1. Question 1

Minimize global data transfer costs for static S3 website

• ❌ Auto Scaling group

• ❌ Cross-Region Replication

• ❌ Move to EC2

• ✅ Create a CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as origin

Explanation:
CloudFront caches globally → reduces S3 data transfer cost significantly.

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2. Question 2 — (Select TWO)

Secure three-tier architecture, HTTPS only

• ❌ API Gateway + private subnets

• ✅ Attach an Internet Gateway; public web tier, private app/db tiers

• ❌ Virtual Private Gateway

• ❌ Allow all traffic

• ✅ Web SG allows HTTPS from internet → App SG allows only Web SG → DB SG allows only App SG

Correct: 2 and 5

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3. Question 3

Identify malicious traffic destination

• ❌ CloudTrail

• ✅ VPC Flow Logs

• ❌ AWS Health Dashboard

• ❌ CloudWatch logs

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4. Question 4

Automate SSL/TLS certificates, central management

• ❌ KMS

• ❌ Systems Manager Run Command

• ✅ AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)

• ❌ Parameter Store

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5. Question 5

Data lake for mixed files, HA, protected from deletion, cost-effective

• ❌ S3 + CRR

• ❌ DynamoDB

• ❌ RDS Multi-AZ

• ✅ S3 bucket with object versioning enabled

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6. Question 6

Decouple and preserve request order

• ✅ SQS FIFO queue

• ❌ SQS standard

• ❌ SNS

• ❌ Kinesis

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7. Question 7

Multi-AZ resilience + scale for gaming workloads

• ✅ ALB → Auto Scaling group across two AZs

• ❌ ALB in one AZ

• ❌ Peered VPCs

• ❌ Multi-region ASG (not supported)

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8. Question 8

Highly available MySQL with minimal management

• ❌ EC2 + EBS snapshots

• ❌ RDS Single-AZ

• ✅ RDS Multi-AZ

• ❌ DynamoDB

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9. Question 9

OS access required, HA RDBMS

• You need EC2 because OS access required.

• ❌ Single AZ

• ❌ RDS (no OS access)

• ❌ EC2 in placement group (not HA across AZs)

• ✅ Multiple EC2 instances in replication across multiple AZs

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10. Question 10

DR in another Region, RPO seconds, RTO minutes, scaled-down version

• ❌ Multi-site active/active

• ❌ Backup/restore

• ❌ Pilot light

• ✅ Warm standby

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11. Question 11

Full OS control + HA Oracle

• ❌ RDS Single-AZ

• ❌ RDS Multi-AZ (no OS access)

• ✅ EC2 across two AZs with Oracle cluster

• ❌ EC2 in single AZ

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12. Question 12

Stop Spot charges

• ❌ Cancel request only

• ❌ Terminate only

• ❌ Terminate then cancel?

• ✅ Cancel Spot request AND terminate Spot Instances

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13. Question 13

Charge departments separately with least effort

• ❌ Aurora global db

• ❌ RDS replicas

• ❌ Redshift clusters per dept

• ✅ Athena with Workgroups per department (billing separation)

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14. Question 14 — (Select TWO)

Automate EBS snapshot lifecycle with least effort

• ❌ AWS Backup (works, but better for RDS/EFS)

• ❌ Copy to S3

• ✅ Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM)

• ❌ EventBridge + Step Functions

• ❌ Systems Manager backups

Correct: 3 and 1 (AWS Backup is valid for EBS now)

Correct answers: 1 and 3

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15. Question 15

Low-cost archive, retrieval next business day

• ❌ EC2 + EBS

• ✅ S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval

• ❌ S3 Standard-IA

• ❌ Replicate to another region

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16. Question 16

Most cost-effective compute for small, occasional S3-based ML inference

• ❌ ECS

• ❌ EC2 Spot

• ❌ Elastic Beanstalk

• ✅ AWS Lambda

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17. Question 17 — (Select TWO)

Modernize database writes, reduce overhead

• ❌ Move apps to Fargate

• ❌ Move local DBs to Aurora Serverless

• ❌ RDS with read replica

• ✅ Refactor apps to use SQS (buffer writes)

• ❌ Add ElastiCache (not relevant)

Correct: 4 and (optional compute modernization)
AWS expected answer: 1 and 4

Correct answers: Migrate apps to Fargate + Use SQS

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18. Question 18

Reduce EC2 test environment cost; business hours only

• ❌ Compute Optimizer

• ✅ Use CloudWatch scheduled actions to start/stop instances

• ❌ Reserved Instances (bad for test env)

• ❌ Lambda

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19. Question 19

Reduce data transfer costs for S3 + EC2 application

• ❌ Duplicate compute in another Region

• ❌ Lambda@Edge

• ✅ CloudFront in front of S3

• ❌ Replicate S3 to other Regions

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🧾 Summary Table

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