Q1. - (Topic 2)
An organization has created 50 IAM users. The organization wants that each user can change their password but cannot change their access keys. How can the organization achieve this?
A. The organization has to create a special password policy and attach it to each user
B. The root account owner has to use CLI which forces each IAM user to change their password on first login
C. By default each IAM user can modify their passwords
D. The root account owner can set the policy from the IAM console under the password policy screen
Answer: D
Explanation:
With AWS IAM, organizations can use the AWS Management Console to display, create, change or delete a password policy. As a part of managing the password policy, the user can enable all users to manage their own passwords. If the user has selected the option which allows the IAM users to modify their password, he does not need to set a separate policy for the users. This option in the AWS console allows changing only the password.
Q2. - (Topic 1)
You have set up Individual AWS accounts for each project. You have been asked to make sure your AWS Infrastructure costs do not exceed the budget set per project for each month.
Which of the following approaches can help ensure that you do not exceed the budget each month?
A. Consolidate your accounts so you have a single bill for all accounts and projects
B. Set up auto scaling with CloudWatch alarms using SNS to notify you when you are running too many Instances in a given account
C. Set up CloudWatch billing alerts for all AWS resources used by each project, with a notification occurring when the amount for each resource tagged to a particular project matches the budget allocated to the project.
D. Set up CloudWatch billing alerts for all AWS resources used by each account, with email notifications when it hits 50%. 80% and 90% of its budgeted monthly spend
Answer: C
Q3. - (Topic 2)
A user has stored data on an encrypted EBS volume. The user wants to share the data with his friend’s AWS account. How can user achieve this?
A. Create an AMI from the volume and share the AMI
B. Copy the data to an unencrypted volume and then share
C. Take a snapshot and share the snapshot with a friend
D. If both the accounts are using the same encryption key then the user can share the volume directly
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS EBS supports encryption of the volume. It also supports creating volumes from existing snapshots
provided the snapshots are created from encrypted volumes. If the user is having data on an encrypted volume and is trying to share it with others, he has to copy the data from the encrypted volume to a new unencrypted volume. Only then can the user share it as an encrypted volume data. Otherwise the snapshot cannot be shared.
Q4. - (Topic 3)
A user is receiving a notification from the RDS DB whenever there is a change in the DB security group. The user does not want to receive these notifications for only a month. Thus, he does not want to delete the notification. How can the user configure this?
A. Change the Disable button for notification to “Yes” in the RDS console
B. Set the send mail flag to false in the DB event notification console
C. The only option is to delete the notification from the console
D. Change the Enable button for notification to “No” in the RDS console
Answer: D
Explanation:
Amazon RDS uses the Amazon Simple Notification Service to provide a notification when an Amazon RDS event occurs. Event notifications are sent to the addresses that the user has provided while creating the subscription. The user can easily turn off the notification without deleting a subscription by setting the Enabled radio button to No in the Amazon RDS console or by setting the Enabled parameter to false using the CLI or Amazon RDS API.
Q5. - (Topic 1)
You are running a database on an EC2 instance, with the data stored on Elastic Block Store (EBS) for persistence At times throughout the day, you are seeing large variance in the response times of the database queries Looking into the instance with the isolate command you see a lot of wait time on the disk volume that the database's data is stored on.
What two ways can you improve the performance of the database's storage while maintaining the current persistence of the data?
Choose 2 answers
A. Move to an SSD backed instance
B. Move the database to an EBS-Optimized Instance
C. T Use Provisioned IOPs EBS
D. Use the ephemeral storage on an m2 4xiarge Instance Instead
Answer: A,B
Q6. - (Topic 3)
A user has launched an EC2 instance. However, due to some reason the instance was terminated. If the user wants to find out the reason for termination, where can he find the details?
A. It is not possible to find the details after the instance is terminated
B. The user can get information from the AWS console, by checking the Instance description under the State transition reason label
C. The user can get information from the AWS console, by checking the Instance description under the Instance Status Change reason label
D. The user can get information from the AWS console, by checking the Instance description under the Instance Termination reason label
Answer: D
Explanation:
An EC2 instance, once terminated, may be available in the AWS console for a while after termination. The user can find the details about the termination from the description tab under the label State transition reason. If the instance is still running, there will be no reason listed. If the user has explicitly stopped or terminated the instance, the reason will be “User initiated shutdown”.
Q7. - (Topic 3)
A user is trying to create an EBS volume with the highest PIOPS supported by EBS. What is the minimum size of EBS required to have the maximum IOPS?
A. 124
B. 150
C. 134
D. 128
Answer: C
Explanation:
A provisioned IOPS EBS volume can range in size from 10 GB to 1 TB and the user can provision up to 4000 IOPS per volume. The ratio of IOPS provisioned to the volume size requested should be a maximum of 30.
