Question 1

A DevOps Engineer must track the health of a stateless RESTful service sitting behind a Classic ILoad Balancer. The deployment of new application revisions is through a CI/CD pipeline. If the service's latency increases beyond a defined threshold, deployment should be stopped until the service has recovered. Which of the following methods allow for the QUICKEST detection time?

Accepted Answer

A)  Use Amazon CloudWatch metrics provided by Elastic Load Balancing to calculate average latency. Alarm and stop deployment when latency increases beyond the defined threshold. 
B)  Use AWS Lambda and Elastic Load Balancing access logs to detect average latency. Alarm and stop deployment when latency increases beyond the defined threshold. 
C)  Use AWS CodeDeploy's MinimumHealthyHosts setting to define thresholds for rolling back deployments. If these thresholds are breached, roll back the deployment. 
D)  Use Metric Filters to parse application logs in Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Create a filter for latency. Alarm and stop deployment when latency increases beyond the defined threshold.

Question 2

A developer is building an application that must allow users to upload images to an Amazon S3 bucket. Users need to be able to sign in to the application using Facebook to upload images. How can these requirements be met?

Accepted Answer

A)  Store a user's Facebook user name and password in an Amazon DymanoDB table. Authenticate against those credentials the next time the user tries to log in. 
B)  Create an Amazon Cognito identity pool using Facebook as the identity provider. Obtain temporary AWS credentials so a user can access Amazon S3. 
C)  Create multiple AWS IAM users. Set the email and password to be the same as each user's Facebook login credentials. 
D)  Create a new Facebook account and store its login credentials in an S3 bucket. Share that S3 bucket with a user. The user will log in to the application using those retrieved credentials.

Question 3

A company wants to use AWS CloudFormation for infrastructure deployment. The company has strict tagging and resource requirements and wants to limit the deployment to two Regions. Developers will need to deploy multiple versions of the same application. Which solution ensures resources are deployed in accordance with company policy?

Accepted Answer

A)  Create AWS Trusted Advisor checks to find and remediate unapproved CloudFormation StackSets. 
B)  Create a CloudFormation drift detection operation to find and remediate unapproved CloudFormation StackSets. 
C)  Create CloudFormation StackSets with approved CloudFormation templates. 
D)  Create AWS Service Catalog products with approved CloudFormation templates.

Question 4

You run a large number of applications on Amazon EC2 instances. Each application has associated metadata, such as cost center, support contact, and application ID. Many applications usually co-exist on each Amazon EC2 instance, so the amount of metadata per instance can range from 10 to 200 items. The customer wants to be able to quickly access this metadata using an API without logging into the instances. Which of the following options will satisfy their requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

A)  Create individual Amazon EC2 tags for each metadata item, and associate them with the Amazon EC2 instances. Access the metadata by using the ec2-describe-instance API call. 
B)  Create compound Amazon EC2 tags for the metadata items, where multiple items are joined together in individual tags, and associate them with the Amazon EC2 instances. Access the metadata by using the ec2-describe-tags API call. 
C)  Create a DynamoDB table to hold the metadata, and associate it with the Amazon EC2 instance IDs running the applications. Access the metadata by querying the database via the DynamoDB API. 
D)  As part of the Amazon EC2 Instance bootstrapping process, add the metadata to the Amazon EC2 user data. Access the metadata by using the ec2-describe-instance API call. 
E)  As part of the Amazon EC2 instance bootstrapping process, add the metadata to the Amazon EC2 user data. Access the metadata by accessing its loopback address from a management instance in the same VPC.

