Reliability and Business Continuity

50. An Amazon DynamoDB table configured with provisioned capacity and auto scaling is still throttling during short, sharp traffic spikes. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Reduce the table's provisioned minimum capacity so auto scaling has more range.
2. B Increase the auto scaling target utilization percentage so scaling triggers later.
3. C Add a global secondary index so read traffic is distributed across two access paths.
4. D Convert the table to on-demand capacity mode so capacity is not bounded by the auto scaling adjustment interval.

51. An Auto Scaling group must maintain capacity across three Availability Zones even when one zone lacks capacity for the requested instance type. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Configure a mixed instances policy that lists several compatible instance types.
2. B Create a scheduled scaling action that adds capacity before peak periods.
3. C Increase the group's maximum size so more launch attempts are made.
4. D Reduce the group's health check interval so failures are detected sooner.

52. A read-heavy application repeatedly issues identical queries against Amazon RDS, and database CPU is high. Which solution most reduces load on the database?

1. A Increase the database instance class so the queries complete more quickly.
2. B Deploy an Amazon ElastiCache cluster and cache the results of the repeated queries.
3. C Create a read replica and direct the repeated queries to it.
4. D Convert the database to a Multi-AZ deployment and direct reads to the standby.

53. An Amazon DynamoDB table serves traffic that swings unpredictably between near zero and very high with no notice. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Configure provisioned capacity with no auto scaling and monitor for throttling.
2. B Configure provisioned capacity sized for the average request rate.
3. C Convert the table to on-demand capacity mode so capacity follows the request rate.
4. D Configure provisioned capacity sized for the highest observed peak.

54. A globally distributed audience downloads large static assets from a single Region, and origin load must be reduced. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Increase the size of the origin instances so they serve requests more quickly.
2. B Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the existing endpoint as the origin.
3. C Enable enhanced networking on the origin instances.
4. D Add origin instances in additional Availability Zones within the same Region.

55. An Amazon Aurora cluster's read load varies unpredictably between the demand of one replica and eight. Which solution meets these requirements at the lowest cost?

1. A Provision eight Aurora Replicas and direct all read traffic to the reader endpoint.
2. B Provision one Aurora Replica on the largest available instance class.
3. C Configure Aurora Auto Scaling to add and remove Aurora Replicas against a target metric.
4. D Direct all read traffic to the writer instance and increase its instance class.

56. An Auto Scaling group configured with ELB health checks replaces instances before the application finishes starting, causing a replacement loop. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Increase the Auto Scaling group desired capacity so healthy instances absorb the traffic.
2. B Increase the Auto Scaling group health check grace period to exceed the application's startup time.
3. C Increase the load balancer health check interval so checks occur less often.
4. D Change the Auto Scaling group health check type from ELB to EC2.

57. An Amazon Route 53 failover record is not failing over even though the primary application is returning HTTP 500 responses. Which cause should the operations team investigate first?

1. A Check the health check configuration, because a check on TCP connectivity alone succeeds while the application returns errors.
2. B Check the record's time to live, because a long value prevents the health check evaluating the endpoint.
3. C Check that the secondary record has a lower weight than the primary record.
4. D Check that both records are in the same hosted zone as the domain's name servers.

58. Traffic must be sent to a secondary Region only when the primary endpoint stops responding. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Create Amazon Route 53 failover records with a health check on the primary endpoint.
2. B Create Amazon Route 53 simple records that return both endpoint addresses.
3. C Create Amazon Route 53 latency records for both Regional endpoints.
4. D Create Amazon Route 53 weighted records that send 90 percent of traffic to the primary.

59. An Amazon RDS database must remain writable when an Availability Zone fails, with minimal data loss and no operator action. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Convert the instance to a Multi-AZ deployment so a synchronous standby is promoted automatically.
2. B Create a manual snapshot each hour and restore from the most recent snapshot when the primary fails.
3. C Create a read replica in a second Availability Zone and promote it when the primary fails.
4. D Increase the automated backup retention period and restore to a point in time when the primary fails.

60. Users report intermittent failures reaching an application behind an Application Load Balancer, and only some requests fail. Which cause should the team investigate first?

