Assessment Test

Question 1

True/false: An EC2 instance must be in a public subnet to access the Internet.

Answer 1

False - An EC2 instance can access the Internet from a private subnet provided it uses a NAT gateway or NAT instance. See Chapter 4 for more information.

Question 2

Which instance type will, if left running, continue to incur costs?
A. Spot
B. Standard reserved
C. On-demand
D. Convertible reserved

Answer 2

C. On-demand
On-demand instances will continue to run and incur costs. Reserved instances cost the same whether they’re running or stopped. Spot instances will be terminated when the spot price exceeds your bid price. See Chapter 13 for more information.

Question 3

You created a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using the Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block 10.0.0.0/24. You need to connect to this VPC from your internal network, but the IP addresses in use on your internal network overlap with the CIDR. Which of the following is a valid way to address this problem?
A. Remove the CIDR and use IPv6 instead.
B. Change the VPC’s CIDR.
C. Create a new VPC with a different CIDR.
D. Create a secondary CIDR for the VPC.

Answer 3

C. Create a new VPC with a different CIDR.
You can’t change the primary CIDR for a VPC, so you must create a new one to connect it to your internal network. See Chapter 4 for more information.

Question 4

True/false: You can create a DynamoDB global secondary index for an existing table at any time.

Answer 4

True - You can create a global secondary index for an existing table at any time. You can create a local secondary index only when you create the table. See Chapter 5 for more information.

Question 5

Where do AWS Config and CloudTrail store their logs?
A. S3 buckets
B. CloudWatch Logs
C. CloudTrail Events
D. DynamoDB
E. Amazon Athena

Answer 5

A. S3 buckets
Both store their logs in S3 buckets. See Chapter 7 for more information.

Question 6

Which ElastiCache engine can persistently store data?
A. MySQL
B. Memcached
C. MongoDB
D. Redis

Answer 6

D. Redis
ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis, but only the latter can store data persistently. See Chapter 11 for more information.

Question 7

What is a difference between a token generated by the AWS Security Token Service (STS) and an IAM access key?
A. The token generated by STS can’t be used by an IAM principal.
B. An IAM access key is unique.
C. The token generated by STS can be used only once.
D. The token generated by STS expires.

Answer 7

D. The token generated by STS expires.
STS tokens expire and IAM access keys do not. An STS token can be used more than once. IAM access keys and STS tokens are both unique. An IAM principal can use an STS token. See Chapter 6 for more information.

Question 8

Which of the following services can you deactivate on your account?
A. Security Token Service (STS)
B. CloudWatch
C. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
D. Lambda

Answer 8

A. Security Token Service (STS)
You can deactivate STS for all regions except US East. See Chapter 12 for more information.

Question 9

Which of the following steps does the most to protect your AWS account?
A. Deleting unused Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies
B. Revoking unnecessary access for IAM users
C. Rotating root access keys
D. Restricting access to S3 buckets
E. Rotating Secure Shell (SSH) key pairs

Answer 9

B. Revoking unnecessary access for IAM users
Revoking unnecessary access for IAM users is the most effective of the listed measures for protecting your AWS account. See Chapter 6 for more information.

Question 10

Which of the following can be used to encrypt the operating system of an EC2 instance?
A. AWS Secrets Manager
B. CloudHSM
C. AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
D. AWS Security Token Service (STS)

Answer 10

C. AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
KMS can be used to encrypt Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes that store an instance’s operating system. See Chapter 6 for more information.

Question 11

True/false: You can use an existing domain name with Route 53 without switching its registration to AWS.
A. True
B. False

Answer 11

A. True
Route 53 is a true DNS service in that it can host zones for any domain name. You can also register domain names with or transfer them to Route 53. See Chapter 8 for more information.

Question 12

You want to use Route 53 to send users to the application load balancer closest to them. Which of the following routing policies lets you do this with the least effort?
A. Latency routing
B. Geolocation routing
C. Geoproximity routing
D. Edge routing

Answer 12

C. Geoproximity routing
Geoproximity routing routes users to the location closest to them. Geolocation routing requires you to create records for specific locations or create a default record. See Chapter 8 for more information.

Question 13

True/false: The Developer Support plan provides access to a support application programming interface (API).
A. True
B. False

Answer 13

B. False
The Business plan offers access to a support API, but the Developer plan does not. See Chapter 1 for more information.

