserved instances, spot instances, cost allocation tags, cost and usage reports, and AWS Trusted Advisor. [AWS Well-Architected Framework] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

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

 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.

The correct answer is B because Amazon ElastiCache is a service that provides in-memory data storage. Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed, scalable, and high-performance service that supports two popular open-source in-memory engines: Redis and Memcached. Amazon ElastiCache allows users to store and retrieve data from fast, low-latency, and high-throughput in-memory systems. Users can use Amazon ElastiCache to improve the performance of their applications by caching frequently accessed data, reducing database load, and enabling real-time data processing. The other options are incorrect because they are not services that provide in-memory data storage. Amazon DynamoDB is a service that provides key-value and document data storage. Amazon RDS is a service that provides relational data storage. Amazon Timestream is a service that provides time series data storage. Reference: Amazon ElastiCache FAQs

Reliability is the benefit of AWS Cloud computing that ensures the workload performs consistently and correctly. According to the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course, reliability means "theability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues."1 Elasticity, security, and pay-as-you-go pricing are also benefits of AWS Cloud computing, but they do not directly relate to the goal of consistent and correct performance.

 The most cost-effective EC2 instance purchasing option for the company that needs to host a web server on Amazon EC2 instances for at least 1 year and cannot tolerate interruption is Partial Upfront Reserved Instances. Reserved Instances are a pricing model that offer significant discounts compared to On-Demand Instances in exchange for a commitment to use a specific amount of compute capacity for a fixed period of time (1 or 3 years). Partial Upfront Reserved Instances require customers to pay a portion of the total cost upfront, and the remaining cost in monthly installments over the term. This option offers a lower effective hourly rate than No Upfront Reserved Instances, which require no upfront payment but have higher monthly payments. On-Demand Instances and Spot Instances are not the best options for the company. On-Demand Instances are a pricing model that offer the most flexibility and no long-term commitment, but have the highest hourly rate. Spot Instances are a pricing model that offer the lowest cost, but are subject to interruption based on supply and demand34

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.

 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.

 The services that can be used to deploy applications on AWS are:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk. This is a service that simplifies the deployment and management of web applications on AWS. Users can upload their application code and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the provisioning, scaling, load balancing, monitoring, and health checking of the resources needed to run the application. Users can also retain full control and access to the underlying resources and customize their configuration settings. Elastic Beanstalk supports multiple platforms, such as Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker. [AWS Elastic Beanstalk Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS OpsWorks. This is a service that provides configuration management and automation for AWS resources. Users can define the application architecture and the configuration of each resource using Chef or Puppet, which are popular open-source automation platforms. OpsWorks then automatically creates and configures the resources according to the user’s specifications. OpsWorks also provides features such as auto scaling, monitoring, and integration with other AWS services. OpsWorks has two offerings: OpsWorks for Chef Automate and OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise. [AWS OpsWorks Overview] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - aws.amazon.com

AWS Storage Gateway file gateway allows companies to use protocols such as NFS and SMB to store and retrieve objects in Amazon S3. File gateway provides a seamless integration between on-premises applications and Amazon S3, and enables low-latency access to data through local caching. File gateway also supports encryption, compression, and lifecycle management of the objects in Amazon S3. For more information, see What is AWS Storage Gateway? and File Gateway.

 The correct answers are C and D because S3 bucket policies and IAM user policies are AWS features that will meet the requirements. S3 bucket policies are access policies that can be attached to Amazon S3 buckets to grant or deny permissions to the bucket and the objects it contains. S3 bucket policies can be used to control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. IAM user policies are access policies that can be attached to IAM users to grant or deny permissions to AWS resources and actions. IAM user policies can be used to control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS features that will meet the requirements. Security groups and network ACLs are AWS features that act as firewalls to control inbound and outbound traffic to and from Amazon EC2 instances and subnets. Security groups andnetwork ACLs do not control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. S3 bucket versioning is an AWS feature that enables users to keep multiple versions of the same object in the same bucket. S3 bucket versioning can be used to recover from accidental overwrites or deletions of objects, but it does not control who has permission to read, write, or delete objects that the company stores in the S3 bucket. Reference: Using Bucket Policies and User Policies, Security Groups for Your VPC, Network ACLs, [Using Versioning]

 The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices and guidelines for designing and operating systems in the cloud. The framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. The concept of elasticity represents a system’s ability to adapt to changes in demand by scaling resources up or down automatically. Therefore, the correct answer is B. You can learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Framework and its pillars

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is a service or tool that helps users migrate their applications to the AWS Cloud. It provides guidance and best practices to identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness. It also helps users align their business and technical perspectives, create an actionable roadmap, and measure their progress. AWS Managed Services (AMS) is a service that provides operational services for AWS infrastructure and applications. It helps users reduce their operational overhead and risk, and focuson their core business. It does not help users identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness. AWS Well-Architected Framework is a tool that helps users design and implement secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient solutions on AWS. It provides a set of questions and best practices across five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. It does not help users identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness. AWS Migration Hub is a service that provides a single location to track and manage the migration of applications to AWS. It helps users discover their on-premises servers, group them into applications, and choose the right migration tools. It does not help users identify and prioritize any business transformation opportunities and evaluate their AWS Cloud readiness.

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.

Reliability is the cloud concept that this architecture represents. Reliability is the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues. Deploying an application to multiple AWS Regions and configuring automatic failoverbetween those Regions enhances the reliability of the application by reducing the impact of regional failures and increasing the availability of the application4

 The correct answer is C because AWS CloudHSM is an AWS service that enables the security engineer to meet the requirements. AWS CloudHSM is a service that provides customers with dedicated hardware security modules (HSMs) to create, control, and manage their own cryptographic keys in the AWS Cloud. AWS CloudHSM allows customers to meet strict regulatory compliance requirements for data security, such as FIPS 140-2 Level 3, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that enable the security engineer to meet the requirements. AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) is a service that provides customers with a fully managed, scalable, and integrated key management system to create and control encryption keys for AWS services and applications. AWS KMS does not provide customers with single-tenant or dedicated HSMs. AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) is a service that provides customers with a simple and secure way to provision, manage, and deploy public and private Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates for use with AWS services and internal connected resources. ACM does not provide customers with HSMs or cryptographic keys. AWS Systems Manager is a service that provides customers with a unified user interface to view operational data from multiple AWS services and automate operational tasks across their AWS resources. AWS Systems Manager does not provide customers with HSMs or cryptographic keys. Reference: AWS CloudHSM FAQs

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 Config and service control policies (SCPs) are AWS services or features that the company can use to create and define controls (guardrails) in a newly created AWS Control Tower landing zone. AWS Config is a service that enables users to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of their AWS resources. It can be used to create rules that check for compliance with the desired configurations and report any deviations. AWS Control Tower provides a set of predefined AWS Config rules that can be enabled as guardrails to enforce compliance across the landing zone1. Service control policies (SCPs) are a type of policy that can be used to manage permissions in AWS Organizations. They can be used to restrict the actions that the users and roles in the member accounts can perform on the AWS resources. AWS Control Tower provides a set of predefined SCPsthat can be enabled as guardrails to prevent access to certain services or regions across the landing zone2. Amazon GuardDuty is a service that provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for AWS accounts and resources. It is not a feature that can be used to create and define controls (guardrails) in a landing zone. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that allows users to manage access to AWS resources and services. It can be used to create users, groups, roles, and policies that control who can do what in AWS. It is not a feature that can be used to create and define controls (guardrails) in a landing zone. Security groups are virtual firewalls that control the inbound and outbound traffic for Amazon EC2 instances. They can be used to allow or deny access to an EC2 instance based on the port, protocol, and source or destination. They are not a feature that can be used to create and define controls (guardrails) in a landing zone.

