Exams Practice Exam Questions and Answers – Part 1/3

Answer: A. Configure S3 Event Notifications to trigger an AWS Lambda function whenever a new product description is uploaded. Inside the function, use Amazon Comprehend's custom entity recognition feature to extract ingredient names. Store these names in the DynamoDB table and let the front-end application query for health scores

Amazon Comprehend custom entity recognition provides managed text analysis without requiring machine learning expertise. SageMaker requires ML skills, Lookout for Vision handles image analysis, and Amazon Transcribe processes audio rather than text files.

Answer: C. Expose an Amazon API Gateway REST API endpoint to receive transaction requests from mobile clients. Integrate the API with AWS Lambda to perform basic validation. For backend processing, deploy the long-running application to Amazon ECS using the Fargate launch type, allowing ECS to manage compute and memory provisioning automatically, with no server management required

API Gateway secures incoming requests, Lambda handles lightweight validation, and Fargate provides serverless compute for long-running heavy workloads. EKS with self-managed nodes, Lightsail, and EKS Anywhere all introduce infrastructure patching burdens.

Answer: C,E. Deploy Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL to enable support for T-SQL commands || Use AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) along with AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to migrate the schema and data

Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL enables applications to run T-SQL queries directly, minimizing application refactoring. AWS Schema Conversion Tool and Database Migration Service handle schema translation and data transfer, whereas standard endpoints or AWS Glue lack native protocol conversion.

Answer: C. Create a Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint. Define a forwarding rule that routes DNS queries for on-premises domains to the on-premises DNS server. Associate the rule with the VPC

A Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint securely forwards DNS queries from a VPC to on-premises DNS servers across a VPN. Inbound endpoints serve the opposite direction, while private hosted zones are not authoritative for external infrastructure.

Answer: C. Use a daily AWS Glue job to transform and clean the data stored in Amazon S3. Load the transformed dataset into Amazon Redshift Serverless, which offers MPP capabilities in a serverless model. Enable analysts to use Amazon Redshift ML to build and train ML models

AWS Glue provides serverless ETL, Amazon Redshift Serverless delivers massively parallel processing for analytics, and Redshift ML enables SQL-based model training. Provisioned EMR and RDS fail the strict serverless requirements.

Answer: B,C. Use multipart uploads for faster file uploads into the destination Amazon S3 bucket || Use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration (Amazon S3TA) to enable faster file uploads into the destination S3 bucket

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration and multipart upload optimize large file transfers over long distances. Direct Connect and Site-to-Site VPN are costly infrastructure provisions rather than simple transfer optimizations, and AWS Global Accelerator does not route traffic directly to S3 buckets.

Answer: A. Use AWS Glue DataBrew to visually build transformation workflows on top of the raw Parquet files in S3. Use DataBrew recipes to track, audit, and share the transformation steps with others. Enable data profiling to inspect column statistics, null values, and data types across datasets

AWS Glue DataBrew is a visual data preparation tool that enables code-free transformations, data profiling, and shareable recipes for lineage tracking. AWS Glue Studio requires underlying Spark scripts and lacks built-in data profiling, making it less suitable for business analysts.

Answer: D. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed file storage accessible via SMB and natively supports Microsoft's Distributed File System. FSx for Lustre targets high-performance computing, while AWS Managed Microsoft AD handles identity rather than file system workloads.

Answer: A,B. Put the instance into the Standby state and then update the instance by applying the maintenance patch. Once the instance is ready, you can exit the Standby state and then return the instance to service || Suspend the ReplaceUnhealthy process type for the Auto Scaling group and apply the maintenance patch to the instance. Once the instance is ready, you can manually set the instance's health status back to healthy and activate the ReplaceUnhealthy process type again

Placing an instance in Standby state or suspending the ReplaceUnhealthy process prevents Auto Scaling from terminating it during temporary health check failures. ScheduledActions are irrelevant, and recreating instances is highly inefficient, eliminating those distractors.