Question 14

You’re designing an application that takes multiple image files and combines them into a video file that users on the Internet can download. Which of the following can help you quickly implement your application in the fastest, most highly available, and most cost-effective manner?
A. EC2 spot fleet
B. Lambda
C. Relational Database Service (RDS)
D. Auto Scaling

Answer 14

Lambda
Lambda is a highly available, reliable, “serverless” compute platform that runs functions as needed and scales elastically to meet demand. EC2 spot instances can be shut down on short notice. See Chapter 10 for more information.

Question 15

True/false: Changing the instance type of an EC2 instance will change its elastic IP address.
A. True
B. False

Answer 15

B. False
An elastic IP address will not change. A public IP address attached to an instance will change if the instance is stopped, as would happen when changing the instance type. See Chapter 2 for more information.

Question 16

True/false: An EC2 instance in a private subnet can resolve an “A” resource record for a public hosted zone hosted in Route 53.
A. True
B. False

Answer 16

A. True
An EC2 instance in a private subnet still has access to Amazon’s private DNS servers, which can resolve records stored in public hosted zones. See Chapter 8 for more information.

Question 17

True/false: You can use either CodeDeploy or an AWS Systems Manager command document to deploy a Lambda application.
A. True
B. False

Answer 17

B. False
You can use CodeDeploy to deploy an application to Lambda or EC2 instances. But an AWS Systems Manager command document works only on EC2 instances. See Chapter 14 for more information.

Question 18

True/false: AWS is responsible for managing the network configuration of your EC2 instances.
A. True
B. False

Answer 18

B. False
Customers are responsible for managing the network configuration of EC2 instances. AWS is responsible for the physical network infrastructure. See Chapter 1 for more information.

Question 19

True/false: After uploading a new object to S3, there will be a slight delay (one to two seconds) before the object is available.
A. True
B. False

Answer 19

B. False
S3 uses a read-after-write consistency model for new objects, so once you upload an object to S3, it’s immediately available. See Chapter 3 for more information.

Question 20

An application you want to run on EC2 requires you to license it based on the number of physical CPU sockets and cores on the hardware you plan to run the application on. Which of the following tenancy models should you specify?
A. Dedicated host
B. Dedicated instance
C. Shared tenancy
D. Bring your own license

Answer 20

A. Dedicated host
The dedicated host option lets you see the number of physical CPU sockets and cores on a host. See Chapter 2 for more information.

Question 21

Which of the following services can alert you to malware on an EC2 instance?
A. AWS GuardDuty
B. AWS Inspector
C. AWS Shield
D. AWS Web Application Firewall

Answer 21

A. AWS GuardDuty
GuardDuty looks for potentially malicious activity. Inspector looks for vulnerabilities that may result in compromise. Shield and Web Application Firewall protect applications from attack. See Chapter 12 for more information.

Question 22

True/false: You can use a Quick Start Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to create any instance type.
A. True
B. False

Answer 22

A Quick Start AMI is independent of the instance type. See Chapter 2 for more information.
A. True

Question 23

Which of the following use cases is well suited for DynamoDB?
A. Running a MongoDB database on AWS
B. Storing large binary files exceeding 1 GB in size
C. Storing JSON documents that have a consistent structure
D. Storing image assets for a website

Answer 23

C. Storing JSON documents that have a consistent structure
DynamoDB is a key-value store that can be used to store items up to 400 KB in size. See Chapter 5 for more information.

Question 24

True/false: The EBS Lifecycle Manager can take snapshots of volumes that were once attached to terminated instances.
A. True
B. False

Answer 24

True
The EBS Lifecycle Manager can take scheduled snapshots of any EBS volume, regardless of attachment state. See Chapter 13 for more information.

Question 25

True/false: EC2 sends instance memory utilization metrics to CloudWatch every five minutes. A. True B. False

Answer 25

False EC2 doesn’t track instance memory utilization. See Chapter 7 for more information.

Question 26

You’re using EC2 Auto Scaling and want to implement a scaling policy that adds one extra instance only when the average CPU utilization of each instance exceeds 90 percent. However, you don’t want it to add more than one instance every five minutes. Which of the following scaling policies should you use? A. Simple B. Step C. Target tracking D. PercentChangeInCapacity

Answer 26

A. Simple A simple scaling policy changes the group size and then has a cooldown period before doing so again. Step scaling policies don’t have cooldown periods. Target tracking policies attempt to keep a metric at a set value. PercentChangeInCapacity is a simple scaling adjustment type, not a scaling policy. See Chapter 10 for more information.