1. A Check whether the load balancer security group allows any inbound traffic.
2. B Check whether the VPC has an internet gateway attached and a default route.
3. C Check whether the Amazon Route 53 hosted zone for the application has been deleted.
4. D Check whether some targets are failing health checks or are unhealthy in one Availability Zone.

61. An operations team must be notified of AWS-side events affecting its own resources, such as scheduled EC2 maintenance or a Regional service disruption. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Create an AWS Config rule that reports when the affected resources change state.
2. B Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that matches AWS Health events and routes them to an Amazon SNS topic.
3. C Create a CloudWatch alarm on the affected service's metrics and route it to an Amazon SNS topic.
4. D Review the public AWS service status page each morning.

62. Instances in an Auto Scaling group are terminated during scale-in while still writing log files that must be preserved. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Add a terminating lifecycle hook and use it to run a Systems Manager document that uploads the logs before the instance is removed.
2. B Configure the CloudWatch agent to upload the logs once each hour.
3. C Enable termination protection on each instance so scale-in does not remove it.
4. D Increase the Auto Scaling group's minimum size so scale-in occurs less frequently.

63. A recovery plan across two Regions must be tested and its readiness continuously verified. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Configure Amazon Application Recovery Controller readiness checks and routing controls for the two Regions.
2. B Configure AWS Backup to copy recovery points to the secondary Region on a schedule.
3. C Configure Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics canaries against the secondary Region endpoint.
4. D Configure AWS Config rules that verify the secondary Region resources exist.

64. Daily backups of Amazon EBS volumes, Amazon RDS databases, and Amazon EFS file systems must be governed by one policy with cross-Region copies. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Create an AWS Backup plan covering all three resource types with a cross-Region copy rule.
2. B Create an AWS Lambda function that invokes each service's snapshot API on a schedule.
3. C Create manual snapshots of each resource and review them monthly.
4. D Create Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager policies for each of the three resource types.

65. Backups must be protected so that no principal, including an account administrator, can delete them before their retention period expires. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Attach an IAM policy that denies backup deletion to all administrator roles.
2. B Store the recovery points in a separate AWS account administered by the security team.
3. C Configure AWS Backup Vault Lock in compliance mode on the vault holding the recovery points.
4. D Configure AWS Backup Vault Lock in governance mode on the vault holding the recovery points.

66. A quarterly restore test must verify that an Amazon RDS backup is usable, without disrupting production. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Fail over the production Multi-AZ instance and confirm that it starts correctly.
2. B Restore the backup over the production instance during a maintenance window.
3. C Take a manual snapshot and confirm that it appears in the console with a completed status.
4. D Restore the automated backup to a new database instance, validate the data, and delete the instance.

67. An Amazon RDS major version upgrade must be tested against production-like data with the ability to switch over quickly and roll back. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Upgrade the production instance during a maintenance window and restore from snapshot on failure.
2. B Create an Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployment and switch over once the green environment is validated.
3. C Restore a snapshot to a new instance on the new version and repoint the application.
4. D Create a read replica on the new engine version and promote it after validation.

68. An Amazon DynamoDB table with point-in-time recovery enabled must be rolled back to its state before an accidental bulk delete two hours ago. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Restore the table to the chosen timestamp, which overwrites the existing table in place.
2. B Enable DynamoDB Streams and replay the delete events in reverse against the existing table.
3. C Create an on-demand backup of the current table and restore it over the existing table.
4. D Restore the table to the chosen timestamp, which creates a new table, then repoint the application at the restored table.

69. An Amazon EFS file system must be replicated to a second Region for disaster recovery with a recovery point objective of minutes. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Configure EFS replication to a destination file system in the second Region.
2. B Copy the file system contents to Amazon S3 and replicate the bucket across Regions.
3. C Create AWS Backup recovery points and copy them to the second Region weekly.
4. D Create an AWS DataSync task that copies the file system to the second Region daily.