 The correct answer is B because AWS CloudTrail is an AWS service that a cloud engineer can use to view API calls to AWS services. AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables customers to track user activity and API usage across their AWS account. AWS CloudTrail records the details of every API call made to AWS services, such as the identity of the caller, the time of the call, the source IP address of the caller, the parameters and responses of the call, and more. Customers can use AWS CloudTrail to audit, monitor, and troubleshoot their AWS resources and actions. The other options are incorrect because they are not AWS services that a cloud engineer can use to view API calls to AWS services. Amazon CloudWatch is an AWS service that enables customers to collect, analyze, and visualize metrics, logs, and events from their AWS resources and applications. AWS Config is an AWS service that enables customers to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of their AWS resources. AWS Artifact is an AWS service that provides customers with on-demand access to AWS compliance reports and select online agreements. Reference: AWS CloudTrail FAQs

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

The correct answers are D and E because AWS offers high availability and AWS provides economies of scale are benefits that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. High availability means that AWS has a global infrastructure that allows customers to deploy their applications and data across multiple regions and availability zones. This increases the fault tolerance and resilience of their applications and reduces the impact of failures. Economies of scale means that AWS can achieve lower variable costs than customers can get on their own. This allows customers to pay only for the resources they use and scale up or down as needed. The other options are incorrect because they are not benefits that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS trains the company’s staff on the use of all the AWS services is not a benefit that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS does provide various learning resources and training courses for customers, but it does nottrain the company’s staff on the use of all the AWS services. AWS manages all security in the cloud is not a benefit that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, but the customer is responsible for the security in the cloud. AWS offers free support from technical account managers (TAMs) is not a benefit that a company receives when it moves an on-premises production workload to AWS. AWS does offer support from TAMs, but only for customers who have the AWS Enterprise Support plan, which is not free. Reference: What is Cloud Computing?, [AWS Shared Responsibility Model], [AWS Support Plans]

The AWS Support plan that provides the full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks at the lowest cost is theAWS Business Supportplan. The AWS Business Support plan includes access to the complete set of Trusted Advisor checks, which cover areas such as cost optimization, security, performance, fault tolerance, and service limits. This plan is specifically designed to support production workloads and includes 24/7 access to cloud support engineers, response times for impaired systems, and other enhanced technical support features.

AWS Developer Support, while more affordable, only provides limited Trusted Advisor checks, specifically around Service Limits and basic Security checks. Full access to all Trusted Advisor checks is only available with Business Support and higher-tier plans, such as Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise Support

The statement that is true regarding pricing for these eight instances is: four instances will be charged as RIs, and four will be charged as regular instances. Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs) are a pricing model that allows users to reserve EC2 instances for a specific term and benefit from discounted hourly rates and capacity reservation. RIs are purchased for a specific AWS Region, and can be shared across multiple accounts in an organization in AWS Organizations for consolidated billing. However, RIs are applied on a first-come, first-served basis, and there is no guarantee that all instances in the organization will be charged at the RI rate. In this case, Account A has purchased five RIs and has four instances running, so all four instances will be charged at the RI rate. Account B has not purchased any RIs and also has four instances running, so all four instances will be charged at the regular rate. The remaining RI in Account A will not be applied to any instance in Account B, and will be wasted.

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.

 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.

AWS Direct Connectis a cloud service solution that makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS. This requires the use of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a colocation facility to connect to the Direct Connect location. It provides a private, high-speed, low-latency connection that does not go over the public internet.

A. AWS VPN: Incorrect, as AWS VPN establishes secure connections over the internet and does not necessarily require a colocation facility.

B. Amazon Connect: Incorrect, as it is a cloud-based contact center service.

D. Internet Gateway: Incorrect, as it is a horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC component that allows communication between instances in your VPC and the internet.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Direct Connect

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

 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.

On-Demand Instances are the most flexible and cost-effective pricing model for short-term, experimental, or unpredictable workloads on AWS. On-Demand Instances let you pay only for the resources you use, without any long-term commitments or upfront fees. You can easily start and stop instances as needed, and scale up or down depending on your demand.

Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and Dedicated Hosts are all pricing models that require a commitment for a certain amount of usage or capacity for a one- or three-year term. These pricing models offer lower prices than On-Demand Instances, but they are not suitable for workloads that only run for 3 to 6 months or have variable usage patterns. Savings Plans and Reserved Instances also offer flexibility to change instance types, sizes, or regions within the same family or pool, while Dedicated Hosts are physical servers that can only run specific instance types.

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.

AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can use Lambda to process event notifications from Amazon S3 when objects are uploaded or deleted. Lambda integrates directly with the event notification and invokes your code automatically. Therefore, the correct answer is A. 

Elasticity is a characteristic of the AWS Cloud that helps users eliminate underutilized CPU capacity. Elasticity refers to the ability to dynamically provision and de-provision computing resources as per demand, ensuring that the application or service always has the required resources to operate efficiently. Elasticity helps users optimize performance and costs, as theyonly pay for the resources they use and avoid wasting resources when the demand is low345. References: 3: Which characteristic of the aws cloud helps users eliminate …, 4: AWS Elastic Load Balancing and Application Load Balancer, 5: Which characteristic of the AWS Cloud helps users eliminate …

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

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 AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is a tool that helps organizations plan and execute their cloud transformation journey. The AWS CAF defines four phases of the cloud transformation journey: Envision, Align, Launch, and Scale. Each phase has a specific purpose and outcome1:

Envision: This phase helps you define your vision, goals, and expected outcomes for your cloud transformation. It also helps you identify and prioritize transformation opportunities across four domains: business, people, governance, and platform2.

Align: This phase helps you identify capability gaps across six perspectives: business, people, governance, platform, security, and operations. It also helps you create strategies for improving your cloud readiness, ensure stakeholder alignment, and facilitate relevant organizational change management activities3.

Launch: This phase helps you deliver pilot initiatives in production and demonstrate incremental business value. It also helps you learn from pilots and adjust your approach before scaling to full production4.

Scale: This phase helps you expand production pilots and business value to desired scale and ensure that the business benefits associated with your cloud investments are realized and sustained.

The options A and B are the correct AWS CAF cloud transformation journey recommendations, as they are part of the four phases defined by the AWS CAF. The options C, D, and E are not AWS CAFcloud transformation journey recommendations, as they are not part of the four phases defined by the AWS CAF

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

 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

AWS Direct Connect is an AWS service that allows users to establish a dedicated network connection between their on-premises data center and the AWS Cloud. This connection bypasses the public internet and provides more predictable network performance, reduced bandwidth costs, and increased security. Users can choose from different port speeds and connection types, and use AWS Direct Connect to access AWS services in any AWS Region globally. Users can also use AWS Direct Connect in conjunction with AWS VPN to create a hybrid network architecture that combines the benefits of both private and public connectivity. References: AWS Direct Connect, [AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials: Module 3 - Compute in the Cloud]

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

 The correct answer is A because an Availability Zone consists of one or more data centers in a single location. An Availability Zone is an isolated location within an AWS Region that has independent power, cooling, and networking. Each Availability Zone has one or more data centers that host the physical servers and storage devices that run the AWS services. The other options are incorrect because they are not accurate descriptions of an Availability Zone. Two or more data centers in multiple locations are not an Availability Zone, but rather multiple Availability Zones within an AWS Region. One or more physical hosts in a single data center are not an Availability Zone, butrather the components of a data center within an Availability Zone. Two or more physical hosts in multiple data centers are not an Availability Zone, but rather the components of multiple data centers within one or more Availability Zones. Reference: [Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones]

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.

AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) is the primary service for migrating Amazon EC2 instances and on-premises servers to AWS, and it supports migration from one AWS Region to another. It automates the process of replicating and converting the source servers (including their applications, configurations, and data) to run natively on AWS. AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is for migrating databases, AWS DataSync is for data transfer, and AWS Migration Hub provides a single location to track migration tasks across multiple AWS services but does not perform the migration itself.

