AWS Certification: EC2 Questions

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

1. A company has a set of EC2 Instances hosted on the AWS Cloud. These instances form a web server farm which services a web application accessed by users on the Internet. Which of the following would help make this architecture more fault tolerant? Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

A. Ensure the instances are placed in separate Availability Zones.

B. Ensure the instances are placed in separate regions.

C. Use an AWS Load Balancer to distribute the traffic.

D. Use Auto Scaling to distribute the traffic.

2. A company has a set of Hyper-V machines and VMware virtual machines. They are now planning on migrating these instances to the AWS Cloud. Which of the following can be used to move these resources to the AWS Cloud?

A. DB Migration utility

B. Use the VM import Tools.

C. Use AWS Migration Tools.

D. Use AWS Config Tools.

3. A company is building a Two-Tier web application to serve dynamic transaction-based content. The Data Tier uses an Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) database. What services should you leverage to enable an elastic and scalable Web Tier?

A. Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon EC2, and Auto Scaling

B. Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ, and Amazon S3

C. Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ and Auto Scaling

D. Amazon EC2, Amazon Dynamo DB, and Amazon S3

4. A company is hosting EC2 instances which focus on work-loads for non-production and non-priority batch loads. Also, these processes can be interrupted at any time. What is the best pricing model that can be used for EC2 instances in this case?

A. Reserved instances

B. On-Demand instances

C. Spot instances

D. Regular instances

5. A company is planning on using the AWS Redshift service. The Redshift service and data on it would be used continuously for the next 3 years as per the current business plan. Which of the following would be the most cost-effective solution in this scenario?

A. Consider using On-demand instances for the Redshift Cluster.

B. Enable Automated backup.

C. Consider using Reserved Instances for the Redshift Cluster.

D. Consider not using a cluster for the Redshift nodes.

6. A company is running three production web server reserved EC2 Instances with EBS-backed root volumes. These instances have a consistent CPU load of 80%. Traffic is being distributed to these instances by an Elastic Load Balancer. They also have production and development Multi-AZ RDS MySQL databases. What recommendation would you make to reduce cost in this environment without affecting availability of mission-critical systems? Choose the correct answer from the options given below.

A. Consider using On-demand instances instead of Reserved EC2 instances.

B. Consider not using a Multi-AZ RDS deployment for the development database.

C. Consider using Spot instances instead of Reserved EC2 instances.

D. Consider removing the Elastic Load Balancer.

7. A company wants to self-manage a database environment. Which of the following should be adopted to fulfill this requirement?

A. Use the DynamoDB service.

B. Provision the database using the AWS RDS service.

C. Provision the database using the AWS Aurora service.

D. Create an EC2 Instance and install the database service accordingly.

8. A customer wants to import their existing virtual machines to the cloud. Which service can they use for this? Choose one answer from the options given below.

A. VM Import/Export

B. AWS Import/Export

C. AWS Storage Gateway

D. DB Migration Service

9. An application consists of a couple of EC2 Instances. One EC2 Instance hosts a web application and the other Instance hosts the database server. Which of the following changes can be made to ensure high availability of the database layer?

A. Enable Read Replicas for the database.

B. Enable Multi-AZ for the database.

C. Have another EC2 Instance in the same Availability Zone with replication configured.

D. Have another EC2 Instance in the another Availability Zone with replication configured.

10. An application in AWS is currently running in the Singapore region. You have been asked to implement disaster recovery for the same. So, if the application goes down in the Singapore region, it has to be started in the Asia region. Your application relies on pre-built AMIs. As a part of your disaster recovery strategy, which of the below points would you consider?

A. Nothing, because all AMIs by default are available in any region as long as they are created within the same account.

B. Copy the AMI from the Singapore region to the Asia region. Modify the Auto Scaling groups in the backup region to use the new AMI ID in the backup region.

C. Modify the image permissions and share the AMI to the Asia region.

D. Modify the image permissions to share the AMI with another account, then set the default region to the backup region.

11. An IT company would like to secure their resources in their AWS Account. Which of the following options is able to secure data at rest and in transit in AWS? Choose 3 answers from the options given below.

A. Encrypt all EBS volumes attached to EC2 Instances.

B. Use Server-Side Encryption for S3.

C. Use SSL/HTTPS when using the Elastic Load Balancer.

D. Use IOPS Volumes when working with EBS Volumes on EC2 Instances.

12. As a part of your application architecture requirements, the company you are working for has requested the ability to run analytics against all the combined log files from the Elastic Load Balancer. Which services are used together to collect logs and process log file analysis in an AWS environment? Choose the correct option.

