SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Question and Answers

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/default-bucket-encryption.html

You can set the default encryption behavior on an Amazon S3 bucket so that all objects are encrypted when they are stored in the bucket. The objects are encrypted using server-side encryption with either Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3) or AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer master keys (CMKs).

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-prevent-uploads-of-unencrypted-objects-to-amazon-s3/

How to Prevent Uploads of Unencrypted Objects to Amazon S3#

By using an S3 bucket policy, you can enforce the encryption requirement when users upload objects, instead of assigning a restrictive IAM policy to all users.

To ensure that the application endpoint has a static public IP address, the SysOps administrator should deploy the application behind an internet-facing Network Load Balancer (NLB):

Network Load Balancer:

An NLB automatically provides a static IP address that can be associated with the load balancer. It supports static IP addresses for each Availability Zone and can handle a high number of requests per second.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Each Lambda function generates 1 GB of log data daily in its own CloudWatch Logs log group.

The security team needs a count of application errors, grouped by type, across all log groups.

Analyze the Requirements:

Aggregate and analyze log data across multiple log groups.

Count and group errors by type.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Perform a CloudWatch Logs Insights query.

CloudWatch Logs Insights allows querying and analyzing log data.

The stats command and count function can aggregate and count errors across log groups.

Option B: Perform a CloudWatch Logs search with groupby and count.

CloudWatch Logs search does not support these functions; Logs Insights is needed for advanced queries.

Option C: Perform an Amazon Athena query.

Athena can query data in S3 but is not directly applicable to CloudWatch Logs.

Option D: Perform an Amazon RDS query.

RDS queries are for database data, not applicable to log data in CloudWatch.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: CloudWatch Logs Insights is designed for querying and analyzing log data, making it the appropriate choice for counting and grouping errors.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights

CloudWatch Logs Insights provides powerful querying capabilities to aggregate and analyze log data, including counting and grouping errors.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/encryption.html

Amazon EFS supports two forms of encryption for file systems, encryption of data in transit and encryption at rest. You can enable encryption of data at rest when creating an Amazon EFS file system. You can enable encryption of data in transit when you mount the file system.

Objective:

Resolve the failure of the CloudFormation Auto Scaling group resource creation due to a missing wait condition signal.

cfn-signal:

The cfn-signal command is used in user data scripts to signal CloudFormation that the resource has been successfully created or configured.

This ensures the stack creation process continues as expected.

Steps to Implement:

At the end of the user data script in the EC2 launch template:

Add the command: cfn-signal --stack --resource --region

Replace , , and with appropriate values.

AWS References:

cfn-signal:Using cfn-signal to Signal Completion

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option B: While port 443 is necessary for CloudFormation signaling, the main issue is the absence of cfn-signal.

Option C: Reducing DesiredCapacity may bypass the error but does not solve the root cause.

Option D: Associating a public IP may help connectivity but is unrelated to the wait condition.

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts and workloads. It provides detailed monitoring for unauthorized access attempts, including console login attempts from unusual locations.

Amazon GuardDuty:

GuardDuty analyzes VPC flow logs, AWS CloudTrail logs, and DNS logs to detect suspicious activity.

It generates findings, such as UnauthorizedAccess

/ConsoleLoginSuccess, to alert administrators about potential security issues.

Setup:

Enable GuardDuty in your AWS account.

Configure GuardDuty to monitor unauthorized console logins.

Set up notifications for the relevant findings to alert administrators.

Amazon GuardDuty

GuardDuty Finding Types

Amazon FSx provides a fully managed file system that is optimized for Windows-based workloads and can be used to create file shares that can be accessed both on premises and in the AWS Cloud. The file shares that are created in Amazon FSx are highly available and can be accessed with low latency. Additionally, Amazon FSx supports Windows-based authentication, making it easy to integrate with existing Windows user accounts.

For EBS volumes restored from snapshots to immediately achieve the required IOPS performance, Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) can be utilized:

Enable FSR: Fast Snapshot Restore can be enabled on specific snapshots. This feature pre-warms the EBS volume created from a snapshot to its full performance level immediately after it is provisioned.

Operational Impact: By enabling FSR, any EBS volume created from these enabled snapshots will provide the provisioned IOPS performance right from the start, eliminating the performance lag that typically occurs as the data is lazily loaded from S3.

Cost Considerations: While FSR increases costs due to the pre-warming of data, it is justified by the need for immediate high performance, especially in environments where EBS volume responsiveness is critical to application performance.

This solution directly addresses the challenge of initial performance degradation and ensures that the EBS volumes can handle the required workload immediately upon restoration from a snapshot.

To maintain a documented trail of any changes made to the security groups and receive notifications, AWS Config is the best solution.

AWS Config:

AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations.

You can set up AWS Config to record changes to your security groups.

Setting Up AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console and choose "Set up AWS Config."

Select the resource types you want to record (in this case, security groups).

Specify an Amazon S3 bucket to store configuration snapshots and history files.

Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic for notifications about configuration changes.

Subscribe the SysOps administrator's email address to the SNS topic.

AWS Config

Setting Up AWS Config

When an AWS CloudFormation stack is in the DELETE_FAILED state due to the inability to delete a specific resource, such as an Amazon EC2 security group, the recommended approach is to use the DeleteStack operation with the RetainResources parameter. By specifying the resource (in this case, the security group) in the RetainResources parameter, CloudFormation will retain that resource and proceed to delete the rest of the stack.

This method is particularly useful when a resource cannot be deleted because it is being referenced by other resources outside the stack or due to dependencies that prevent its deletion. By retaining the problematic resource, you can successfully delete the stack and then manually address the retained resource as needed.

To monitor and automatically respond to security groups allowing SSH access:

AWS Config: This service can be used to detect security groups that allow SSH access publicly (Option B). AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations.