Question 5

A DevOps Engineer is deploying a new web application. The company chooses AWS Elastic Beanstalk for deploying and managing the web application, and Amazon RDS MySQL to handle persistent data. The company requires that new deployments have minimal impact if they fail. The application resources must be at full capacity during deployment, and rolling back a deployment must also be possible. Which deployment sequence will meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

A)  Deploy the application using Elastic Beanstalk and connect to an external RDS MySQL instance using Elastic Beanstalk environment properties. Use Elastic Beanstalk features for a blue/green deployment to deploy the new release to a separate environment, and then swap the CNAME in the two environments to redirect traffic to the new version. 
B)  Deploy the application using Elastic Beanstalk, and include RDS MySQL as part of the environment. Use default Elastic Beanstalk behavior to deploy changes to the application, and let rolling updates deploy changes to the application. 
C)  Deploy the application using Elastic Beanstalk, and include RDS MySQL as part of the environment. Use Elastic Beanstalk immutable updates for application deployments. 
D)  Deploy the application using Elastic Beanstalk, and connect to an external RDS MySQL instance using Elastic Beanstalk environment properties. Use Elastic Beanstalk immutable updates for application deployments.

Question 6

A DevOps Engineer is architecting a continuous development strategy for a company's software as a service (SaaS) web application running on AWS. For application and security reasons, users subscribing to this application are distributed across multiple Application Load Balancers (ALBs), each of which has a dedicated Auto Scaling group and fleet of Amazon EC2 instances. The application does not require a build stage, and when it is committed to AWS CodeCommit, the application must trigger a simultaneous deployment to all ALBs, Auto Scaling groups, and EC2 fleets. Which architecture will meet these requirements with the LEAST amount of configuration?

Accepted Answer

A)  Create a single AWS CodePipeline pipeline that deploys the application in parallel using unique AWS CodeDeploy applications and deployment groups created for each ALB-Auto Scaling group pair. 
B)  Create a single AWS CodePipeline pipeline that deploys the application using a single AWS CodeDeploy application and single deployment group. 
C)  Create a single AWS CodePipeline pipeline that deploys the application in parallel using a single AWS CodeDeploy application and unique deployment group for each ALB-Auto Scaling group pair. 
D)  Create an AWS CodePipeline pipeline for each ALB-Auto Scaling group pair that deploys the application using an AWS CodeDeploy application and deployment group created for the same ALB-Auto Scaling group pair.

Question 7

You were just hired as a DevOps Engineer for a startup. Your startup uses AWS for 100% of their infrastructure. They currently have no automation at all for deployment, and they have had many failures while trying to deploy to production. The company has told you deployment process risk mitigation is the most important thing now, and you have a lot of budget for tools and AWS resources. Their stack:  The scaling group properly varies between 4 and 12 EC2 servers. Which of the following approaches, given this company's stack and their priorities, best meets the company's needs?

Accepted Answer

A)  Model the stack in AWS Elastic Beanstalk as a single Application with multiple Environments. Use Elastic Beanstalk's Rolling Deploy option to progressively roll out application code changes when promoting across environments. 
B)  Model the stack in 3 CloudFormation templates: Data layer, compute layer, and networking layer. Write stack deployment and integration testing automation following Blue-Green methodologies. 
C)  Model the stack in AWS OpsWorks as a single Stack, with 1 compute layer and its associated ELB. Use Chef and App Deployments to automate Rolling Deployment. 
D)  Model the stack in 1 CloudFormation template, to ensure consistency and dependency graph resolution. Write deployment and integration testing automation following Rolling Deployment methodologies.

Question 8

A DevOps Engineer must implement monitoring for a workload running on Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS MySQL. The monitoring must include: Application logs and operating system metrics for the Amazon EC2 instances Database logs and operating system metrics for the Amazon RDS database Which steps should the Engineer take?

Accepted Answer

A)  Install an Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 and RDS instances. Configure the agent to send the operating system metrics and application and database logs to CloudWatch. 
B)  Install an Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instance, and configure the agent to send the application logs and operating system metrics to CloudWatch. Enable RDS Enhanced Monitoring, and modify the RDS instance to publish database logs to CloudWatch Logs. 
C)  Install an Amazon CloudWatch Logs agent on the EC2 instance and configure it to send application logs to CloudWatch. 
D)  Set up scheduled tasks on the EC2 and RDS instances to put operating system metrics and application and database logs into an Amazon S3 bucket. Set up an event on the bucket to invoke an AWS Lambda function to monitor for errors each time an object is put into the bucket.