A. Amazon DynamoDB to store the logs and EC2 for running custom log analysis scripts

B. Amazon EC2 for storing and processing the log files

C. Amazon S3 for storing the ELB log files and EC2 for processing the log files in analysis

D. Amazon S3 for storing ELB log files and Amazon EMR for processing the log files in analysis

13. In Your company currently has a set of EC2 Instances running a web application which sits behind an Elastic Load Balancer. You also have an Amazon RDS instance which is accessible from the web application. You have been asked to ensure that this architecture is self-healing in nature and cost-effective. Which of the following would fulfill this requirement? Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

A. Use CloudWatch metrics to check the utilization of the web layer. Use Auto Scaling Group to scale the web instances accordingly based on the CloudWatch metrics.

B. Use CloudWatch metrics to check the utilization of the databases servers. Use Auto Scaling Group to scale the database instances accordingly based on the CloudWatch metrics.

C. Utilize the Read Replica feature for the Amazon RDS layer.

D. Utilize the Multi-AZ feature for the Amazon RDS layer.

14. What options can be used to host an application that uses NGINX and is scalable at any point in time?

Choose 2 correct answers.

A. AWS EC2

B. AWS Elastic Beanstalk

C. AWS SQS

D. AWS ELB

15. Which of the following AWS services should be implemented in multiple Availability Zones for high availability solutions? Choose 2 answers from the options below.

A. Amazon DynamoDB

B. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

C. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing

D. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

16. You are designing a system which needs at minimum, 8 m4.large instances operating to service traffic. While designing a system for high availability in the us-east-1 region having 6 Availability Zones, your company needs to be able to handle the death of a full availability zone. How should you distribute the servers to save as much cost as possible, assuming all of the EC2 nodes are properly linked to an ELB? Your VPC account can utilize us-east-1’s AZs a through f, inclusive.

A. 3 servers in each of AZs a through d, inclusive.

B. 8 servers in each of AZs a and b.

C. 2 servers in each of AZs a through e, inclusive.

D. 4 servers in each of AZs a through c, inclusive.

17. You create an Auto Scaling Group which is used to spin up instances On Demand. As an architect, you need to ensure that the instances are pre-installed with a software when they are launched. What are the ways in which you can achieve this? Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

A. Add the software installation to the configuration for the Auto Scaling Group.

B. Add the scripts for the installation in the User data section.

C. Create a golden image and then create a launch configuration.

D. Ask the IT operations team to install the software as soon as the instance is launched.

18. You currently have an EC2 instance hosting a web application. The number of users is expected to increase in the coming months and hence, you need to add more elasticity to your setup. Which of the following methods can help add elasticity to your existing setup? Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

A. Set up your web app on more EC2 instances and set them behind an Elastic Load Balancer.

B. Set up an ElastiCache in front of the EC2 instance.

C. Set up your web app on more EC2 instances and use Route 53 to route requests accordingly.

D. Set up DynamoDB behind your EC2 Instances.

19. You currently have the following architecture in AWS:

a. A couple of EC2 Instances located in us-west-2a b. The EC2 Instances are launched via an Auto Scaling group. c. The EC2 Instances sit behind a Classic ELB. Which of the following additional steps should be taken to ensure the above architecture conforms to a well-architected framework?

A. Convert the Classic ELB to an Application ELB.

B. Add an additional Auto Scaling Group.

C. Add additional EC2 Instances to us-west-2a.

D. Add or spread existing instances across multiple Availability Zones.

20. You currently manage a set of web servers hosted on EC2 Servers with public IP addresses. These IP addresses are mapped to domain names. There was an urgent maintenance activity that had to be carried out on the servers and the servers had to be stopped and restarted. Now the web application hosted on these EC2 Instances is not accessible via the domain names configured earlier. Which of the following could be a reason for this?

A. The Route 53 hosted zone needs to be restarted.

B. The network interfaces need to initialized again.

C. The public IP addresses need to associated to the ENI again.

D. The public IP addresses have changed after the instance was stopped and started.

21. You have a set of EC2 Instances that support an application. They are currently hosted in the US Region. In the event of a disaster, you need a way to ensure that you can quickly provision the resources in another region. How could this be accomplished? Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

A. Copy the underlying EBS Volumes to the destination region.

B. Create EBS Snapshots and then copy them to the destination region.

C. Create AMIs for the underlying instances.

D. Copy the metadata for the EC2 Instances to S3.

22. You have a video transcoding application running on Amazon EC2. Each instance polls a queue to find out which video should be transcoded, and then runs a transcoding process. If this process is interrupted, the video gets transcoded by another instance based on the queuing system. You have a large backlog of videos that need to be transcoded and you would like to reduce this backlog by adding more instances. These instances will only be needed until the backlog is reduced. What Amazon EC2 Instance type should you use to reduce the backlog in the most cost-efficient way?

A. Reserved Instances

B. Spot Instances

C. Dedicated Instances

D. On-Demand Instances

23. You have an application running in us-west-2 requiring 6 EC2 Instances running at all times. With 3 Availability Zones in the region viz. us-west-2a, us-west-2b, and us-west-2c, which of the following deployments provides fault tolerance if an Availability Zone in us-west-2 becomes unavailable?

Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

A. 2EC2 Instances in us-west-2a, 2 EC2 Instances in us-west-2b, and 2 EC2 Instances in us-west-2c

B. 3 EC2 Instances in us-west-2a, 3 EC2 Instances in us-west-2b, and 3 EC2 Instances in us-west-2c

C. 4 EC2 Instances in us-west-2a, 2 EC2 Instances in us-west-2b, and 2 EC2 Instances in us-west-2c

D. 6 EC2 Instances in us-west-2a, 6 EC2 Instances in us-west-2b, and no EC2 Instances in us-west-2c

24. You have an EC2 Instance in a particular region. This EC2 Instance has a preconfigured software running on it. You have been requested to create a disaster recovery solution in case the instance in the region fails. Which of the following is the best solution?

A. Create a duplicate EC2 Instance in another AZ. Keep it in the shutdown state. When required, bring it back up.

B. Backup the EBS data volume. If the instance fails, bring up a new EC2 instance and attach the volume.

C. Store the EC2 data on S3. If the instance fails, bring up a new EC2 instance and restore the data from S3.

D. Create an AMI of the EC2 Instance and copy it to another region.

25. You have been instructed by your supervisor to devise a disaster recovery model for the resources in their AWS account. The key requirement while devising the solution is to ensure that the cost is at a minimum. Which of the following disaster recovery mechanisms would you employ in such a scenario?

A. Backup and Restore

B. Pilot Light

C. Warm standby

D. Multi-Site

26. You plan on hosting a web application on AWS. You create an EC2 Instance in a public subnet which needs to connect to an EC2 Instance that will host an Oracle database. Which of the following steps should be taken to ensure that a secure setup is in place? Choose 2 answers from the choices below.

A. Place the EC2 Instance with the Oracle database in the same public subnet as the Webserver for faster communication.

B. Place the EC2 Instance with the Oracle database in a separate private subnet.

C. Create a database security group and ensure that the web server’s security group allows incoming access.

D. Ensure that the database security group allows incoming traffic from 0.0.0.0/0

27. You plan on hosting an application on EC2 Instances which will be used to process logs. The application is not very critical and can resume operation even after an interruption. Which of the following steps can help provide a cost-effective solution?

A. Use Reserved Instances for the underlying EC2 Instances.

B. Use Provisioned IOPS for the underlying EBS Volumes.

C. Use Spot Instances for the underlying EC2 Instances.

D. Use S3 as the underlying data layer.

28. You plan to use Auto Scaling groups to maintain the performance of your web application. How can you ensure that the scaling activity has sufficient time to stabilize without executing another scaling action?

A. Modify the Instance User Data property with a timeout interval.

B. Increase the Auto Scaling Cooldown timer value.

C. Enable the Auto Scaling cross zone balancing feature.

D. Disable CloudWatch alarms till the application stabilizes.

29. Your company has a set of EC2 Instances hosted in AWS. There is a mandate to prepare for disasters and come up with the necessary disaster recovery procedures. Which of the following would help in mitigating the effects of a disaster for the EC2 Instances?

A. Place an ELB in front of the EC2 Instances.

B. Use Auto Scaling to ensure the minimum number of instances are always running.

C. B. Use Auto Scaling to ensure the minimum number of instances are always running.

D. Use AMIs to recreate the EC2 Instances in another region.

30. Your company has migrated their production environment into AWS VPC 6 months ago. As a cloud architect, you are required to revise the infrastructure and ensure that it is cost-effective in the long term. There are more than 50 EC2 instances that are up and running all the time to support the business operation. What can you do to lower the cost?

A. Reserved instances

B. On-demand instances

C. Spot instances

D. Regular instances

31. Your company is planning on using the EMR service available in AWS for running their big data framework and wants to minimize the cost for running the EMR service. Which of the following could help achieve this?

A. Running the EMR cluster in a dedicated VPC

B. Choosing Spot Instances for the underlying nodes

C. Choosing On-Demand Instances for the underlying nodes

D. Disable automated backups

32. Your company wants to automate the deployment of new EC2 Instances. There is a need to have pre-baked Images so that the deployment of instances can be done in a faster manner. Which of the following options can help achieve this?

A. Create an Elastic Beanstalk image.

B. Create an OpsWorks image.

C. Create an Amazon Machine image.

D. Create an EC2 image.

33. Your Development team wants to start making use of EC2 Instances to host their Application and Web servers. In the space of automation, they want the Instances to always download the latest version of the Web and Application servers when they are launched. As an architect, what would you recommend for this scenario?

A. Ask the Development team to create scripts which can be added to the User Data section when the instance is launched.

B. Ask the Development team to create scripts which can be added to the Meta Data section when the instance is launched.

C. Use Auto Scaling Groups to install the Web and Application servers when the instances are launched.

D. UseEC2 Config to install the Web and Application servers when the instances are launched.