AWS Systems Manager Automation: This can automatically execute actions like closing the port when a non-compliant security group is detected (Option D). It allows the execution of automated workflows that can respond to Config rule findings, ensuring immediate remediation actions such as closing ports. These two services combined offer a comprehensive solution to monitor, detect, and rectify unwanted security group configurations automatically. AWS documentation on AWS Config AWS Config and on Systems Manager Automation Systems Manager Automation provides additional insights.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

A user cannot upload an object to an S3 bucket using a presigned URL, even though the URL is valid and the bucket has no policy applied.

Analyze the Requirements:

Determine the cause of the issue preventing the upload via the presigned URL.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: The user has not properly configured the AWS CLI.

CLI configuration is not relevant to using a presigned URL.

Option B: The SysOps administrator does not have the necessary permissions.

The administrator's permissions are required to generate a valid presigned URL with sufficient permissions.

Option C: A bucket policy is required.

A bucket policy is not necessary if the presigned URL has the correct permissions.

Option D: The object has already been uploaded.

A presigned URL remains valid until it expires or the specified permissions are revoked.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Ensuring that the SysOps administrator has the necessary permissions to upload objects to the S3 bucket is crucial for generating valid presigned URLs.

Amazon S3 Presigned URLs

IAM Policies for Amazon S3

The SysOps administrator must have the necessary permissions to upload objects to the S3 bucket, ensuring that the presigned URL generated allows the user to upload successfully.

Systems Manager Quick Setup is the recommended method for enabling Systems Manager capabilities across all accounts in an organization.

From AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup documentation:

You can use Quick Setup in the management account of your organization to automatically configure Systems Manager in all current and future member accounts.

The "Default Host Management Configuration" enables:

Instance registration

SSM Agent setup

IAM role association

This meets the requirement with the least ongoing maintenance.

FIFO queues don't support per-message delays, only per-queue delays. If your application sets the same value of the DelaySeconds parameter on each message, you must modify your application to remove the per-message delay and set DelaySeconds on the entire queue instead.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/FIFO-queues-moving.html

The most operationally efficient and secure method to share an object from a private Amazon S3 bucket with users who do not have an AWS account is by generating a presigned URL. This URL grants temporary access to the object and can be limited by time, ensuring that users can only access the S3 object during a specified window. This does not require managing network configurations or sharing credentials, making it a secure and simple solution. Option D is therefore the correct answer. Reference to this method can be found in the AWS S3 documentation on presigned URLs Amazon S3 Presigned URLs.

The reason is that it uses the Amazon CloudWatch billing alarm which is a built-in service specifically designed to monitor and alert on cost usage of your AWS account, which makes it a more suitable solution for this use case. The alarm can be configured to detect when costs reach 75% of the threshold and when it is triggered, it can publish a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. The email distribution list can be subscribed to the topic, so that they will receive the alerts when costs reach 75% of the threshold.

AWS Budgets allows you to track and manage your costs, but it doesn't specifically focus on data transfer costs between regions, and it might not provide as much granularity as CloudWatch Alarms.

To address high I/O requirements during the bootstrap process, increasing both IOPS and throughput on the EBS volume is recommended:

Increase EBS Volume IOPS: Enhances the instance’s ability to handle multiple read and write operations per second, essential for data-heavy tasks like downloading Docker images.

Increase EBS Volume Throughput: Provides higher data transfer rates, reducing bottlenecks during intensive I/O operations.

Increasing instance size is unnecessary if the primary issue is disk I/O, and changing from Nitro-based instances would not address the underlying storage performance need.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/systems-manager-automation.html

To ensure all EC2 instances have the required tags and terminate any noncompliant instances, AWS Config can be used to check the compliance, and AWS Systems Manager Automation can be invoked to take action on noncompliant instances.

Create AWS Config Rule:

Open the AWS Config console at AWS Config Console.

Create a new rule to check for the required tags on EC2 instances. Use the managed rule required-tags.

Create AWS Systems Manager Automation Document:

Open the AWS Systems Manager console at AWS Systems Manager Console.

Create an Automation document to terminate noncompliant instances.

Link AWS Config Rule to Automation:

In the AWS Config console, configure the rule to invoke the Systems Manager Automation document if an instance is found to be noncompliant.

AWS Config Rules

AWS Systems Manager Automation

AWS Config Managed Rules

To ensure that all users within the AWS Organization have read-level access to a specific Amazon S3 bucket, while preventing access outside the organization, you can specify a wildcard principal ("Principal": "*") and use the PrincipalOrgId condition key in the bucket policy.

Specify the Principal:

Use "Principal": "*". This means that any principal can access the bucket, but the actual access will be controlled by the condition.

Add Condition with PrincipalOrgId:

Add a condition to restrict access based on the PrincipalOrgId. This condition ensures that only the principals from the specified AWS Organization can access the bucket.

Example bucket policy:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*",

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"aws:PrincipalOrgID": "o-exampleorgid"

}

}

}

]

}

A stack policy is used to protect specific resources within a CloudFormation stack from being unintentionally updated or deleted. By using a stack policy, you can explicitly deny updates to critical resources while allowing updates to other parts of the stack.

Create a Stack Policy:

Define a JSON stack policy that includes an explicit allow for all resources and an explicit deny for the protected resources. For example:

json

Copy code

{

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": "Update:*",

"Principal": "*",

"Resource": "*"

},

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "Update:*",

"Principal": "*",

"Resource": "arn:aws:cloudformation:region:account-id:stack/stack-name/protected-resource"

}

]

}

Replace region, account-id, stack-name, and protected-resource with the appropriate values.

Apply the Stack Policy:

Navigate to the CloudFormation console.

Select the stack you want to protect.

Choose "Stack actions" and then "Edit stack policy".

Paste the stack policy JSON and save the policy.

Perform Stack Updates:

When performing stack updates, the stack policy will enforce the rules specified, preventing accidental updates to the protected resources.

Review and Adjust:

Periodically review the stack policy to ensure it still meets the needs of the organization and update it as necessary.