Question 9

A DevOps Engineer manages a large commercial website that runs on Amazon EC2. The website uses Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to collect and process web logs. The Engineer manages the Kinesis consumer application, which also runs on EC2. Spikes of data cause the Kinesis consumer application to fall behind, and the streams drop records before they can be processed. What is the FASTEST method to improve stream handling?

Accepted Answer

A)  Modify the Kinesis consumer application to store the logs durably in amazon S3. Use Amazon EMR to process the data directly on S3 to derive customer insights and store the results in S3. 
B)  Horizontally scale the Kinesis consumer application by adding more EC2 instances based on the GetRecord.IteratorAgeMilliseconds Amazon CloudWatch metric. Increase the Kinesis Data Streams retention period. Horizontally scale the Kinesis consumer application by adding more EC2 instances based on the GetRecord.IteratorAgeMilliseconds Amazon CloudWatch metric. Increase the Kinesis Data Streams retention period. 
C)  Convert the Kinesis consumer application to run as an AWS Lambda function. Configure the Kinesis Data Streams as the event source for the Lambda function to process the data streams. 
D)  Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis Data Streams to increase the overall throughput so that the consumer processes data faster.

Question 10

Your application is currently running on Amazon EC2 instances behind a load balancer. Your management has decided to use a Blue/Green deployment strategy. How should you implement this for each deployment?

Accepted Answer

A)  Set up Amazon Route 53 health checks to fail over from any Amazon EC2 instance that is currently being deployed to. 
B)  Using AWS CloudFormation, create a test stack for validating the code, and then deploy the code to each production Amazon EC2 instance. 
C)  Create a new load balancer with new Amazon EC2 instances, carry out the deployment, and then switch DNS over to the new load balancer using Amazon Route 53 after testing. 
D)  Launch more Amazon EC2 instances to ensure high availability, de-register each Amazon EC2 instance from the load balancer, upgrade it, and test it, and then register it again with the load balancer.

Question 11

A Development team is adding a new country to an e-commerce application. This addition requires that new application features be added to the shipping component of the application. The team has not decided if all new features should be added, as some will take approximately six weeks to build. While the final decision on the shipping component features is being made, other team members are continuing to work on other features of the application. Based on this situation, how should the application feature deployments be managed?

Accepted Answer

A)  Add the code updates as commits to the release branch. The team can delay the deployment until all features are ready. 
B)  Add the code updates as commits to a feature branch. Merge the commits to a release branch as features are ready. 
C)  Add the code updates as a single commit when a feature is ready. Tag this commit with "new-country." 
D)  Create a new repository named "new-country". Commit all the code changes to the new repository.

Question 12

A development team is using AWS CodeCommit to version control application code and AWS CodePipeline to orchestrate software deployments. The team has decided to use a remote master branch as the trigger for the pipeline to integrate code changes. A developer has pushed code changes to the CodeCommit repository, but noticed that the pipeline had no reaction, even after 10 minutes. Which of the following actions should be taken to troubleshoot this issue?

Accepted Answer

A)  Check that an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule has been created for the master branch to trigger the pipeline. 
B)  Check that the CodePipeline service role has permission to access the CodeCommit repository. 
C)  Check that the developer's IAM role has permission to push to the CodeCommit repository. 
D)  Check to see if the pipeline failed to start because of CodeCommit errors in Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

Question 13

A retail company has adopted AWS OpsWorks for managing its deployments. In the last three months, the company has discovered that some production instances have been restarting without reason. Upon inspection of the AWS CloudTrail logs, a DevOps Engineer determined that those instances were restarted by OpsWorks. The Engineer now wants automated email notifications whenever OpsWorks restarts an instance when the instance is deemed unhealthy or unable to communicate with the service endpoint. How can the Engineer meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

