- (Topic 1)
An ecommerce company wants to launch a one-deal-a-day website on AWS. Each day will feature exactly one product on sale for a period of 24 hours. The company wants to be able to handle millions of requests each hour with millisecond latency during peak hours.
Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

1. A. Use Amazon S3 to host the full website in different S3 buckets Add Amazon CloudFront distributions Set the S3 buckets as origins for the distributions Store the order data in Amazon S3
2. B. Deploy the full website on Amazon EC2 instances that run in Auto Scaling groups across multiple Availability Zones Add an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute the website traffic Add another ALB for the backend APIs Store the data in Amazon RDS for MySQL
3. C. Migrate the full application to run in containers Host the containers on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Use the Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler to increase and decrease the number of pods to process bursts in traffic Store the data in Amazon RDS for MySQL
4. D. Use an Amazon S3 bucket to host the website's static content Deploy an Amazon CloudFront distributio
5. E. Set the S3 bucket as the origin Use Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda functions for the backend APIs Store the data in Amazon DynamoDB

Correct Answer: D
To launch a one-deal-a-day website on AWS with millisecond latency during peak hours and with the least operational overhead, the best option is to use an Amazon S3 bucket to host the website's static content, deploy an Amazon CloudFront distribution, set the S3 bucket as the origin, use Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda functions for the backend APIs, and store the data in Amazon DynamoDB. This option requires minimal operational overhead and can handle millions of requests each hour with millisecond latency during peak hours. Therefore, option D is the correct answer.
Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/building-a-serverless-multi-player-game-with-aws-lambda-and-amazon-dynamodb/

- (Topic 1)
A development team runs monthly resource-intensive tests on its general purpose Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance with Performance Insights enabled. The testing lasts for 48 hours once a month and is the only process that uses the database. The team wants to reduce the cost of running the tests without reducing the compute and memory attributes of the DB instance.
Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

1. A. Stop the DB instance when tests are complete
2. B. Restart the DB instance when required.
3. C. Use an Auto Scaling policy with the DB instance to automatically scale when tests are completed.
4. D. Create a snapshot when tests are complete
5. E. Terminate the DB instance and restore the snapshot when required.
6. F. Modify the DB instance to a low-capacity instance when tests are complete
7. G. Modify the DB instance again when required.

Correct Answer: A
To reduce the cost of running the tests without reducing the compute and memory attributes of the Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance, the development team can stop the instance when tests are completed and restart it when required. Stopping the DB instance when not in use can help save costs because customers are only charged for storage while the DB instance is stopped. During this time, automated backups and automated DB instance maintenance are suspended. When the instance is restarted, it retains the same configurations, security groups, and DB parameter groups as when it was stopped.
Reference:
Amazon RDS Documentation: Stopping and Starting a DB instance (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_StopInstance.html)

- (Topic 1)
A solutions architect is designing a new hybrid architecture to extend a company s on- premises infrastructure to AWS The company requires a highly available connection with consistent low latency to an AWS Region. The company needs to minimize costs and is willing to accept slower traffic if the primary connection fails.
What should the solutions architect do to meet these requirements?

1. A. Provision an AWS Direct Connect connection to a Region Provision a VPN connection as a backup if the primary Direct Connect connection fails.
2. B. Provision a VPN tunnel connection to a Region for private connectivit
3. C. Provision a second VPN tunnel for private connectivity and as a backup if the primary VPN connection fails.
4. D. Provision an AWS Direct Connect connection to a Region Provision a second Direct Connect connection to the same Region as a backup if the primary Direct Connect connection fails.
5. E. Provision an AWS Direct Connect connection to a Region Use the Direct Connect failover attribute from the AWS CLI to automatically create a backup connection if the primary Direct Connect connection fails.

Correct Answer: A
"In some cases, this connection alone is not enough. It is always better to guarantee a fallback connection as the backup of DX. There are several options, but implementing it with an AWS Site-To-Site VPN is a real cost-effective solution that can be exploited to reduce costs or, in the meantime, wait for the setup of a second DX." https://www.proud2becloud.com/hybrid-cloud-networking-backup-aws-direct-connect-network-connection-with-aws-site-to-site-vpn/

- (Topic 4)
A pharmaceutical company is developing a new drug. The volume of data that the
company generates has grown exponentially over the past few months. The company's researchers regularly require a subset of the entire dataset to be immediately available with minimal lag. However the entire dataset does not need to be accessed on a daily basis. All the data currently resides in on-premises storage arrays, and the company wants to reduce ongoing capital expenses.
Which storage solution should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?

1. A. Run AWS DataSync as a scheduled cron job to migrate the data to an Amazon S3 bucket on an ongoing basis.
2. B. Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway file gateway with an Amazon S3 bucket as the target storage Migrate the data to the Storage Gateway appliance.
3. C. Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway with cached volumes with an Amazon S3 bucket as the target storag
4. D. Migrate the data to the Storage Gateway appliance.
5. E. Configure an AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection from the on-premises environment to AW
6. F. Migrate data to an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system.

Correct Answer: C
AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that allows you to seamlessly integrate your on-premises applications with AWS cloud storage. Volume Gateway is a type of Storage Gateway that presents cloud-backed iSCSI block storage volumes to your on-premises applications. Volume Gateway operates in either cache mode or stored mode. In cache mode, your primary data is stored in Amazon S3, while retaining your frequently accessed data locally in the cache for low latency access. In stored mode, your primary data is stored locally and your entire dataset is available for low latency access on premises while also asynchronously getting backed up to Amazon S3.
For the pharmaceutical company’s use case, cache mode is the most suitable option, as it meets the following requirements:
✑ It reduces the need to scale the on-premises storage infrastructure, as most of the
data is stored in Amazon S3, which is scalable, durable, and cost-effective.
✑ It provides low latency access to the subset of the data that the researchers regularly require, as it is cached locally in the Storage Gateway appliance.
✑ It does not require the entire dataset to be accessed on a daily basis, as it is stored in Amazon S3 and can be retrieved on demand.
✑ It offers flexible data protection and recovery options, as it allows taking point-in- time copies of the volumes using AWS Backup, which are stored in AWS as Amazon EBS snapshots.
Therefore, the solutions architect should recommend deploying an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway with cached volumes with an Amazon S3 bucket as the target storage and migrating the data to the Storage Gateway appliance.
References:
✑ Volume Gateway | Amazon Web Services
✑ How Volume Gateway works (architecture) - AWS Storage Gateway
✑ AWS Storage Volume Gateway - Cached volumes - Stack Overflow

- (Topic 4)
A company hosts multiple production applications. One of the applications consists of resources from Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) across multiple AWS Regions. All company resources are tagged with a tag name of “application” and a value that corresponds to each application. A solutions architect must provide the quickest solution for identifying all of the tagged components.
Which solution meets these requirements?

1. A. Use AWS CloudTrail to generate a list of resources with the application tag.
2. B. Use the AWS CLI to query each service across all Regions to report the tagged components.
3. C. Run a query in Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights to report on the components with the application tag.
4. D. Run a query with the AWS Resource Groups Tag Editor to report on the resources globally with the application tag.

Correct Answer: D
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/tag-editor/latest/userguide/tagging.html