AWS CloudFormation Stack Policies

Creating and Applying a Stack Policy

If users are unable to connect to a specific Ubuntu EC2 instance using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager while other instances are accessible, the issue is likely due to IAM permissions:

Instance Profile Permissions: Ensure that the EC2 instance has the necessary IAM permissions to interact with Systems Manager. The AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore managed policy includes permissions required for the SSM Agent on the instance to communicate with the AWS Systems Manager service.

Attach Managed Policy: Attach the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy to the IAM role that is associated with the Ubuntu instance's instance profile. This step is crucial as it authorizes the instance to use Systems Manager services, including Session Manager.

Verify Configuration and Connectivity: After updating the instance profile, verify that users can connect via Session Manager. This solution does not require any changes to network security settings like security groups.

By ensuring that the instance has the appropriate IAM permissions, you resolve issues related to access control and Systems Manager functionality, allowing authorized personnel to connect securely without using SSH or RDP.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the functionality of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and regions with a single operation. Using a stack set, the SysOps administrator can manage deployments across different regions and accounts within AWS Organizations efficiently.

Setting up StackSets: First, define your CloudFormation template that describes all the resources that need to be deployed across the regions. Store this template in an S3 bucket accessible by the central administration account.

Service-Managed Permissions: When creating a stack set, select the option for service-managed permissions if you are using AWS Organizations. This allows AWS CloudFormation to automatically set up the necessary permissions in the target accounts.

Deploying the Stack Set: From the central administration account, create the stack set and specify the target accounts and regions. CloudFormation will then ensure that the resources defined in the template are instantiated in each of the specified regions and accounts.

This method simplifies management and ensures consistency of infrastructure across multiple regions and accounts, leveraging the organizational units in AWS Organizations for centralized governance.

ï‚· AWS Config Managed Rule:

AWS Config can be used to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of AWS resources. The managed rule can check if instances are launched from approved AMIs.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Config.

Create a managed rule that checks for EC2 instances running approved AMIs.

Configure the rule to use a list of approved AMIs.

ï‚· Automatic Remediation with Systems Manager Automation:

AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks can automate the process of remediating non-compliant resources.

Steps:

Create a Systems Manager Automation runbook that terminates instances not running approved AMIs.

Attach the runbook to the AWS Config rule for automatic remediation.

AWS Config Rules, AWS Systems Manager Automation

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows allow you to define a schedule for performing administrative tasks on your instances. By setting up a maintenance window:

Schedule Reboots:

Define a maintenance window outside business hours.

Register the EC2 instances as targets.

Assign the AWS-RestartEC2Instance Automation document to the task.

This setup ensures that instances are rebooted regularly, mitigating the effects of the memory leak until a permanent fix is implemented.

To alleviate performance degradation on a heavily queried Amazon Aurora DB cluster:

A: Create an Aurora Replica node and implement an Auto Scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Ensure all reporting requests use the read-only connection string to redirect read queries to the replica. This setup alleviates the load on the primary DB instance by balancing read traffic, which can significantly improve stability during periods of high demand. Aurora Replicas are ideal for scaling read operations and can improve the performance of the primary instance by offloading read requests. More details on Aurora Replicas and their benefits can be found in the AWS documentation on Aurora Replicas Amazon Aurora Replicas.

To ensure that EC2 instances in your VPC can send DNS queries for example.com to the DNS servers in your on-premises data center, follow these steps:

Create a Route 53 Resolver Outbound Endpoint:

Set up an outbound endpoint in Route 53 Resolver in your VPC to forward DNS queries to your on-premises DNS servers.

This solution provides a central logging solution and automated alerting based on application error logs.

From CloudWatch Logs and Metric Filters documentation:

Use CloudWatch Agent to send logs to CloudWatch Logs. Then, create a metric filter for error patterns and configure an alarm to notify via SNS.

This is fully automated, scalable, and operationally efficient.

To ensure that the website is accessible only through https://example.com , the following configuration is recommended:

Internet-Facing Application Load Balancer (ALB):Deploy an ALB that is internet-facing to distribute incoming traffic across the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group. The ALB provides high availability and scalability across multiple Availability Zones.

Amazon Route 53 Alias Record:Create an alias record in Amazon Route 53 that points to the ALB's DNS name. This allows users to access the website using the domain name example.com.

HTTP to HTTPS Redirect:Configure the ALB to redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS. This ensures that all traffic is encrypted and complies with the requirement to use only HTTPS.

Host-Based Routing:On the ALB's HTTPS listener, create a host-based rule that forwards requests specifically for example.com to the appropriate target group containing the EC2 instances.

This setup ensures secure, domain-specific access to the website, leveraging AWS services for scalability and reliability.

The error message indicates that the current quota for the number of EC2 instances allowed in the specified region has been reached. To resolve this issue, a quota increase must be requested.

Request Quota Increase:

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to Amazon EC2 service.

Find the specific quota for the instance type family that you need to increase.

Select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Provide the necessary details and submit the request.

This action will initiate a request to AWS to increase the limit, allowing you to launch additional instances once the request is approved.

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

Amazon FSx for Lustre is purpose-built for compute-intensive workloads that require high IOPS, low latency, and fast throughput—ideal for HPC use cases.

Key benefits include:

High IOPS: Lustre file systems can scale to hundreds of thousands of IOPS.

Low Latency: Sub-millisecond latency suitable for large-scale parallel processing.

Durability: Fully managed by AWS and integrated with Amazon S3 for persistent storage.

POSIX Compliance: Supports Linux-based applications.

This makes FSx for Lustre the optimal solution for HPC workloads where existing Throughput Optimized HDDs (st1) fall short in performance.

Exact Reference from AWS Documentation:

FSx for Lustre is designed for high-performance workloads and can deliver 100,000+ IOPS, addressing demanding storage needs.

[Source: Amazon FSx for Lustre Performance Guide]

To restrict access to an Amazon S3 bucket to Amazon EC2 instances in a VPC only, and ensure all traffic is over the AWS private network, the SysOps administrator should create a VPC endpoint for the S3 bucket and create an S3 bucket policy that conditionally limits all S3 actions on the bucket to the VPC endpoint as the source.