AWS Artifact is a service provided by AWS that offers on-demand access to AWS compliance reports, including the Payment Card Industry (PCI) reports. It is the primary tool for retrieving compliance reports such as Service Organization Control (SOC) reports, ISO certifications, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) reports.

To obtain these reports:

The company should log into the AWS Management Console and navigate to AWS Artifact.

From there, they can select and download the necessary compliance reports.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Contact AWS Support: AWS Support is not needed to obtain these reports; they are readily available through AWS Artifact.

C. Download reports from AWS Security Hub: AWS Security Hub is a service that provides a comprehensive view of security alerts and compliance status, but it does not host or provide compliance reports like PCI DSS.

D. Contact an AWS technical account manager (TAM): While a TAM may assist in various AWS-related queries, they are not required to obtain PCI reports. AWS Artifact is designed for this purpose.

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]

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.

AWS Cost Exploreris a tool that enables you to view and analyze your costs and usage. It provides an easy-to-use interface to visualize, understand, and manage AWS costs and usage over time. Cost Explorer allows the company to monitor ongoing costs, set budget alerts, and analyze cost drivers, which is ideal for keeping the cost of running an ecommerce website within a specific budget.

B. AWS SDKs: Incorrect, as they are software development kits that allow integration with AWS services but do not provide cost monitoring or management capabilities.

C. EC2 Image Builder: Incorrect, as it is a service for automating the creation of virtual machine images, not for monitoring costs.

D. AWS CloudFormation: Incorrect, as it is used for provisioning and managing infrastructure as code, not for cost monitoring.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Cost Explorer

 Amazon EventBridge is the service that meets the requirements of building a serverless architecture that connects application data from multiple data sources without requiring additional code. 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. Amazon EventBridge handles the event ingestion, delivery, security, authorization, and error handling for you34

Amazon Macie is a data security and privacy service offered by AWS that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover the sensitive data stored within Amazon S3. You can define your own custom type of sensitive data category that might be unique to your business or use case. Macie also provides you with dashboards and alerts that give you visibility into how your data is being accessed or moved. Macie helps you protect your data by enabling you to apply data protection techniques such as encryption, deletion, access control, and auditing. References: Strengthen the security of sensitive data stored in Amazon S3 by using additional AWS services, Security best practices for Amazon S3, Sensitive Data Protection on AWS, Sensitive Data Protection on Amazon Web Services

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.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces are AWS services that can be used to provide managed Windows virtual desktops and applications to remote employees over secure network connections. Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service that allows users to access Windows desktop applications from any device, without installing or managing any software. Amazon AppStream 2.0 delivers applications over an encrypted connection and isolates them from the underlying infrastructure, ensuring security and compliance1. Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed desktop virtualization service that allows users to access Windows or Linux desktops from any device, with a consistent user experience. Amazon WorkSpaces provides persistent, cloud-based virtual desktops that can be customized and scaled according to the user’s needs. Amazon WorkSpaces also offers encryption, backup, and monitoring features to ensure security and reliability2. References:

Amazon AppStream 2.0

Amazon WorkSpaces

AWS CodeDeployis a fully managed deployment service that automates software deployments to a variety of compute services such as Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and on-premises servers. CodeDeploy makes it easy to release new features, helps avoid downtime during application deployment, and handles the complexity of updating applications in a scalable and reliable manner.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Amazon AppFlow: A service to automate data flows between AWS and SaaS applications, not for application deployment.

C. AWS PrivateLink: A service to securely access AWS services from your virtual private cloud (VPC), not related to application deployments.

D. Amazon EKS Distro: A Kubernetes distribution for running Kubernetes clusters, not specifically designed for automated deployments.

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

AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS Single Sign-On or AWS SSO)provides a single sign-on experience for accessing AWS accounts and applications by integrating with third-party identity providers (IdPs) like Microsoft Active Directory, Okta, or any SAML 2.0-compliant IdP. This service allows employees to log in once using their existing corporate credentials managed by the third-party IdP and gain access to multiple AWS accounts and services without needing separate AWS credentials.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. AWS Directory Service: Provides a managed Microsoft Active Directory, but does not directly support single sign-on integration with third-party IdPs.

B. Amazon Cognito: Primarily used for managing authentication for web and mobile apps, not for integrating third-party IdPs for AWS management access.

D. AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM): Used for sharing AWS resources across accounts, not for identity and access management.

ASecurity Groupacts as a virtual firewall for your Amazon EC2 instances to control inbound and outbound traffic. It provides granular control over network connections to and from a specific EC2 instance or set of instances. Unlike Network ACLs, which operate at the subnet level, Security Groups operate at the instance level, allowing control over network traffic for individual instances.

A. Network ACL: Incorrect, as it controls traffic at the subnet level and not for individual instances.

B. AWS WAF: Incorrect, as AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits but is not designed for controlling instance-level traffic.

C. Route table: Incorrect, as route tables are used for network routing within a VPC and do not act as firewalls.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Security Groups

AWS serverless computing is a way of building and running applications without thinking about servers. AWS manages the infrastructure for you, so you don’t have to provision, scale, patch, or monitor servers. You only pay for the compute time you consume, and you can focus on your application logic instead of managing servers12. References: Serverless Computing – Amazon Web Services, AWS Serverless Computing, Benefits, Architecture and Use-cases - XenonStack

AWS PrivateLink provides private connectivity between VPCs, AWS services, and on-premises applications without exposing traffic to the public internet. It enables private access to AWS services by creating private endpoints within a VPC, which enhances security and simplifies network architecture by keeping all communication on the AWS network. This service is ideal for scenarios where a company wants to connect AWS services and VPCs privately.

Best practices for using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) include:

B. Create individual IAM users: Each user should have their own IAM credentials to ensure accountability, control, and traceability. Sharing credentials can lead to security risks and difficulty in auditing.

E. Use groups to assign permissions to IAM users: Assigning permissions through IAM groups simplifies permission management. You can assign the necessary permissions to the group, and then add or remove users from the group as needed, rather than managing permissions for each user individually.

Why other options are not suitable:

A. Share access keys: Sharing access keys is a security risk and violates AWS security best practices. Each user should have their own credentials.

C. Use inline policies instead of customer-managed policies: Customer-managed policies are preferred over inline policies because they offer better control, reusability, and versioning.

D. Grant maximum privileges to IAM users: Granting the least privilege necessary is a best practice to reduce the risk of accidental or malicious actions.

AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that provides on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage. You can use AWS Storage Gateway to simplify storage management and reduce costs for key hybrid cloud storage use cases. One of these use cases is tape-based backup, which allows you to store data backups on virtual tapes in the AWS Cloud. You can use the Tape Gateway feature of AWS Storage Gateway to extend your existing physical tape library to the AWS Cloud. Tape Gateway provides a virtual tape infrastructure that scales seamlessly with your backup needs and eliminates the operational burden of provisioning, scaling, and maintaining a physical tape infrastructure123. References: 1: CloudStorage Appliances, Hybrid Device - AWS Storage Gateway - AWS, 2: AWS Storage Gateway Documentation, 3: AWS Storage Gateway Features | Amazon Web Services

"The Reliability pillar encompasses the ability of a workload to perform its intended function correctly and consistently when it’s expected to. This includes the ability to operate and test the workload through its total lifecycle." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/reliability.html

 Elasticity in the AWS Cloud refers to the ability to acquire resources as you need them and release resources when you no longer need them. In the cloud, you want to do this automatically1. This means that you can rightsized resources as demand shifts, and you can easily procure resources when they are needed. Elasticity is not related to how quickly an Amazon EC2 instance can be restarted, the maximum amount of RAM an Amazon EC2 instance can use, or the pay-as-you-go billing model. These are aspects of scalability, performance, and cost, respectively2.

For more information on elasticity, you can refer to the following sources:

Elasticity - AWS Well-Architected Framework

Elastic - Reactive Systems on AWS

What is the difference between scalability and elasticity?