70. Snapshots of production EBS volumes must be copied to a second Region and encrypted with a key managed in that Region. Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A Create a cross-Region snapshot copy and specify the destination Region's AWS KMS key.
2. B Create an Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager policy without a cross-Region copy rule.
3. C Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication on the bucket holding the snapshots.
4. D Enable replication on the source EBS volume to the second Region.

71. A disaster recovery plan must be validated rather than assumed to work. Which practice meets these requirements?

1. A Verify that the standby resources exist and are correctly configured in the second Region.
2. B Confirm that the scheduled backup jobs complete successfully each night.
3. C Run periodic failover exercises in which the standby actually serves production traffic, and record the results.
4. D Review the documented recovery runbook with the operations team each year.

72. An Auto Scaling group's instances are terminated and relaunched repeatedly shortly after launch. Which configuration should be adjusted?

1. A Increase the group's maximum size.
2. B Reduce the group's desired capacity.
3. C Change the health check type to EC2.
4. D Increase the health check grace period so instances have time to start before health checks apply.

73. An Auto Scaling group must terminate the oldest instances first during a scale-in event. Which configuration is appropriate?

1. A Set the group's desired capacity manually.
2. B Set the group's termination policy to prioritize the oldest launch configuration or instance.
3. C Enable instance scale-in protection on the newest instances.
4. D Reduce the group's cooldown period.

74. A DynamoDB table with auto scaling still throttles during sharp traffic spikes. Which cause explains this?

1. A Auto scaling reacts to observed utilization and takes time to provision, so a sharp spike outpaces it.
2. B Auto scaling only adjusts capacity once per day.
3. C Auto scaling does not apply to read capacity.
4. D Auto scaling requires the table to be in on-demand mode.

75. An Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment has failed over, and the application cannot reconnect. Which cause should be investigated first?

1. A Investigate whether the application connects through the instance endpoint rather than following DNS, since the endpoint resolves to the new primary after failover.
2. B Investigate whether automated backups were enabled.
3. C Investigate whether the standby was in a different Region.
4. D Investigate whether the database's storage was full.

76. An Application Load Balancer reports targets as unhealthy although the application responds correctly when tested directly. Which cause should be investigated first?

1. A Investigate whether the target group uses the correct protocol version.
2. B Investigate whether the load balancer spans enough Availability Zones.
3. C Investigate whether the load balancer is internet-facing.
4. D Investigate whether the target's security group permits traffic from the load balancer on the health check port.

77. A Route 53 health check reports a healthy endpoint as unhealthy. Which cause should be investigated first?

1. A Investigate whether the hosted zone is public or private.
2. B Investigate whether the record's time to live is too long.
3. C Investigate whether the endpoint's firewall or security group permits traffic from the Route 53 health checker address ranges.
4. D Investigate whether the record type is correct.

78. An AWS Backup restore of an EBS volume must be attached to an instance in a different Availability Zone. Which step is required?

1. A Modify the volume's Availability Zone after restoring it.
2. B Attach the restored volume directly across zones.
3. C Create a snapshot of the restored volume and attach the snapshot.
4. D Restore the recovery point into the target Availability Zone, since a volume can only attach within its own zone.

79. A point-in-time restore of an RDS database creates a new instance rather than modifying the existing one. Which consequence must be planned for?

1. A The restored instance inherits the original's endpoint.
2. B The application's connection endpoint must be updated or the instances renamed, since the restore produces a new endpoint.
3. C The original database is deleted automatically.
4. D The restore modifies the original database in place.

80. An AWS Backup vault must be prevented from having its recovery points deleted before their retention expires. Which configuration is appropriate?

1. A Enable encryption on the vault.
2. B Restrict delete permissions with an IAM policy.
3. C Apply AWS Backup Vault Lock so recovery points cannot be deleted before the retention period ends.
4. D Copy the recovery points to a second vault.

81. An AWS Backup plan must protect resources across several accounts in an organization. Which configuration is required?

1. A Enable AWS Backup for the organization and apply a backup policy from the management or delegated administrator account.
2. B Enable AWS Backup in one account and share its vault with the others.
3. C Copy recovery points from each account into a central vault by hand.
4. D Create an identical backup plan manually in each account.