Create a VPC Endpoint for S3:

Open the VPC console.

Choose "Endpoints" and then "Create Endpoint."

Select the service name "com.amazonaws.[region].s3."

Choose the VPC and the subnets where the EC2 instances reside.

Configure the route tables to include the VPC endpoint.

Create an S3 Bucket Policy:

Open the S3 console and select the bucket.

Go to the "Permissions" tab and edit the bucket policy.

Add a condition to the policy to allow access only from the VPC endpoint.

Example policy:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:*",

"Resource": [

"arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name",

"arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*"

],

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"aws:sourceVpce": "vpce-12345678"

}

}

}

]

}

Amazon S3 VPC Endpoints

Amazon S3 Bucket Policies

To address the issue of a fully utilized EBS volume causing application errors, the most efficient solution is to dynamically resize the existing EBS volume and extend the file system. AWS EBS supports Elastic Volumes, allowing you to increase volume size without detaching or stopping the instance.

Steps:

Modify the EBS Volume:

Navigate to the Amazon EC2 console.

Select the EBS volume attached to the instance.

Choose "Modify Volume" and increase the size as needed.

Confirm the modification.

Extend the File System:

Connect to the EC2 instance.

Use the lsblk command to identify the volume and partition.

If necessary, use the growpart command to extend the partition.

Depending on the file system:

For XFS: sudo xfs_growfs -d /mount-point

For ext4: sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1

This approach minimizes downtime and avoids the need for creating new volumes or stopping the instance.

To enable decryption of objects, the role only requires minimal permissions with least privilege:

kms

Necessary for reading and decrypting the data encrypted with KMS.

kms

Allows the role to check key properties, confirming it’s the correct key for decryption.

kms

Useful if multiple keys are in use and validation against an alias is needed.

These permissions are sufficient for decryption without granting additional permissions like encryption or key management.

For high-performance computing (HPC) applications that require minimized network latency and maximized network throughput, the best strategy is to use a cluster placement group. Here’s why:

Cluster Placement Group:

Instances in a cluster placement group are placed within a single Availability Zone, which allows them to communicate using high-bandwidth, low-latency connections.

This is ideal for HPC workloads that require high network throughput and low latency.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the capability of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and AWS Regions

If a Lambda function is not being invoked by an Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) rule, the likely issue is a missing permission. The Lambda function needs permission to be invoked by the EventBridge rule.

Steps:

Add Permission to Lambda Function:

Open the AWS Lambda console.

Select your Lambda function.

Choose "Configuration" and then "Permissions".

Under the "Resource-based policy" section, add a policy that grants EventBridge permission to invoke your function.

Example policy:

json

Copy code

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"Service": "events.amazonaws.com"

},

"Action": "lambda:InvokeFunction",

"Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:function:FUNCTION_NAME",

"Condition": {

"ArnLike": {

"AWS:SourceArn": "arn:aws:events:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:rule/RULE_NAME"

}

}

}

]

}

Verify the EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console.

Select the rule that targets your Lambda function.

Ensure that the rule is correctly configured to match events and the target is your Lambda function.

To ensure that database credentials are never stored in plaintext and the password is rotated every 30 days, use AWS Secrets Manager:

Store Credentials in Secrets Manager:

Open the AWS Secrets Manager console.

Click on "Store a new secret."

Select "RDS database credentials" and provide the necessary details (username, password, database instance).

Configure the secret's name and details.

Enable Automatic Rotation:

During the secret creation process, enable automatic rotation.

Specify an automatic rotation schedule of 30 days.

Choose the Lambda function that Secrets Manager will use to update the database password automatically.

Update Lambda Functions:

Update each Lambda function to retrieve the database password from Secrets Manager.

Use the AWS SDK in your Lambda code to access Secrets Manager and fetch the secret value.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

Retrieve Secrets from AWS Lambda

AWS Secrets Manager is the recommended and native solution for managing secrets such as RDS DB credentials, with built-in support for automatic password rotation.

From Secrets Manager RDS integration documentation:

Secrets Manager supports automatic rotation for Amazon RDS databases. You can configure rotation for the master user credentials using a predefined Lambda rotation function provided by AWS.

This is the least operational effort option:

No custom Lambda code required

Seamlessly integrates with RDS

Fully managed password rotation

To enable troubleshooting of EC2 instances marked as unhealthy before they are terminated by the Auto Scaling group, you can use lifecycle hooks:

Add a Lifecycle Hook: Configure a lifecycle hook in the Auto Scaling group. This hook will hold the instance in a "wait" state either when it launches or terminates (in this case, when it's about to be terminated due to health check failure).

Integration with Amazon EventBridge (CloudWatch Events): Set up the lifecycle hook to send an event to EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) when an instance is in the termination lifecycle state.

Invoke Lambda Function: Configure EventBridge to trigger an AWS Lambda function when it receives the termination lifecycle event from the Auto Scaling group. This Lambda function can then perform necessary diagnostics, logging, or data capture activities on the instance before it's terminated.

This configuration allows the SysOps administrator to perform necessary investigations on why instances were marked unhealthy before they are automatically replaced, offering a chance to diagnose and potentially correct underlying issues.

geolocation "Geolocation routing lets you choose the resources that serve your traffic based on the geographic location of your users, meaning the location that DNS queries originate from. For example, you might want all queries from Europe to be routed to an ELB load balancer in the Frankfurt region."

Could be confused with geoproximity - "Geoproximity routing lets Amazon Route 53 route traffic to your resources based on the geographic location of your users and your resources. You can also optionally choose to route more traffic or less to a given resource by specifying a value, known as a bias. A bias expands or shrinks the size of the geographic region from which traffic is routed to a resource" the use case is not needed as per question.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/routing-policy.html

In this scenario, the issue is that the EC2 instances are marked healthy by status checks, but the website is still intermittently failing, returning HTTP 500 errors.

This indicates that the OS-level checks are passing, but the application is not behaving properly. To resolve this, the Auto Scaling group must use ALB (ELB) health checks which verify application-level health, not just EC2 status.