Q8. - (Topic 3)
A user has created a subnet in VPC and launched an EC2 instance within it. The user has not selected the option to assign the IP address while launching the instance. Which of the
below mentioned statements is true with respect to this scenario?
A. The instance will always have a public DNS attached to the instance by default
B. The user can directly attach an elastic IP to the instance
C. The instance will never launch if the public IP is not assigned
D. The user would need to create an internet gateway and then attach an elastic IP to the instance to connect from internet
Answer: D
Explanation:
A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC. is a virtual network dedicated to the user’s AWS account. A user can create a subnet with VPC and launch instances inside that subnet. When the user is launching an instance he needs to select an option which attaches a public IP to the instance. If the user has not selected the option to attach the public IP then it will only have a private IP when launched. The user cannot connect to the instance from the internet. If the user wants an elastic IP to connect to the instance from the internet he should create an internet gateway and assign an elastic IP to instance.
Q9. - (Topic 2)
A user has configured an Auto Scaling group with ELB. The user has enabled detailed CloudWatch monitoring on Auto Scaling. Which of the below mentioned statements will help the user understand the functionality better?
A. It is not possible to setup detailed monitoring for Auto Scaling
B. In this case, Auto Scaling will send data every minute and will charge the user extra
C. Detailed monitoring will send data every minute without additional charges
D. Auto Scaling sends data every minute only and does not charge the user
Answer: B
Explanation:
CloudWatch is used to monitor AWS as well as the custom services. It provides either basic or detailed monitoring for the supported AWS products. In basic monitoring, a service sends data points to CloudWatch every five minutes, while in detailed monitoring a service sends data points to CloudWatch every minute. Auto Scaling includes 7 metrics and 1 dimension, and sends data to CloudWatch every 5 minutes by default. The user can enable detailed monitoring for Auto Scaling, which sends data to CloudWatch every minute. However, this will have some extra-costs.
Q10. - (Topic 3)
A user runs the command “dd if=/dev/xvdf of=/dev/null bs=1M” on an EBS volume created from a snapshot and attached to a Linux instance. Which of the below mentioned activities is the user performing with the step given above?
A. Pre warming the EBS volume
B. Initiating the device to mount on the EBS volume
C. Formatting the volume
D. Copying the data from a snapshot to the device
Answer: A
Explanation:
When the user creates an EBS volume and is trying to access it for the first time it will encounter reduced IOPS due to wiping or initiating of the block storage. To avoid this as well as achieve the best performance it is required to pre warm the EBS volume. For a volume created from a snapshot and attached with a Linux OS, the “dd” command pre warms the existing data on EBS and any restored snapshots of volumes that have been previously fully pre warmed. This command maintains incremental snapshots; however, because this operation is read-only, it does not pre warm unused space that has never been written to on the original volume. In the command “dd if=/dev/xvdf of=/dev/null bs=1M” , the parameter “if=input file” should be set to the drive that the user wishes to warm. The “of=output file” parameter should be set to the Linux null virtual device, /dev/null. The “bs” parameter sets the block size of the read operation; for optimal performance, this should be set to 1 MB.
Q11. - (Topic 2)
An organization is using cost allocation tags to find the cost distribution of different departments and projects. One of the instances has two separate tags with the key/ value as “InstanceName/HR”, “CostCenter/HR”. What will AWS do in this case?
A. InstanceName is a reserved tag for AWS. Thus, AWS will not allow this tag
B. AWS will not allow the tags as the value is the same for different keys
C. AWS will allow tags but will not show correctly in the cost allocation report due to the same value of the two separate keys
D. AWS will allow both the tags and show properly in the cost distribution report
Answer: D
Explanation:
AWS provides cost allocation tags to categorize and track the AWS costs. When the user applies tags to his AWS resources, AWS generates a cost allocation report as a comma-separated value (CSV file. with the usage and costs aggregated by those tags. Each tag will have a key-value and can be applied to services, such as EC2, S3, RDS, EMR, etc. It is required that the key should be different for each tag. The value can be the same for different keys. In this case since the value is different, AWS will properly show the distribution report with the correct values.
Q12. - (Topic 3)
An organization (Account ID 123412341234. has attached the below mentioned IAM policy to a user. What does this policy statement entitle the user to perform?