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]

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

AWS Workspaces is a service that provides fully managed, secure, and reliable virtual desktops for your employees. You can access your personal Windows environment on various devices, such as Android, iOS, Fire, Mac, PC, Chromebook, and Linux. You can choose from different bundles of CPU, memory, storage, and software options to suit your needs. You can also integrate AWS Workspaces with your existing Active Directory, VPN, and security policies. AWS Workspaces helps you reduce the cost and complexity of managing your desktop infrastructure, while enhancing the productivity and security of your remote workers456. References: 4: Amazon WorkSpaces Client Download, 5: VDI Desktops - Amazon WorkSpaces Family - AWS, 6: Amazon WorkSpaces

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

On-Demand Instances are the most cost-efficient pricing model for an uninterruptible workload that runs once a year for 24 hours. On-Demand Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour or second, depending on which instances you run. No long-term commitments or up-front payments are required. You can increase or decrease your compute capacity to meet the demands of your application and only pay the specified hourly rates for the instance you use1. This model is suitable for developing/testing applications with short-term or unpredictable workloads2. The other pricing models are not cost-efficient for this use case. Reserved Instances and Savings Plans require a commitment to a consistent amount of usage, in USD per hour, for a term of 1 or 3 years. They provide significant discounts compared to On-Demand Instances, but they are not flexible or scalable for workloads that run only once a year12. Spot Instances are the cheapest option, but they are not suitable for uninterruptible workloads, as they can be reclaimed by AWS at any time. They are recommended for applications that have flexible start and end times, or that are only feasible at very low compute prices12. 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 hardware12. References: Amazon EC2 – Secure and resizable compute capacity – AWS, Amazon EC2 - How AWS Pricing Works

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.

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

Amazon Inspector is a service that provides automated security assessment and management for AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Inspector can scan applications for common vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and remote code execution. Amazon Inspector can also check the configuration of AWS resources against security best practices, such as the CIS Benchmarks and the AWS Security Best Practices. Amazon Inspector can help customers identify and remediate security issues, comply with security standards, and improve the security posture of their AWS environment12. References:

Amazon Inspector

Improved, Automated Vulnerability Management for Cloud Workloads with a New Amazon Inspector | AWS News Blog

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

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.

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 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

AWS provides an Attestation of Compliance (AOC) report for specific AWS services to assist companies in achieving Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance in the cloud. This report demonstrates that AWS services meet the necessary PCI DSS requirements. AWS does not offer physical inspections of data centers by appointment, nor does it provide certifications for any application running on AWS. Additionally, AWS does not provide professional PCI compliance services; companies must manage their PCI compliance in their environment.

AWS Outposts is an AWS offering that brings AWS infrastructure and services to a customer's on-premises location. It allows companies to run AWS services locally while meeting any regulatory or compliance requirements to keep data or applications on-premises. Dedicated Instances are EC2 instances that run on hardware dedicated to a single customer but are still within AWS data centers. Amazon CloudFront is a CDN service, and AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers, neither of which meets the requirement for running an application on-premises.

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

AWS Transit Gatewayis a network transit hub that customers can use to connect their Amazon VPCs and on-premises networks to a central hub. This service simplifies network management and reduces operational overhead by enabling a single gateway for managing multiple network connections. It facilitates seamless integration and routing between VPCs and on-premises networks.

A. Virtual private gateway: Incorrect, as it is used to connect a single VPC to an on-premises network through a VPN connection.

C. Internet gateway: Incorrect, as it provides internet access for instances in a VPC but does not connect multiple networks.

D. Customer gateway: Incorrect, as it represents the on-premises device or software application that connects to AWS, but it does not provide a central hub.

AWS Cloud References:

AWS Transit Gateway

An IAM credential report is a feature of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) that allows you to view and download a report that lists all IAM users in your account and the status of their various credentials, such as passwords, access keys, and MFA devices. You can use this reportto audit the security status of your IAM users and ensure that they follow the best practices for credential management1. References: 1: AWS Documentation - IAM User Guide - Getting credential reports for your AWS account

Understanding IAM Roles: IAM (Identity and Access Management) roles in AWS are designed to delegate access permissions without sharing long-term security credentials. This means applications and services can use temporary security credentials, which enhances security.

Why IAM Roles are Best Practice:

Least Privilege Principle: By using IAM roles, you can ensure that applications only have the minimum permissions they need to function, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

Temporary Credentials: Roles provide temporary security credentials, which reduce the risk if they are compromised compared to long-term access keys.

Automated Rotation: Temporary credentials automatically expire and are rotated, which means you don’t have to manage the rotation manually.

How to Implement IAM Roles:

Create an IAM Role: In the AWS Management Console, navigate to IAM, and create a new role. Choose the type of trusted entity (e.g., EC2, Lambda).

Attach Policies: Attach the necessary policies to the role that define the permissions for accessing the S3 bucket.

Assign Role to Service: Attach the IAM role to your EC2 instances, Lambda functions, or other AWS services that need to access the S3 bucket.

Use AWS SDKs: When accessing S3 from your application, use the AWS SDKs to automatically assume the IAM role and obtain temporary credentials.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM Roles

Amazon CloudFrontis a content delivery network (CDN) that helps deliver your website content globally with low latency by caching copies of your website content at edge locations around the world. This helps ensure that users receive content from the edge location closest to them, thereby reducing latency and improving user experience.

A. Amazon Route 53: Incorrect, as it is a DNS web service that routes users to the appropriate endpoint, but it does not cache content or reduce latency.

C. Elastic Load Balancing: Incorrect, as it distributes incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, but does not cache content globally.

D. AWS Lambda: Incorrect, as it is a serverless compute service, not intended for content delivery.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon CloudFront

Cost allocation tags are an AWS feature that allows for detailed tracking of cloud costs by tagging resources. These tags can be customized to represent departments, projects, or cost centers, enabling organizations to allocate and monitor expenses accurately. By using cost allocation tags, companies can create reports that break down costs by tag, providing granular insights into their cloud spending. This feature is critical for achieving detailed cost management and is a core part of AWS’s billing and cost management offerings.

Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It’s a fully managed, multi-region, multi-active, durable database with built-in security, backup and restore, and in-memory caching for internet-scale applications. DynamoDB can handle more than 10 trillion requests per day and can support peaks of more than 20 million requests per second. DynamoDB provides the least operational overhead for storing data from a recommendation engine, as it does not require any server provisioning, patching, or maintenance3

Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It allows you to launch virtual servers, called instances, with different configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes the specifications and utilization metrics of your Amazon EC2 instances and generates recommendations for optimal instance types that can reduce costs and improve performance. You can view the recommendations on the AWS Compute Optimizer console or the Amazon EC2 console12.

Amazon RDS, Amazon Lightsail, and AWS Step Functions are not supported by AWS Compute Optimizer. Amazon RDS is a managed relational database service that lets you set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. Amazon Lightsail is an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything you need to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan. AWS Step Functions lets you coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows so you can build and update apps quickly3 .

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, the customer is responsible for the security in the cloud, which includes configuring firewalls and networks. AWS provides security groups and network access control lists (NACLs) as firewall features that customers can use to control the traffic to andfrom their AWS resources. Customers are also responsible for managing their own virtual private clouds (VPCs), subnets, route tables, internet gateways, and other network components. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes the physical security of the facilities, thehost operating system and virtualization layer, and the AWS global network infrastructure12. References:

Shared Responsibility Model - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Shared responsibility model - Amazon Web Services: Risk and Compliance

Amazon GuardDutyis a threat detection service that continuously monitors AWS accounts and workloads for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to help protect your AWS resources. It uses machine learning, anomaly detection, and integrated threat intelligence to detect when an instance or account might be compromised or if there are threats from attacks.

B. AWS WAF: Incorrect, as it is a web application firewall that protects against common web exploits but does not provide comprehensive threat detection.