From the Auto Scaling User Guide:

By default, an Auto Scaling group uses EC2 instance status checks to determine the health state of an instance. You can optionally configure the Auto Scaling group to use Elastic Load Balancing health checks in combination with EC2 status checks.

These health checks allow Auto Scaling to detect application failures and replace unhealthy instances automatically.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Network Load Balancer is for TCP-level traffic and does not solve HTTP 500 errors.

C. Sticky sessions are used for session persistence and don’t solve server errors.

D. Installing CloudWatch agents and rebooting is reactive and not an automated health check replacement system.

AWS provides a native integration with Slack via the AWS Support App, which allows:

Real-time updates for AWS Support cases in Slack

Replying to support cases and adding comments from Slack

Case creation and escalation from Slack

From the AWS Support App in Slack Documentation:

You must first authorize the Slack workspace in your AWS account using the AWS Support App setup process.

Then, add the specific Slack channel by specifying the channel ID and required case types (e.g., account, service limit, technical).

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A: Slack must authorize the workspace first, not just an AWS account.

C and D: Using SNS + EventBridge + Lambda is not necessary, as AWS provides a native Slack integration with full support case features.

S3 Storage Lens and Lifecycle Policies:

Incomplete Multipart Upload Bytes Metric: This metric in S3 Storage Lens helps you identify the storage consumed by incomplete multipart uploads.

S3 Lifecycle Policies: Lifecycle policies allow you to automatically manage the lifecycle of objects, including deleting incomplete multipart uploads after a specified number of days.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to S3 and select the bucket.

Go to the "Metrics" tab and view the "Incomplete Multipart Upload Bytes" metric in the S3 Storage Lens dashboard.

To create a lifecycle policy:

Select the bucket.

Go to the "Management" tab.

Under "Lifecycle rules," click "Create lifecycle rule."

Define a rule name.

Choose "Multipart upload" and specify "Delete incomplete multipart uploads" after 7 days.

Save the rule.

AWS S3 Storage Lens

AWS S3 Lifecycle Policies

To manage incomplete multipart uploads in an Amazon S3 bucket, creating an S3 Lifecycle rule to specifically address these uploads is the most effective method. The rule can be configured to automatically delete expired multipart upload parts, which helps in cleaning up unused data and reducing storage costs. Option A is correct as it directly addresses the requirement to manage incomplete uploads effectively. Reference on setting up S3 Lifecycle policies can be found here Amazon S3 Lifecycle.

Steps:

Use CloudWatch Agent to collect disk utilization metrics.

Set a CloudWatch alarm to trigger when disk usage = 100%.

Configure EventBridge to invoke an AWS Lambda function that reboots the instance using the EC2 API (RebootInstances).

This approach is automated, efficient, and minimizes human intervention.

From CloudWatch and EventBridge integration:

CloudWatch alarms can send events to EventBridge, which can trigger Lambda functions or other automation workflows.

Using a CloudWatch alarm with an EventBridge rule provides an automated, direct way to reboot the EC2 instance without extra components like SES or Lambda. This is a straightforward approach with low operational overhead.

AWS Config provides a managed rule named required-tags that checks whether specified resources have the tags you define. This rule can be used to evaluate DynamoDB tables for compliance with tagging requirements.

While the required-tags rule does not support the AWS-managed Systems Manager automation document AWS-SetRequiredTags for remediation, you can create a custom Systems Manager automation document to remediate noncompliant resources. By associating this custom document with the required-tags rule, AWS Config can automatically remediate DynamoDB tables that lack the appropriate tags.

This approach leverages AWS managed services and minimizes operational overhead by automating both detection and remediation processes.

To improve the performance of an Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) when users report slower file retrieval times, configuring the file system for Provisioned Throughput is an effective solution.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon EFS console at Amazon EFS Console.

Select the File System:

In the EFS console, select the file system that you want to modify.

Modify Throughput Settings:

Choose File system policy and then Manage file system policy.

Under Throughput mode, select Provisioned Throughput.

Specify the desired throughput in MiB/s based on your application's needs.

Apply Changes:

Save the changes to apply the new throughput settings to the file system.

Amazon EFS Performance

Managing Throughput Modes

To increase upload speeds into the S3 bucket from Europe and Australia, the SysOps administrator should use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration and multipart uploads. These methods are cost-effective and efficient.

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration:

This feature speeds up uploads by using the globally distributed edge locations of Amazon CloudFront. Data is routed to the closest edge location, which then forwards the data to the S3 bucket in the destination region.

This reduces latency and increases the upload speed for large files.

Multipart Uploads:

Multipart upload allows you to upload a single large object as a set of parts. Each part is independently uploaded and can be uploaded in parallel.

This method improves the upload efficiency and resiliency, especially for large files.

Configuration Steps:

Enable Transfer Acceleration on the S3 bucket through the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI.

Implement multipart upload in the application or scripts used for uploading files.

To generate a monthly report showing all S3 buckets and their compliance with the requirement to block public read access, the SysOps administrator can take the following steps:

Create an AWS Config Aggregator:

Create an AWS Config aggregator in an aggregator account. Use the organization as the source to aggregate AWS Config data across all accounts in the organization.

NAT Gateway resides in public subnet, and traffic should be routed from private subnet to NAT Gateway: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-nat-gateway.html

To deliver digital content to authorized users through CloudFront while restricting unauthorized access, you can use an origin access identity (OAI) with signed URLs.

Store Content in S3 with Public Access Blocked:

Ensure the S3 bucket has public access blocked.

Navigate to the S3 console, select the bucket, and configure the "Block Public Access" settings.

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully managed, highly available, and native Windows file system compatible with the SMB protocol, ideal for Windows workloads requiring shared access.

Multi-AZ File System: Ensures high availability across multiple Availability Zones.

Native Windows Capabilities: Allows instances to map file shares and access files using Windows storage features, offering strong consistency and performance for shared files.

Other options, like Amazon S3 and Amazon EFS, either lack native Windows integration or do not offer the desired consistency and high availability for shared file systems in a Windows environment.