Answer: D. Upload the compressed file using multipart upload with Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration (Amazon S3TA)

S3 Transfer Acceleration speeds up long-distance public internet transfers by routing traffic through Amazon CloudFront edge locations. Combining this with a multipart upload parallelizes the file transfer, maximizing throughput over your available bandwidth. Option D correctly leverages both.

Answer: B. Change the application architecture to create customer-specific custom prefixes within the single Amazon S3 bucket and then upload the daily files into those prefixed locations

S3 scales automatically by distributing requests across distinct prefixes. Using customer-specific prefixes within a single bucket parallelizes the uploads, successfully bypassing the bottleneck of the baseline request rate. Creating multiple buckets or migrating storage types introduces unnecessary operational overhead.

Answer: B,C. Modify the application to publish purchase events to an Amazon SQS queue. Launch an Auto Scaling group of EC2 workers that poll the queue and process purchases asynchronously || Implement Amazon RDS Proxy between the application and the Aurora PostgreSQL cluster. Deploy EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group to retry transactions as needed

Amazon RDS Proxy efficiently pools database connections to prevent timeouts during compute scaling. Amazon SQS decouples transaction processing to buffer traffic bursts asynchronously. Caching transactions or slowing traffic with API Gateway risks data loss or user friction.

Answer: C. Use AWS Directory Service AD Connector to connect AWS to the on-premises Active Directory. Integrate AD Connector with AWS IAM Identity Center. Use permission sets to assign access to AWS accounts and resources based on Active Directory group membership

AWS IAM Identity Center provides a centralized access portal and uses permission sets to manage accounts via Active Directory group membership. Integrating it with an AD Connector delegates authentication to the existing on-premises directory, completely eliminating the need to manage a separate cloud identity store.

Answer: A. Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway on premises. Configure it to present an NFS-compatible file share to the workloads. Store the uploaded files in Amazon S3, and use S3 Lifecycle policies to automatically transition infrequently accessed objects to lower-cost storage classes

A File Gateway provides seamless NFS compatibility to existing applications while transparently storing files as S3 objects. This combination utilizes unlimited cloud storage and native lifecycle policies. Volume and FSx options require unnecessary architecture changes or protocol conversions.

Answer: B,E. Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) delete on the Amazon S3 bucket || Enable versioning on the Amazon S3 bucket

Amazon S3 versioning preserves, retrieves, and restores overwritten or accidentally deleted objects. Enabling multi-factor authentication delete adds a secondary authentication requirement, preventing unauthorized or accidental permanent deletions. SNS alerts or managerial approvals do not technically restrict the deletion action.

Answer: A. Use Instance Store based Amazon EC2 instances

Instance store volumes provide high random I/O performance and are physically attached to the host computer. Because the application replicates data across the fleet, ephemeral storage is the most cost-optimal and resource-efficient choice. Block storage like EBS incurs extra costs for provisioned IOPS.

Answer: B. Implement an Amazon SQS FIFO queue to reliably buffer and deliver form submissions from the web application layer to the processing tier

Amazon SQS FIFO queues guarantee exactly-once message processing and preserve the order of operations. Standard queues only offer at-least-once delivery, risking duplicates, making FIFO the required choice for strict data integrity and reliable permit submissions.

Answer: B. Store the intermediary query results in Amazon S3 Standard storage class

Amazon S3 Standard is the most cost-effective storage class for frequently accessed data with a lifespan of only 24 hours. Infrequent Access classes incur retrieval fees and minimum duration charges, making them more expensive for heavily referenced, short-lived data.

Answer: C. Use AWS Direct Connect plus virtual private network (VPN) to establish a connection between the data center and AWS Cloud

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated, low latency, high throughput connection, but it is not encrypted by default. Adding a virtual private network ensures the traffic remains fully encrypted. Therefore, Direct Connect combined with a VPN satisfies all requirements.

Answer: C,D. Throughput Optimized Hard disk drive (st1) || Cold Hard disk drive (sc1)

Amazon EBS HDD-backed volumes like Throughput Optimized HDD and Cold HDD are optimized for large streaming workloads and cannot be used as boot volumes. Solid state drive backed volumes and Instance Store are the only valid options for booting an EC2 instance.