C. AWS Shield: Incorrect, as it provides protection against DDoS attacks but does not detect compromises within AWS accounts.

D. Amazon Inspector: Incorrect, as it is a service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS by assessing for vulnerabilities, not for threat detection.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon GuardDuty

Amazon CloudWatch alarm is an AWS service or feature that can initiate an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling action based on CPU utilization. Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service that collects and tracks metrics, logs, events, and alarms for your AWS resources and applications. Amazon CloudWatch alarms are actions that you can configure to send notifications or automatically make changes to the resources you are monitoring based on rules that you define67.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is a service that helps you maintain application availability and allows you to automatically add or remove EC2 instances according to definable conditions. You can create dynamic scaling policies that track a specific CloudWatch metric, such as CPU utilization, and define what action to take when the associated CloudWatch alarm is in ALARM. When the policy is in effect, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling adjusts the group’s desired capacity up or down when the threshold of an alarm is breached89. References: 6: Cloud Monitoring - Amazon CloudWatch - AWS, 7: Amazon CloudWatch Documentation, 8: Dynamic scaling for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, 9: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Documentation

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

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

Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service that supports several database engines, including PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS can run a managed PostgreSQL database that provides online transaction processing (OLTP), which is a type of database workload that handles frequent read and write operations on small amounts of data. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL offers high performance, availability, scalability, security, and compatibility with the PostgreSQL community edition. Amazon RDS also provides automated backups, point-in-time recovery, encryption, monitoring, and maintenance for PostgreSQL databases. References:

Hosted PostgreSQL - Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

OLTP Database, MySQL And PostgreSQL ManagedDatabase - Amazon Aurora

PostgreSQL options on AWS: Self- managed, managed, and serverless

This is a benefit of using an AWS managed service, such as Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, or AWS Lambda. AWS managed services are fully managed by AWS, which means that AWS handles the provisioning, scaling, patching, backup, and recovery of the underlying infrastructure and software. This reduces the operational overhead for the company’s IT staff, who can focus on their core business logic and innovation. You can learn more about the AWS managed services from this webpage or this digital course.

Understanding the Reliability Pillar: The Reliability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework focuses on the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues.

Key Concepts of Reliability:

Foundations: Ensure a solid foundation on which to build, including AWS account management, limits, and networking.

Change Management: Manage changes in automation to ensure systems remain reliable during modifications.

Failure Management: Design systems to detect failures and automatically recover from them.

How to Align with Reliability Pillar:

Implement Multi-AZ Deployments: Deploy applications across multiple Availability Zones to ensure fault tolerance.

Use Auto Scaling: Automatically adjust resources to maintain system performance during demand fluctuations.

Monitor and Respond: Implement monitoring and alerting mechanisms using services like CloudWatch to detect and respond to issues proactively.

AWS Well-Architected Framework: Reliability Pillar

Amazon Neptuneis a fully managed graph database service optimized for storing and querying highly connected data. It supports popular graph models such as Property Graph and W3C's RDF, making it ideal for building graph queries for real-time fraud pattern detection and other applications that require complex relationships and data traversal.

B. Amazon DynamoDB: Incorrect, as it is a NoSQL database service that is not optimized for graph queries.

C. Amazon Timestream: Incorrect, as it is a time-series database service designed for storing and analyzing time-series data, not graph data.

D. Amazon Forecast: Incorrect, as it is a fully managed service that provides time-series forecasting capabilities, not for graph queries.

AWS Cloud References:

Amazon Neptune

Amazon Redshift is a fast, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service that makes it simple and cost-effective to analyze all your data using your existing business intelligence tools. You can start small with no commitments, and scale to petabytes for less than a tenth of the cost of traditional solutions. Amazon Redshift does not require manual hardware and software management, as AWS handles all the tasks such as provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failure detection, and repair12. Amazon Redshift also offers serverless capabilities, which allow you to access and analyze data without any configurations or capacity planning. Amazon Redshift automatically scales the data warehouse capacity to deliver fast performance for even the most demanding and unpredictable workloads3. Therefore, Amazon Redshift meets the requirements of the company, compared to the other options.

The other options are not suitable for the company’s requirements, because:

Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a fast, scalable, highly available, and fully managed document database service that supports MongoDB workloads. It is not designed for petabyte-scale data warehousing or analytics4.

Amazon Neptune is a fast, reliable, and fully managed graph database service that makes it easy to build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets. It is not designed for petabyte-scale data warehousing or analytics5.

Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store and cache service that supports Redis and Memcached. It is not designed for petabyte-scale data warehousing or analytics.

What is Amazon Redshift? - Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift Features - Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift Serverless - Amazon Redshift

What Is Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)? - Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)

What Is Amazon Neptune? - Amazon Neptune

[What Is Amazon ElastiCache for Redis? - Amazon ElastiCache for Redis]

Rehosting ("lift and shift") is a migration strategy where applications are moved to the cloud with minimal changes, making it the least effort-intensive method for applications incompatible with the cloud. Repurchasing involves moving to a different product, often a SaaS solution, which can also minimize migration effort by avoiding the need for application-level changes. Retiring, replatforming, and refactoring require significant effort either in terms of analyzing and shutting down the application, making changes to the underlying platform, or redesigning the application architecture, respectively.

Amazon S3 is an AWS service that provides scalable, durable, and cost-effective object storage in the cloud. Amazon S3 can store any amount and type of data, such as server logs, and offers various storage classes with different performance and pricing characteristics. Amazon S3 is the most cost-effective option for storing server logs, as it offers low-cost storage classes, such as S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and S3 Intelligent-Tiering, that are suitable for infrequently accessed or changing access patterns data. Amazon S3 also integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon Athena and Amazon OpenSearch Service, that can query the server logs directly from S3 without requiring any additional data loading or transformation. References: Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Storage Classes, Querying Data in Amazon S3

Amazon RDS is a service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. Amazon RDS supports MySQL as one of the database engines. By using Amazon RDS with a MySQL database, the company can offload the tasks of patching the database and taking backup snapshots to AWS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and operating system of the database instances. Amazon RDS also automatically backs up the database and retains the backups for a user-defined retention period. The company can also restore the database to any point in time within the retention period. Deploying MySQL database server clusters onAmazon EC2 instances, using an AWS CloudFormation template to deploy MySQL database servers on Amazon EC2 instances, or migrating all the MySQL database data to Amazon S3 are not the best options to meet the requirements. These options would not automate the tasks of patching the database and taking backup snapshots, and would require more operational overhead from the company3

Decoupling the components of an application means reducing the dependencies and interactions between them, which can improve the application’s reliability, scalability, and performance. Decoupling can be achieved by using services such as Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and AWS Lambda1

AWS Managed Services is a service that provides operational management for AWS infrastructure and applications. It helps users migrate their workloads to AWS and provides ongoing support, security, compliance, and automation. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides best practices and recommendations for cost optimization, performance, security, and fault tolerance. AWS Consulting Partners are professional services firms that help customers design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on AWS. AWS Artifacts is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS compliance reports and select online agreements.