"You can add tags to resources when you create the resource. You can use the resource's service console or API to add, change, or remove those tags one resource at a time. To add tags to—or edit or delete tags of—multiple resources at once, use Tag Editor. With Tag Editor, you search for the resources that you want to tag, and then manage tags for the resources in your search results." https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ARG/latest/userguide/tag-editor.html

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that delivers your content with low latency and high transfer speeds. By distributing the static content (images and videos) to CloudFront edge locations, users in the United States and Europe can access the content from the nearest edge location, significantly improving the load times.

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the Amazon CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Choose Create Distribution and select Web.

Specify the S3 bucket as the origin where your static content is stored.

Configure Distribution Settings:

Configure the settings, such as cache behaviors and SSL/TLS settings.

Optionally, configure additional features like geo-restriction and logging.

Update DNS Configuration:

Update your DNS records to point to the CloudFront distribution. This can be done via Amazon Route 53 or your DNS provider.

Monitor Performance:

Use CloudFront reports and logs to monitor the performance and adjust configurations if needed.

Amazon CloudFront Overview

Creating a CloudFront Distribution

To resolve the issue of users being frequently prompted to log in, which typically indicates that session persistence is not configured:

Sticky Sessions: Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB's target group. This configuration makes sure that all requests from a single user during a session are directed to the same EC2 instance, rather than being load balanced to different instances which might not share session data.

Configuration: This is done in the ALB settings under the target group attributes. Sticky sessions use a user-specific cookie generated by the ALB to route requests to the designated instance.

Session Cookie: The ALB handles the session cookie automatically, but you may adjust settings like the duration that the session cookie remains valid.

Enabling sticky sessions ensures that user sessions are maintained with the same server, reducing the instances of repeated logins and improving the user experience.

To securely connect to the S3 buckets over a private connection from EC2 instances without incurring additional costs, the SysOps administrator can create a gateway VPC endpoint.

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint:

Navigate to the VPC console.

Create a gateway VPC endpoint for Amazon S3.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The threat of ransomware encrypting and holding company data hostage.

Need to protect an Amazon S3 bucket.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure that data in the S3 bucket is protected against unauthorized encryption or deletion.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Deny Post, Put, and Delete on the bucket.

Denying these actions would prevent any uploads or modifications to the bucket, making it unusable.

Option B: Enable server-side encryption on the bucket.

Server-side encryption protects data at rest but does not prevent the encryption of data by ransomware.

Option C: Enable Amazon S3 versioning on the bucket.

S3 versioning keeps multiple versions of an object in the bucket. If a file is overwritten or encrypted by ransomware, previous versions of the file can still be accessed.

Option D: Enable snapshots on the bucket.

Amazon S3 does not have a snapshot feature; this option is not applicable.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Enabling Amazon S3 versioning is the best solution as it allows access to previous versions of objects, providing protection against ransomware encryption by retaining prior, unencrypted versions.

Amazon S3 Versioning

Best Practices for Protecting Data with Amazon S3

Enabling S3 versioning ensures that previous versions of objects are preserved, providing a safeguard against ransomware by allowing recovery of unencrypted versions of data.

ï‚· Objective:

Publish VPC flow logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

ï‚· Root Cause:

VPC flow logs require an IAM role with permissions to create log groups, log streams, and write logs to CloudWatch Logs.

If the logs:CreateLogGroup permission is missing, the flow log cannot create the required log group, and logs will not appear in CloudWatch.

ï‚· Solution Implementation:

Step 1: Verify the IAM role attached to the VPC flow logs.

Step 2: Add the following permissions to the IAM policy:

logs:CreateLogGroup

logs:CreateLogStream

logs:PutLogEvents

Step 3: Update the IAM role policy and retry creating flow logs.

ï‚· AWS References:

VPC Flow Logs Permissions:Permissions for VPC Flow Logs

ï‚· Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option B: logs:CreateExportTask is for exporting logs from CloudWatch to S3, not for creating log groups.

Option C: IPv6 addresses do not impact the publishing of flow logs to CloudWatch Logs.

Option D: VPC peering does not block flow log functionality.

Ensuring that all the EC2 instances have an instance profile with Systems Manager access is the most effective way to fix this issue. Having an instance profile with Systems Manager access will allow the SysOps administrator to configure the inventory collection for all the instances in the subnet, regardless of whether or not they are managed by Systems Manager.

Using the ALB’s RequestCount metric will allow the SysOps administrator to collect information about total requests for a 2-week period and determine when requests exceeded the threshold of 100 requests per second. Configuring a time range of 2 weeks and a period of 1 minute will ensure that the data can be accurately examined to determine peak traffic times and volumes.

To configure replication of a DynamoDB table to another AWS Region for disaster recovery, you should use DynamoDB Global Tables. Global Tables use DynamoDB Streams to replicate changes across multiple regions.

Enable DynamoDB Streams:

Navigate to the DynamoDB console.

Select your table and enable DynamoDB Streams.

Add a Global Table Region:

With Streams enabled, go to the Global Tables tab.

Add a new region to the table, specifying the region where you want to replicate the data.

Automatic Replication:

DynamoDB will handle the replication of data across regions automatically, ensuring data consistency and high availability.

DynamoDB Global Tables

Enabling DynamoDB Streams

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/object-lock-overview.html In governance mode, users can 't overwrite or delete an object version or alter its lock settings unless they have special permissions. With governance mode, you protect objects against being deleted by most users, but you can still grant some users permission to alter the retention settings or delete the object if necessary. You can also use governance mode to test retention-period settings before creating a compliance-mode retention period. In compliance mode, a protected object version can't be overwritten or deleted by any user, including the root user in your AWS account. When an object is locked in compliance mode, its retention mode can't be changed, and its retention period can't be shortened. Compliance mode helps ensure that an object version can't be overwritten or deleted for the duration of the retention period.