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [{
"Sid": "AllowUsersAllActionsForCredentials",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"iam:*LoginProfile",
"iam:*AccessKey*",
"iam:*SigningCertificate*"
],
"Resource": ["arn:aws:iam:: 123412341234:user/${aws:username}"]
}]
}
A. The policy allows the IAM user to modify all IAM user’s credentials using the console, SDK, CLI or APIs
B. The policy will give an invalid resource error
C. The policy allows the IAM user to modify all credentials using only the console
D. The policy allows the user to modify all IAM user’s password, sign in certificates and access keys using only CLI, SDK or APIs
Answer: D
Explanation:
WS Identity and Access Management is a web service which allows organizations to manage users and user permissions for various AWS services. If the organization (Account ID 123412341234. wants some of their users to manage credentials (access keys, password, and sing in certificates. of all IAM users, they should set an applicable policy to that user or group of users. The below mentioned policy allows the IAM user to modify the credentials of all IAM user’s using only CLI, SDK or APIs. The user cannot use the AWS
console for this activity since he does not have list permission for the IAM users.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [{
"Sid": "AllowUsersAllActionsForCredentials",
"Effect": "Allow"
"Action": [
"iam:*LoginProfile",
"iam:*AccessKey*",
"iam:*SigningCertificate*"
],
"Resource": ["arn:aws:iam::123412341234:user/${aws:username}"]
Amazon AWS-SysOps : Practice Test
}] }
Q13. - (Topic 3)
A user has enabled versioning on an S3 bucket. The user is using server side encryption for data at Rest. If the user is supplying his own keys for encryption (SSE-C., which of the below mentioned statements is true?
A. The user should use the same encryption key for all versions of the same object
B. It is possible to have different encryption keys for different versions of the same object
C. AWS S3 does not allow the user to upload his own keys for server side encryption
D. The SSE-C does not work when versioning is enabled
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS S3 supports client side or server side encryption to encrypt all data at rest. The server side encryption can either have the S3 supplied AES-256 encryption key or the user can send the key along with each API call to supply his own encryption key (SSE-C.. If the bucket is versioning-enabled, each object version uploaded by the user using the SSE-C feature can have its own encryption key. The user is responsible for tracking which encryption key was used for which object's version
Q14. - (Topic 3)
A user is observing the EC2 CPU utilization metric on CloudWatch. The user has observed some interesting patterns while filtering over the 1 week period for a particular hour. The user wants to zoom that data point to a more granular period. How can the user do that easily with CloudWatch?
A. The user can zoom a particular period by selecting that period with the mouse and then releasing the mouse
B. The user can zoom a particular period by double clicking on that period with the mouse
C. The user can zoom a particular period by specifying the aggregation data for that period
D. The user can zoom a particular period by specifying the period in the Time Range
Answer: A
Q15. - (Topic 2)
A user is trying to setup a recurring Auto Scaling process. The user has setup one process to scale up every day at 8 am and scale down at 7 PM. The user is trying to setup another recurring process which scales up on the 1st of every month at 8 AM and scales down the same day at 7 PM. What will Auto Scaling do in this scenario?
A. Auto Scaling will execute both processes but will add just one instance on the 1st
B. Auto Scaling will add two instances on the 1st of the month
C. Auto Scaling will schedule both the processes but execute only one process randomly
D. Auto Scaling will throw an error since there is a conflict in the schedule of two separate Auto Scaling Processes
Answer: D
Explanation:
Auto Scaling based on a schedule allows the user to scale the application in response to predictable load changes. The user can also configure the recurring schedule action which will follow the Linux cron format. As per Auto Scaling, a scheduled action must have a unique time value. If the user attempts to schedule an activity at a time when another existing activity is already scheduled, the call will be rejected with an error message noting the conflict.
Q16. - (Topic 3)
A user has created a VPC with CIDR 20.0.0.0/16 using the wizard. The user has created a public subnet CIDR (20.0.0.0/24. and VPN only subnets CIDR (20.0.1.0/24. along with the
VPN gateway (vgw-12345. to connect to the user’s data centre. The user’s data centre has CIDR 172.28.0.0/12. The user has also setup a NAT instance (i-123456. to allow traffic to the internet from the VPN subnet. Which of the below mentioned options is not a valid entry for the main route table in this scenario?
A. Destination: 20.0.1.0/24 and Target: i-12345
B. Destination: 0.0.0.0/0 and Target: i-12345
C. Destination: 172.28.0.0/12 and Target: vgw-12345
D. Destination: 20.0.0.0/16 and Target: local
Answer: A
Explanation:
The user can create subnets as per the requirement within a VPC. If the user wants to connect VPC from his own data centre, he can setup a public and VPN only subnet which uses hardware VPN access to connect with his data centre. When the user has configured this setup with Wizard, it will create a virtual private gateway to route all traffic of the VPN subnet. If the user has setup a NAT instance to route all the internet requests then all requests to the internet should be routed to it. All requests to the organization’s DC will be routed to the VPN gateway. Here are the valid entries for the main route table in this scenario: Destination: 0.0.0.0/0 & Target: i-12345 (To route all internet traffic to the NAT Instance. Destination: 172.28.0.0/12 & Target: vgw-12345 (To route all the organization’s data centre traffic to the VPN gateway. Destination: 20.0.0.0/16 & Target: local (To allow local routing in VPC.