Spot Instances are a type of EC2 instance that let you bid on unused compute capacity, which AWS offers at a discount of up to 90% compared to On-Demand prices1. Spot Instances are suitable for fault-tolerant, stateless, or flexible applications that can handle interruptions2. Spot Instances can be interrupted with a two-minute warning when EC2 needs the capacity back3. The other options are not pricing models that will interrupt a running EC2 instance if capacity becomes temporarily unavailable

When you run a NoSQL database on Amazon EC2 instances, you are responsible for managing the database layer and the guest operating system of the instances. This means that you need to perform tasks such as updating the operating system, maintaining high availability, and configuring the security group firewall. AWS is responsible for managing the physical infrastructure that hosts the EC2 instances. This means that AWS ensures that the hardware and firmware of the servers, routers, switches, and other devices are updated and secure. AWS also handles the power, cooling, networking, and security of the data centers12. References: CLF-C02: Which task is responsibility of AWS to run NoSQL database on …, Best Practices for Hosting NoSQL Databases on Amazon EC2

AWS Security Hub is a cloud security posture management (CSPM) service that performs security best practice checks, aggregates alerts, and enables automated remediation. Security Hub collects findings from the security services enabled across your AWS accounts, such as intrusion detection findings from Amazon GuardDuty, vulnerability scans from Amazon Inspector, and sensitive data identification findings from Amazon Macie. Security Hub also collects findings from partner security products using a standardized AWS Security Finding Format, eliminating the need for time-consuming data parsing and normalization efforts. Customers can designate an administrator account that can access all findings across their accounts. References: AWS Security Hub Overview, AWS Security Hub FAQs

AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides real-time guidance to help you provision your resources following AWS best practices. AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommended actions in five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service quotas. Cost optimization helps you reduce your overall AWS costs by identifying idle and underutilized resources. Service quotas helps you monitor and manage your usage of AWS service quotas and request quota increases. Operating system patches, repetitive tasks, and account activity records are not categories that AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommended actions for. Source: [AWS Trusted Advisor]

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.

 A is correct because Amazon RDS is the AWS service that provides a managed relational database service that supports various database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server. B is incorrect because Amazon Redshift is the AWS service that provides a managed data warehouse service that is optimized for analytical queries. C is incorrect because Amazon ElastiCache is the AWS service that provides a managed in-memory data store service that supports Redis and Memcached. D is incorrect because Amazon Neptune is the AWS service that provides a managed graph database service that supports property graph and RDF models.

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.

Identity and access management is one of the foundational capabilities for the operations perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). It involves managing the identities, roles, permissions, and credentials of users and systems that interact with AWS resources. Performance and capacity management is a capability for the platform perspective. Application portfolio management is a capability for the business perspective. Product management is a capability for the governance perspective.

AWS Organizations is a service that enables you to create and manage multiple AWS accounts centrally. You can use AWS Organizations to automate account creation, apply policies to control access and permissions, and consolidate billing across your accounts. You can also use AWS Organizations to prevent users from creating Amazon EC2 instances in certain regions or with certain configurations2

The AWS Enterprise Support Concierge team is a group of billing and account experts who specialize in working with enterprise customers. They can help customers with questions about billing, account management, cost optimization, and other non-technical issues. They can also assist customers with navigating and optimizing their AWS environment, such as setting up consolidated billing, applying for service limit increases, or requesting refunds.

IAM access keys are long-term credentials that consist of an access key ID and a secret access key. You use access keys to sign programmatic requests that you make to AWS. If you need to access AWS services from an on-premises application, you can use IAM access keys to authenticate your requests. AWS account user name and password are used to sign in to the AWS Management Console. Amazon EC2 key pairs are used to connect to your EC2 instances using SSH. AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys are used to encrypt and decrypt your data using the AWS Encryption SDK or the AWS CLI.

 Establishing an AWS Direct Connect connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network is the action that the company should take to meet the requirement of having a dedicated connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network. AWS Direct Connect is a service that lets you establish a dedicated network connection between your network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can create a private connection between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections. Establishing a VPN connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network is an action that the company can take to create a secure and encrypted connection between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network, but it is not a dedicated connection, as it uses the public internet as the transport mechanism. Attaching an internet gateway to the VPC and using the AWS public endpoints for connectivity is an action that the company can take to enable communication between the VPC and the internet, but it is not a dedicated connection, as it also uses the public internet as the transport mechanism. Configuring Amazon Connect to provide connectivity between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network is not an action that the company can take, because Amazon Connect is a service that lets you set up and manage a contact center in the cloud, but it does not provide network connectivity between the VPC and the company’s on-premises network.

AWS Enterprise Support provides customers with a designated technical account manager (TAM) who is a single point of contact for all technical and operational issues. The TAM provides consultative architectural and operational guidance delivered in thecontext of the customer’s applications and use-cases to help them achieve the greatest value from AWS. The TAM also helps customers with proactive services, such as strategic business reviews, security improvement programs, guided Well-Architected reviews, cost optimization workshops, and more1.

A full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks is not an additional benefit of AWS Enterprise Support, as it is also included in the AWS Business Support plan2. AWS Trusted Advisor is a tool that provides best practice recommendations for cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits.

Phone, email, and chat access to cloud support engineers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is not an additional benefit of AWS Enterprise Support, as it is also included in the AWS Business Support plan2. Cloud support engineers can help customers with technical issues, such as troubleshooting, configuration, usage, and service features.

A consultative review and architecture guidance for the company’s applications is not an additional benefit of AWS Enterprise Support, as it is also included in the AWS Business Support plan2. Customers can request a consultative review from a solutions architect who will provide best practices and recommendations based on the customer’s use-cases and goals.

Using EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone is a solution that meets the requirements of minimizing network latency between the EC2 instances and not needing high availability. An Availability Zone is a physically isolated location within an AWS Region that has its own power, cooling, and network connectivity. EC2 instances within the same Availability Zone can communicate with each other using low-latency private IP addresses. However, EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone are not highly available, because they are vulnerable to failures or disruptions that affect the Availability Zone

Amazon Inspector is the AWS service that can be used to perform vulnerability scans on AWS EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities automatically in a periodic fashion. Amazon Inspector automatically discovers EC2 instances and scans them for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. Amazon Inspector uses AWS Systems Manager (SSM) and the SSM Agent to collect information about the software application inventory of the EC2 instances. This data is then scanned by Amazon Inspector for software vulnerabilities12. Amazon Inspector also integrates with other AWS services, such as AmazonEventBridge and AWS Security Hub, to automate discovery, expedite vulnerability routing, and shorten mean time to remediate (MTTR) vulnerabilities2.

On-Demand Instances are ideal for workloads that require flexibility, offering compute capacity with no upfront cost, allowing users to pay by the second for the instances they use. This makes it suitable for applications with short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted. Reserved Instances require long-term commitments, Spot Instances can be interrupted, and Dedicated Instances are for specific hardware requirements, making On-Demand the correct choice for uninterruptible and flexible instance usage.

 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

These are two of the general AWS Cloud design principles described in the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Testing systems at production scale means using tools such as AWS CloudFormation, AWS CodeDeploy, and AWS X-Ray to simulate real-world scenarios and measure the performance, scalability, and availability of the system. Driving architecture design based on data means using tools such as Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Config to collect and analyze metrics, logs, and events about the system and use the insights to optimize the system’s design and operation. You can learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Framework from this whitepaper or [this digital course].

 Security groups act as a firewall for associated Amazon EC2 instances, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. You can use security groups to set rules that allow or deny traffic to or from your instances. You can modify the rules for a security group at any time; the new rules are automatically applied to all instances that are associated with the security group.