To achieve maximum cost savings and flexibility for a 24/7 running application across different AWS regions and operating systems, the best approach is to use a Compute Savings Plan. Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility by automatically applying to any EC2 instance usage regardless of instance family, size, OS, tenancy, or AWS Region, and also apply to AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda usage.

Understand Compute Savings Plans:

Compute Savings Plans offer significant savings over On-Demand prices, with the flexibility to use the compute option that best suits your needs.

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan:

Login to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to the Savings Plans section.

Choose Purchase Savings Plan and select Compute Savings Plan.

Define the hourly commitment amount and the term length (one or three years).

Monitor and Optimize Usage:

Ensure that your usage aligns with the Savings Plan to maximize savings.

Use AWS Cost Explorer and Savings Plans Utilization reports to monitor usage.

Savings Plans

Compute Savings Plans

Using AWS Systems Manager to schedule a maintenance window for restarting EC2 instances outside business hours provides a straightforward and automated approach.

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Window: Allows for daily scheduling, ensuring that restarts occur consistently outside of business hours.

AWS-RestartEC2Instance Runbook: This runbook can be assigned to the maintenance window, automating the reboot process and minimizing manual intervention.

Reduced Disruption: The scheduled restart ensures the application remains operational during business hours.

For improving upload performance globally for an Amazon S3 bucket, enabling S3 Transfer Acceleration is the best solution. This service optimizes file transfers to S3 using Amazon CloudFront's globally distributed edge locations. After enabling this feature, uploads to the S3 bucket are first routed to an AWS edge location and then transferred to S3 over an optimized network path. Option C is correct, and the developers should use the provided accelerate endpoint in their API calls. For more details, consult the AWS documentation on S3 Transfer Acceleration Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration.

gp3 volumes provide higher performance and flexibility than gp2. With gp3, you can provision IOPS and throughput independently of storage size.

From the Amazon EBS documentation:

gp3 volumes deliver baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS, and you can provision up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s, regardless of volume size.

Here are the steps to update an existing AWS CloudFormation stack:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the CloudFormation service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

Choose "Replace current template" and upload the updated CloudFormation template from the Amazon S3 bucket named "cloudformation-bucket"

In the "Parameter" section, update the EC2 instance type to us-east-t2.nano and add the IP address range 192.168.100.0/30 for SSH access.

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

In the "Capabilities" section, check the checkbox for "IAM Resources"

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

Once the update is complete, navigate to the stack and click on the "Stack options" button, and select "Prevent updates to prevent accidental deletion"

To get the value of the Prodlnstanceld , navigate to the "Outputs" tab in the CloudFormation stack and find the key "Prodlnstanceld". The value corresponding to it is the value that you need to enter in the text box below.

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation service role to deploy updates.

You can refer to the AWS CloudFormation documentation for more information on how to update and manage stacks: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

Here are the steps to configure Amazon EventBridge to meet the above requirements:

Log in to the AWS Management Console by using the AWS Management Console shortcut from the VM desktop. Make sure that you are logged in to the desired AWS account.

Go to the EventBridge service in the us-east-2 Region.

In the EventBridge service, navigate to the "Event buses" page.

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

Give a name to your event bus, and select "default" as the event source type.

Navigate to "Rules" page and create a new rule named "RunFunction"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "Schedule" as the event source and set the schedule to run every 15 minutes.

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to Lambda" and choose the existing AWS Lambda function named "LogEventFunction"

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "EC2" as the event source, and filter the events on "EC2 Spot Instance interruption"

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to SNS topic" and create a new standard Amazon SNS topic named "TopicEvents"

In the "Input Transformer" section, set the Input Path to {“instance” : “$.detail.instance-id”} and Input template to “The EC2 Spot Instance has been interrupted on account.

Now all Amazon EC2 events in the default event bus will be replayable for past 90 days.

Note:

You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs to create and manage EventBridge resources.

You can use CloudTrail event history to replay events from the past 90 days.

You can refer to the AWS EventBridge documentation for more information on how to configure and use the service: https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/

Here are the steps to configure an Amazon S3 bucket to serve a static error page in the event of a failure at the primary site:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the S3 service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing S3 bucket named lab-751906329398-26023898.com and click on it.

In the "Properties" tab, click on "Static website hosting" and select "Use this bucket to host a website".

In "Index Document" field, enter the name of the object that you want to use as the index document, in this case, "index.html"

In the "Permissions" tab, click on "Block Public Access", and make sure that "Block all public access" is turned OFF.

Click on "Bucket Policy" and add the following policy to allow public read access:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::lab-751906329398-26023898.com/*"

}

]

}

Now navigate to the Amazon Route 53 service, and find the existing hosted zone named lab-751906329398-26023898.com.

Click on the "A record" and update the routing policy to "Primary - Failover" and add the existing ALB as the primary record.

Click on "Create Record" button and create a new secondary failover alias record for the domain lab-751906329398-26023898.com that routes traffic to the existing S3 bucket.

Now, when the primary site (ALB) goes down, traffic will be automatically routed to the S3 bucket serving the static error page.

Note:

You can use CloudWatch to monitor the health of your ALB.

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

You can use Amazon Route 53 for routing traffic to different resources based on health checks.

You can refer to the AWS documentation for more information on how to configure and use these services:

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

https://aws.amazon.com/route53/

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

To view the cost details of each project in an AWS account using Cost Explorer, you need to activate cost allocation tags and tag the resources with a project identifier.

Activate Cost Allocation Tags:

Navigate to the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Cost allocation tags".

Select the tags you want to activate (e.g., "Project") and click "Activate".

Tag Resources with Project Identifier:

Go to the AWS Management Console for each service where resources are deployed (e.g., EC2, S3, RDS).

For each resource, add a tag with the key "Project" and a value that identifies the project (e.g., "ProjectA").

Ensure that all relevant resources are tagged appropriately.

View Cost Allocation in Cost Explorer:

Navigate to the Cost Explorer console.

Use the "Group by" option to group costs by the "Project" tag.

Review the cost details for each project based on the tags applied to the resources.