A)  Create a Chef recipe to place a cron to run a custom script within the Amazon EC2 instances that sends an email to the team by using Amazon SES if the OpsWorks agent detects an instance failure. 
B)  Create an Amazon SNS topic and create a subscription for this topic that contains the destination email address. Create an Amazon CloudWatch rule: specify aws.opsworks as a source and specify auto-healing in the initiated_by details. Use the SNS topic as a target. Create an Amazon SNS topic and create a subscription for this topic that contains the destination email address. Create an Amazon CloudWatch rule: specify aws.opsworks as a source and specify auto-healing in the initiated_by details. Use the SNS topic as a target. 
C)  Create an Amazon SNS topic and create a subscription for this topic that contains the destination email address. Create an Amazon CloudWatch rule specify aws.opsworks as a source and specify instance-replacement in the initiated_by details. Use the SNS topic as a target. Create an Amazon SNS topic and create a subscription for this topic that contains the destination email address. Create an Amazon CloudWatch rule specify instance-replacement 
D)  Create a subscription for this topic that contains the email address. Enable instance restart notifications within the OpsWorks layer and indicate the destination email address for the notification.

Question 14

Which status represents a failure state in AWS CloudFormation?

Accepted Answer

A) UPDATE_COMPLETE_CLEANUP_IN_PROGRESS B) DELETE_COMPLETE_WITH_ARTIFACTS C) ROLLBACK_IN_PROGRESS D) ROLLBACK_FAILED

Question 15

For AWS Auto Scaling, what is the first transition state an existing instance enters after leaving steady state in Standby mode?

Accepted Answer

A)  Detaching 
B)  Terminating:Wait 
C)  Pending 
D)  EnteringStandby

Question 16

Using the AWS CLI, which command would you use to change the configuration settings for a CloudTrail trail?

Accepted Answer

A)  modify-trail 
B)  change-trail 
C)  update-trail 
D)  set-trail

Question 17

A company is deploying a new application that uses Amazon EC2 instances. The company needs a solution to query application logs and AWS account API activity. Which solution will meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

A)  Use the Amazon CloudWatch agent to send logs from the EC2 instances to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Configure AWS CloudTrail to deliver the API logs to Amazon S3. Use CloudWatch to query both sets of logs. 
B)  Use the Amazon CloudWatch agent to send logs from the EC2 instances to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Configure AWS CloudTrail to deliver the API logs to CloudWatch Logs. Use CloudWatch Logs Insights to query both sets of logs. 
C)  Use the Amazon CloudWatch agent to send logs from the EC2 instances to Amazon Kinesis. Configure AWS CloudTrail to deliver the API logs to Kinesis. Use Kinesis to load the data into Amazon Redshift. Use Amazon Redshift to query both sets of logs. 
D)  Use the Amazon CloudWatch agent to send logs from the EC2 instances to Amazon S3. Use AWS CloudTrail to deliver the API logs to Amazon S3 Amazon S3. Use Amazon Athena to query both sets of logs in Amazon S3.

Question 18

When specifying multiple variable names and values for a playbook on the command line, which of the following is the correct syntax?

Accepted Answer

A)  ansible-playbook playbook.yml -e `host="foo" pkg="bar"' 
B)  ansible-playbook playbook.yml -e `host: "foo", pkg: "bar"' 
C)  ansible-playbook playbook.yml -e `host="foo"' -e `pkg="bar"' 
D)  ansible-playbook playbook.yml --extra-vars "host=foo", "pkg=bar"

Question 19

A company plans to stop using Amazon EC2 key pairs for SSH access, and instead plans to use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. To further enhance security, access to Session Manager must take place over a private network only. Which combinations of actions will accomplish this? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

A)  Allow inbound access to TCP port 22 in all associated EC2 security groups from the VPC CIDR range. 
B)  Attach an IAM policy with the necessary Systems Manager permissions to the existing IAM instance profile. 
C)  Create a VPC endpoint for Systems Manager in the desired Region. 
D)  Deploy a new EC2 instance that will act as a bastion host to the rest of the EC2 instance fleet. 
E)  Remove any default routes in the associated route tables.

Question 20

A user is defining a policy for an IAM user. Which of the below mentioned options is a valid version defined for the policy?

Accepted Answer

A)  "Version":"2014-01-01" 
B)  "Version":"2011-10-17" 
C)  "Version":"2013-10-17" 
D)  "Version":"2012-10-17"

Exam 12: AWS DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C01)