AWS Regions are the AWS service or resource that the company should use to select its Amazon RDS deployment area. AWS Regions are separate geographic areas where AWS clusters its data centers. Each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate Availability Zones within a geographic area. Each AWS Region is designed to be isolated from the other AWS Regions to achieve the highest possible fault tolerance and stability. AWS provides a more extensive global footprint than any other cloud provider, and to support its global footprint and ensure customers are served across the world, AWS opens new Regions rapidly. AWS maintains multiple geographic Regions, including Regions in North America, South America, Europe, China, Asia Pacific, South Africa, and the Middle East. Amazon RDS is available in several AWS Regions worldwide. To create or work with an Amazon RDS DB instance in a specific AWS Region, you must use the corresponding regional service endpoint. You can choose the AWS Region that meets your latency or legal requirements. You can also use multiple AWS Regions to design a disaster recovery solution or to distribute your read workload. References: Global Infrastructure Regions & AZs - aws.amazon.com, Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones - Amazon Relational Database Service

 Using AWS Artifact to access AWS documents about the compliance of the services, and getting the compliance of the application certified by a company assessor are actions that the company should take to meet the requirements of complying with credit card regulatory requirements. AWS Artifact is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS security and compliance reports and select online agreements. Reports available in AWS Artifact include our Service Organization Control (SOC) reports, Payment Card Industry (PCI) reports, and certifications from accreditation bodies across geographies and compliance verticals that validate the implementation and operating effectiveness of AWS security controls. AWS Artifact can help you demonstrate compliance with credit card regulatory requirements by providing you with proof that the AWS services and deployment are in compliance. Getting the compliance of the application certified by a company assessor is an action that the company should take to ensure that the application meets the specific requirements of the credit card industry. A company assessor is an independent third-party entity that is qualified to assess the compliance of the application with the relevant standards and regulations. Using Amazon Inspector to submit the application for certification is not an action that the company should take, because 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, but it does not provide certification for the applications. Ensuring that the application’s underlying hardware components comply with requirements is not an action that the company should take, because the application is deployed on AWS, and AWS is responsible for the security and compliance of the underlying hardware components. This is part of the shared responsibility model, where AWS is responsible for security of the cloud, and customers are responsible for security in the cloud. Using AWS Security Hub to certify the compliance of the application is not an action that the company should take, because AWS Security Hub is a service that gives you a comprehensive view of your security posture acrossyour AWS accounts and helps you check your environment against security industry standards and best practices, but it does not provide certification for the applications.

 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].

According to security best practices, the best way to give an Amazon EC2 instance access to an Amazon S3 bucket is to have the EC2 instance assume a role to obtain the privileges to upload the file. A role is an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) entity that defines a set of permissions for making AWS service requests. You can use roles to delegate access to users, applications, or services that don’t normally have access to your AWS resources. For example, you can create a role that allows EC2 instances to access S3 buckets, and then attach the role to the EC2 instance. This way, the EC2 instance can assume the role and obtain temporary security credentials to access the S3 bucket. This method is more secure and scalable than storing or hardcoding IAM user credentials on the EC2 instance, as it avoids the risk of exposing or compromising the credentials. It also allows you to manage the permissions centrally and dynamically, and to audit the access using AWS CloudTrail. For more information on how to create and use roles for EC2 instances, see Using an IAM role to grant permissions to applications running on Amazon EC2 instances1

The other options are not recommended for security reasons. Hardcoding or storing IAM user credentials on the EC2 instance is a bad practice, as it exposes the credentials to potential attackers or unauthorized users who can access the instance or the application code. It also makes it difficult to rotate or revoke the credentials, and to track the usage of the credentials. Modifying the S3 bucket policy to allow any serviceto upload to it at any time is also a bad practice, as it opens the bucket to potential data breaches, data loss, or data corruption. It also violates the principle of least privilege, which states that you should grant only the minimum permissions necessary for a task.

 Using an IAM role to grant permissions to applications running on Amazon EC2 instances

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.

IAM roles are a way of granting temporary permissions to entities that need to access AWS resources, such as users, applications, or services. IAM roles allow customers to assign permissions to entities without having to create or manage IAM users or credentials for them. IAM roles can be assumed by different entities depending on the trust policy attached to the role. For example, IAM roles can be assumed by IAM users in the same or different AWS accounts, AWS services such as EC2 or Lambda, or external identities such as federated users or web identities. IAM roles can also be switched by IAM users to temporarily change their permissions. IAM roles are recommended for managing permissions for employees who often change teams, because they allow customers to define permissions based on job roles and responsibilities, and easily assign or revoke them as needed. IAM roles also reduce the operational overhead of creating, updating, or deleting IAM users or credentials for each employee or team change.

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.

AWS Site-to-Site VPN and AWS Direct Connect are AWS services that are connectivity services for a VPC. AWS Site-to-Site VPN is a service that enables you to securely connect your on-premises network or branch office site to your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). You can establish VPN connections over the internet or over AWS Direct Connect1. AWS Direct Connect is a service that lets you establish a dedicated network connection between your network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can create a private connection between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which can reduce your network costs,increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections2. Amazon Connect is a service that lets you set up and manage a contact center in the cloud, but it does not provide network connectivity between the VPC and your on-premises network. AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) is a service that makes it easy for you to create and manage cryptographic keys and control their use across a wide range of AWS services and inyour applications, but it does not provide network connectivity between the VPC and your on-premises network. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely, but it does not provide network connectivity between the VPC and your on-premises network.

AWS Outposts is a service that delivers AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS Outposts allows you to extend and run native AWS services on premises, and is available in a variety of form factors, from 1U and 2U Outposts servers to 42U Outposts racks, and multiple rack deployments. With AWS Outposts, you can run some AWS services locally and connect to a broad range of services available in the local AWS Region. Run applications and workloads on premises using familiarAWS services, tools, and APIs2. AWS Outposts is the only AWS service that supports a hybridarchitecture that gives users the ability to extend AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to data centers, co-location environments, or on-premises facilities. References: On-Premises Infrastructure - AWS Outposts Family

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. It works seamlessly with services including AWS Shield for DDoS mitigation, Amazon S3, Elastic Load Balancing or Amazon EC2 as origins for your applications, and Lambda@Edge to run custom code closer to customers’ users and to customize the user experience. By using CloudFront, you can cache your content at the edge locations that are closest to your end users, reducing the network latency and improving theperformance of your application. CloudFront also offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, so you only pay for the data transfer and requests that you use.

AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) is a managed service that enables you to easily encrypt your data. AWS KMS provides you with centralized control of the encryption keys used to protect your data. You can use AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon RDS and Amazon EBS volumes12

AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that allows you to extend your on-premises file storage capabilities to the AWS Cloud. AWS Storage Gateway file gateway enables you to store and access your files in Amazon S3 using industry-standard file protocols such as NFS and SMB. File gateway caches frequently accessed files locally, providing low-latency access to your data. File gateway also optimizes the transfer of data between your on-premises environment and AWS, minimizing the amount of bandwidth consumed. By using file gateway, you can retain the performance benefit of sharing content locally while leveraging the scalability, durability, and cost-effectiveness of Amazon S3. References: AWS Storage Gateway, File Gateway

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is an AWS service that can help users reduce the number of Amazon EC2 instances that run when application usage is low. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling allows users to create scaling policies that automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on the demand or a schedule. EC2 Instance Savings Plans, Spot Instances, and Reserved Instances are instance purchasing options that can help users save money on EC2 usage, but they do not automatically scale the number of instances according to the application usage .

 The AWS service that meets the requirements of providing a graph database service that is scalable and highly available is Amazon Neptune. Amazon Neptune is a fast, reliable, and fully managed graph database service that supports property graph and RDF graph models. Amazon Neptune is designed to store billions of relationships and query the graph with milliseconds latency. Amazon Neptune also offers high availability and durability by replicating six copies of the data across three Availability Zones and continuously backing up the data to Amazon S35. Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon DynamoDB are other AWS services that provide relational or non-relational database solutions, but they do not support graph database models.

The AWS service that should be used when a company needs to provide its remote employees with virtual desktops is Amazon WorkSpaces. Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed, secure desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution that runs on AWS. Amazon WorkSpaces allows users to provision cloud-based virtual desktops and provide their end users access to the documents, applications, and resources they need from any supported device, including Windows and Mac computers, Chromebooks, iPads, Fire tablets, and Android tablets4. Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Directory Service, and AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On) are other AWS services related to identity and access management, but they do not provide virtual desktops.

The security best practices that should be followed are A and E.

A. Grant the developer access to only the AWS resources needed to perform the job. This is an example of the principle of least privilege, which means giving the minimum permissions necessary to achieve a task. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access, data leakage, or accidental damage to AWS resources.You canuse AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create users, groups, roles, and policies that grant fine-grained access to AWS resources12.