Using Cost Allocation Tags

Analyzing Your Costs with Cost Explorer

Understand the Problem:

The requirement is to delete the CloudFormation stack without deleting the DynamoDB table.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure the DynamoDB table is preserved when the CloudFormation stack is deleted.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Add a Retain deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource.

The Retain policy ensures that the DynamoDB table is not deleted when the stack is deleted.

Option B: Add a Snapshot deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource.

Snapshot policy is not applicable to DynamoDB tables and would not retain the table itself.

Option C: Enable termination protection on the CloudFormation stack.

Prevents stack deletion entirely but does not specifically protect the DynamoDB table.

Option D: Update the IAM policy with a Deny statement for dynamodb:DeleteTable.

Prevents deletion of the table but is not a CloudFormation stack-specific solution.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Adding a Retain deletion policy to the DynamoDB resource in the CloudFormation stack ensures the table is preserved when the stack is deleted.

AWS CloudFormation Deletion Policy

Using the Retain deletion policy ensures that the DynamoDB table is not deleted when the CloudFormation stack is deleted, preserving critical data.

When receiving an InstanceLimitExceeded error in a participant account of a shared VPC, you need to request an instance quota increase from the participant account.

Requesting a Quota Increase:

Open the AWS Service Quotas console in the participant account.

In the navigation pane, choose "AWS services" and select "Amazon EC2."

Select the quota you need to increase, such as "Running On-Demand Standard (A, C, D, H, I, M, R, T, Z) instances."

Click "Request quota increase" and specify the desired limit.

Quota Management in AWS Organizations:

While shared VPCs allow resources to be used across accounts, quota limits are still managed per account.

Each participant account must manage its own quotas independently.

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

In AWS, each subnet has a fixed CIDR block, and the number of available IP addresses is determined by this block. For example, a /28 subnet provides 16 IP addresses, but 5 are reserved by AWS, leaving 11 usable IPs.

Since the subnet is already at capacity:

Create a New Subnet:

Choose a CIDR block that doesn't overlap with existing subnets.

Ensure it's within the VPC's CIDR range.

Launch additional EC2 instances in this new subnet.

This approach allows for the deployment of more instances without modifying existing subnets.

Configuring Security Groups:

Security groups act as virtual firewalls for your instances to control inbound and outbound traffic.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2.

Select "Security Groups" from the left-hand menu.

Find and select the security group associated with your EC2 instances.

Choose the "Inbound rules" tab and click "Edit inbound rules."

Add a rule to allow traffic from the security group associated with the NLB.

Type: Custom TCP (or the specific port your application uses)

Source: Select "Custom" and enter the ID of the NLB's security group.

This setup ensures that the EC2 instances accept traffic only from the NLB, enhancing security with minimal operational overhead.

AWS Security Groups

To ensure that the new web subnet can communicate with the database instance, follow these steps:

Create an Inbound Allow Rule for MySQL/Aurora (3306):

On the network ACL for the database subnets, add an inbound allow rule to permit traffic from the third web subnet on port 3306 (MySQL/Aurora).

To centrally store traffic logs for the website and ensure all data is encrypted at rest, using an Amazon S3 bucket with default server-side encryption is the best solution.

Create an Amazon S3 Bucket with Server-Side Encryption:

Open the S3 console and create a new bucket.

In the bucket properties, enable default server-side encryption using AES-256.

Configure CloudFront to Use the S3 Bucket as a Log Destination:

Open the CloudFront console.

Select the CloudFront distribution and configure the logging settings.

Specify the S3 bucket as the log destination.

Server-Side Encryption:

Ensure that the S3 bucket is configured to use server-side encryption with AES-256 by default, ensuring that all logs stored are encrypted at rest.

Amazon S3 Server-Side Encryption

CloudFront Access Logs

STORAGE_FULL State:

When an RDS instance is in the STORAGE_FULL state, automated backups cannot be performed because there is insufficient storage available.

Steps to Resolve:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to RDS and select the DB instance.

Check the storage metrics to confirm the STORAGE_FULL state.

Increase the allocated storage for the DB instance to provide sufficient space for automated backups.

Amazon RDS DB Instance Status

To securely connect to Amazon S3 buckets from Amazon EC2 instances over a private connection without incurring additional costs, you can use a gateway VPC endpoint for S3. This method allows you to create a single gateway VPC endpoint for all S3 buckets in the same region, ensuring secure, private communication.

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint:

Navigate to the VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Endpoints" and then click "Create Endpoint".

Select "AWS services" and then choose "com.amazonaws..s3" from the service name dropdown.

Select the VPC in which to create the endpoint and the appropriate route tables.

Click "Create endpoint".

Update the Route Tables:

The gateway VPC endpoint will automatically update the selected route tables to include routes that direct S3 traffic through the endpoint.

Ensure that the route tables associated with your subnets include routes for the S3 service pointing to the gateway VPC endpoint.

Verify the Configuration:

Ensure that instances in the VPC can access the S3 buckets using private IP addresses.

Check the routing configuration to confirm that traffic to S3 is routed through the gateway VPC endpoint.

Gateway VPC Endpoints for Amazon S3

Creating a Gateway Endpoint

To optimize the routing of requests to the application for users in different geographic locations, use Amazon Route 53's latency-based routing:

Latency Routing Policy: Modify the Route 53 DNS settings for app.anycompany.com by changing the routing policy to latency. This policy routes user requests to the server that has the lowest latency relative to the user's location.

Configure Latency Records: Create latency records for each ALB—one for the ALB in us-west-2 and another for the new ALB in ap-southeast-2. Route 53 will automatically direct traffic to the endpoint that provides the lowest latency connection to the user.

Seamless User Experience: By using latency routing, the URL remains the same (app.anycompany.com), but the backend service location varies based on which endpoint is likely to respond the fastest. This setup provides a seamless experience for users, reducing latency without requiring any changes to how they access the application.

This method leverages Route 53's advanced DNS capabilities to ensure optimal performance and user experience by dynamically routing traffic based on geographic latency considerations.