Question 27

True/false: If versioning is enabled on an S3 bucket, applying encryption to an unencrypted object in that bucket will create a new, encrypted version of that object. A. True B. False

Answer 27

True Applying encryption to an unencrypted object will create a new, encrypted version of that object. Previous versions remain unencrypted. See Chapter 12 for more information.

Question 28

Which of the following lets you spin up new web servers the quickest? A. Lambda B. Auto Scaling C. Elastic Container Service D. CloudFront

Answer 28

C. Elastic Container Service lets you run containers that can launch in a matter of seconds. EC2 instances take longer. Lambda is “serverless,” so you can’t use it to run a web server. CloudFront provides caching but isn’t a web server. See Chapter 13 for more information.

Question 29

True/false: The route table for a public subnet must have a default route pointing to an Internet gateway as a target. A. True B. False

Answer 29

True The definition of a public subnet is a subnet that has a default route pointing to an Internet gateway as a target. Otherwise, it’s a private subnet. See Chapter 4 for more information.

Question 30

Which S3 encryption option does not require AWS persistently storing the encryption keys it uses to decrypt data? A. Client-side encryption B. SSE-KMS C. SSE-S3 D. SSE-C

Answer 30

D. SSE-C With SSE-C you provide your own keys for Amazon to use to decrypt and encrypt your data. AWS doesn’t persistently store the keys. See Chapter 3 for more information.

Question 31

True/false: EC2 Auto Scaling automatically replaces group instances directly terminated by the root user. A. True B. False

Answer 31

True Auto Scaling always attempts to maintain the minimum group size or, if set, the desired capacity. See Chapter 10 for more information.

Question 32

True/false: CloudFormation stack names are case-sensitive. A. True B. False

Answer 32

True Almost everything in CloudFormation is case sensitive. See Chapter 14 for more information.

Question 33

True/false: Durability measures the percentage of likelihood that a given object will not be inadvertently lost by AWS over the course of a year. A. True B. False

Answer 33

True Durability corresponds to an average annual expected loss of objects stored on S3, not including objects you delete. Availability measures the amount of time S3 will be available to let you retrieve those objects. See Chapter 3 for more information.

Question 34

You configured a CloudWatch alarm to monitor CPU utilization for an EC2 instance. The alarm began in the INSUFFICIENT_DATA state and then entered the ALARM state. What can you conclude from this? A. The instance recently rebooted. B. CPU utilization is too high. C. The CPU utilization metric crossed the alarm threshold. D. The instance is stopped.

Answer 34

C. The CPU utilization metric crossed the alarm threshold. The transition to the ALARM state simply implies that the metric crossed a threshold but doesn’t tell you what the threshold is. Newly created alarms start out in the INSUFFICIENT_DATA state. See Chapter 7 for more information.

Question 35

Which of the following services is most useful for decoupling the components of a monolithic application? A. SNS B. KMS C. SQS D. Glacier

Answer 35

SQS Simple Queue Service (SQS) allows for event-driven messaging within distributed systems that can decouple while coordinating the discrete steps of a larger process. See Chapter 1 for more information.

Question 36

True/false: S3 cross-region replication uses transfer acceleration. A. True B. False

Answer 36

False S3 cross-region replication transfers objects between different buckets. Transfer acceleration uses a CloudFront edge location to speed up transfers between S3 and the Internet. See Chapter 11 for more information.

Question 37

True/false: Enabling point-in-time RDS snapshots is sufficient to give you a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 10 minutes. A. True B. False

Answer 37

True Enabling point-in-time recovery gives you an RPO of about five minutes. The recovery time objective (RTO) depends on the amount of data to restore. See Chapter 5 for more information.

Question 38

Which of the following is not an AWS service? A. CloudFormation B. Puppet C. OpsWorks D. Snowball

Answer 38

Puppet is a configuration management platform that AWS offers via OpsWorks but is not itself an AWS service. See Chapter 11 for more information.

Question 39

Where might CodeDeploy look for the appspec.yml file? (Choose two.) A. GitHub B. CodeCommit C. S3 D. CloudFormation

Answer 39

Github and S3 CodeDeploy looks for the appspec.yml file with the application files it is to deploy, which can be stored in S3 or on GitHub. See Chapter 14 for more information.