E. Ensure the account password policy requires a minimum length. This is a basic security measure that helps prevent brute-force attacks or guessing of passwords. A longer password is harder to crack than a shorter one.You can use IAM to configure apassword policy that enforces a minimum password length, as well as other requirements such as complexity, expiration, and history34.

B. Share the AWS account root user credentials with the developer. This is a bad practice that should be avoided. The root user has full access to all AWS resources and services, and can perform sensitive actions such as changing billing information, closing the account, or deleting all resources. Sharing the root user credentials exposes your account to potential compromise or misuse.You should never share your root user credentials with anyone, and use them only for account administration tasks5.

C. Add the developer to the administrator’s group in IAM. This is also a bad practice that should be avoided. The administrator’s group has full access to all AWS resources and services, which is more than what a developer needs to perform their job. Adding the developer to the administrator’s group violates the principle of least privilege and increases the risk of unauthorized access, data leakage, or accidental damage to AWS resources.You should create a custom group for the developer that grants only the necessary permissions for their role12.

D. Configure a password policy that ensures the developer’s password cannot be changed. This is another bad practice that should be avoided. Preventing the developer from changing their password reduces their ability to protect their credentials and comply with security policies. For example, if the developer’s password is compromised, they cannot change it to prevent further unauthorized access. Or if the company requires periodic password rotation, they cannot update their password to meet this requirement.You should allow the developer to change their password as needed, and enforce a password policy that sets reasonable rules for password management34.

 AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. You can use AWS Secrets Manager to store, rotate, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle. AWS Secrets Manager eliminates the need to hardcode sensitive information in plain text, and reduces the risk of unauthorized access or leakage. AWS Secrets Manager also integrates with other AWS services, such as AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, and AWS CloudFormation, to simplify the management of secrets across your environment5

 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.

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 Application Discovery Service is a service that helps you plan your migration to the AWS Cloud by collecting usage and configuration data about your on-premises servers and databases. This data includes information such as the hostname, IP address, and MAC address of each server, as well as the performance metrics, network connections, and processes running on them. You can use AWS Application Discovery Service to discover your on-premises inventory, map the dependencies between servers and applications, and estimate the cost and effort of migrating to AWS. You can also export the data to other AWS services, such as AWS Migration Hub and AWS Database Migration Service, to support your migration tasks. AWS Application Discovery Service offers two ways of performing discovery: agentless discovery and agent-based discovery. Agentless discovery uses a virtual appliance that you deploy on your VMware vCenter to collect data from your virtual machines and hosts. Agent-based discovery uses an agent that you install on each of your physical or virtual servers to collect data. You can choose the method that best suits your environment and needs. AWS DataSync is a service that helps you transfer data between your on-premises storage and AWS storage services, such as Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server. AWS DataSync does not collect information about your on-premises infrastructure, but rather focuses on optimizing the data transfer speed, security, and reliability. 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. AWS Application Migration Service does not collect information about your on-premises infrastructure, but rather uses a lightweight agent to replicate your servers as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and launch them as EC2 instances on AWS. AWS Database Migration Service is a 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 Database MigrationService does not collect information about your on-premises infrastructure, but rather uses a source and a target endpoint to connect to your databases and transfer the data. References: AWS Application Discovery Service, AWS DataSync, AWS Application Migration Service, [AWS Database Migration Service]

Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is ideal for quick, ad-hoc querying but it can also handle complex analysis, including large joins, window functions, and arrays. Athena scales automatically—executing queries in parallel—so results are fast, even with large datasets and complex queries. Amazon Redshift is a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service that can run complex analytic queries against structured and semi-structured data using standard SQL. However, it is not a serverless service and requires provisioning and managing clusters of nodes. AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it easy to prepare and load your data for analytics. However, it is not a query service and does not support standard SQL. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a service that enables you to build custom applications that process or analyze streaming data for specialized needs. However, it is not a query service and does not support standard SQL.

These are two of the seven capabilities that are in the platform perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). The platform perspective helps you build an enterprise-grade, scalable, hybrid cloud platform, modernize existing workloads, and implement new cloud-native solutions1. The other five capabilities are:

Platform architecture – Establish and maintain guidelines, principles, patterns, and guardrails for your cloud environment.

Platform engineering – Build a compliant multi-account cloud environment with enhanced security features, and packaged, reusable cloud products.

Platform operations – Manage and optimize your cloud environment with automation, monitoring, and incident response.

Application development – Develop and deploy cloud-native applications using modern architectures and best practices.

Application migration – Migrate your existing applications to the cloud using proven methodologies and tools.

Performance and capacity management, infrastructure protection, and change and release management are not capabilities of the platform perspective. They are part of the operations perspective, which helps you achieve operational excellence in the cloud2. The operations perspective comprises six capabilities:

Performance and capacity management – Monitor and optimize the performance and capacity of your cloud workloads.

Infrastructure protection – Protect your cloud infrastructure from unauthorized access, malicious attacks, and data breaches.

Change and release management – Manage changes and releases to your cloud workloads using automation and governance.

Configuration management – Manage the configuration of your cloud resources and applications using automation and version control.

Incident management – Respond to incidents affecting your cloud workloads using best practices and tools.

Service continuity management – Ensure the availability and resilience of your cloud workloads using backup, recovery, and disaster recovery strategies.

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 AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of decisions you make while building systems on AWS. By using the Framework, you will learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. The Framework consists of five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization2.

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.

Scaling horizontally across multiple Availability Zones is a way to adopt a highly available architecture, as it increases the fault tolerance and resilience of the application. Scaling vertically to a larger EC2 instance size is a way to improve the performance of the application, but it does not improve the availability. Purchasing an EC2 Dedicated Instance is a way to isolate the instance from other AWS customers, but it does not improve the availability. Changing the EC2 instance family to a compute optimized instance is a way to optimize the instance type for the workload, but it does not improve the availability. These concepts are explained in the AWS Well-Architected Framework2.

AWS VPN and AWS Direct Connect are two services that enable customers to connect their on-premises data center network to the AWS Cloud. AWS VPN establishes a secure and encrypted connection over the public internet, while AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated and private connection through a partner network. You can learn more about AWS VPN from [this webpage] or [this digital course]. You can learn more about AWS Direct Connect from [this webpage] or [this digital course].

AWS Business Support is the least expensive AWS Support plan that provides the full set of AWS Trusted Advisor best practice checks for cost optimization. AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides best practices and recommendations for cost optimization, performance, security, and fault tolerance. AWS Business Support also provides other benefits, such as 24/7 technical support, unlimited cases, and faster response times. AWS Enterprise Support is the most expensive AWS Support plan that provides the same benefits as AWS Business Support, plus additional benefits, such as a technical account manager and enterprise concierge support. AWS Developer Support and AWS Basic Support are cheaper AWS Support plans that provide only a limited set of AWS Trusted Advisor best practice checks for cost optimization .

The AWS Cloud benefit that describes the ability to acquire resources as they are needed and release resources when they are no longer needed is elasticity. Elasticity means that users can quickly add and remove resources to match the demand of their applications, and only pay for what they use. Elasticity enables users to handle unpredictable workloads, reduce costs, and improve performance1. Economies of scale, agility, and security are other benefits of the AWS Cloud, but they do not describe the specific ability of acquiring and releasing resources on demand.

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

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications and workloads. Based on five pillars — operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization — the Framework provides a consistent approach for customers and partners to evaluate architectures, and implement designs that can scale over time. Operational excellence is one of the pillars of the Framework, and it focuses on running and monitoring systems to deliver business value, and continually improving processes and procedures.

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that works with both Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). AWS Fargate allows you to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters of Amazon EC2 instances. With AWS Fargate, you only pay for the compute resources you use to run your containers, and you don’t need to worry about scaling, patching, securing, or maintaining the underlying infrastructure. AWS Fargate simplifies the deployment and management of containerized applications, and enables you to focus on building and running your applications instead of managing the infrastructure. References: AWS Fargate, What is AWS Fargate?

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