Helping Hand Questions for DOP-C02

• Option A is incorrect because setting the deployment configuration to LambdaAllAtOnce means that the new version of the application will be deployed to all Lambda functions at once, affecting all customers. This does not meet the requirement of affecting the fewest customers possible. Moreover, configuring automatic rollbacks on the deployment group is not operationally efficient, as it requires manual intervention to fix the errors and redeploy the application.
• Option B is correct because setting the deployment configuration to LambdaCanary10Percent10Minutes means that the new version of the application will be deployed to 10 percent of the Lambda functions first, and then to the remaining 90 percent after 10 minutes. This minimizes the impact of errors on customers, as only 10 percent of them will be affected by a faulty deployment. Configuring automatic rollbacks on the deployment group also meets the requirement of reverting to the most recent stable version of the application when an error is detected. Creating a CloudWatch alarm that detects HTTP Bad Gateway errors on API Gateway is a valid way to monitor the health of the application and trigger a rollback if needed.
• Option C is incorrect because setting the deployment configuration to LambdaAllAtOnce means that the new version of the application will be deployed to all Lambda functions at once, affecting all customers. This does not meet the requirement of affecting the fewest customers possible. Moreover, configuring manual rollbacks on the deployment group is not operationally efficient, as it requires human intervention to stop the current deployment and start a new one. Creating an SNS topic to send notifications every time a deployment fails is not sufficient to detect errors in the application, as it does not monitor the API Gateway responses.
• Option D is incorrect because configuring manual rollbacks on the deployment group is not operationally efficient, as it requires human intervention to stop the current deployment and start a new one. Creating a metric filter on a CloudWatch log group for API Gateway to monitor HTTP Bad Gateway errors is a valid way to monitor the health of the application, but invoking a new Lambda function to perform a rollback is unnecessary and complex, as CodeDeploy already provides automatic rollback functionality.

References:

• AWS CodeDeploy Deployment Configurations
• [AWS CodeDeploy Rollbacks]
• Amazon CloudWatch Alarms

Mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication requires two-way authentication between the client and the server. For Amazon API Gateway, you can enable mTLS for a custom domain name, which requires clients to present X.509 certificates to verify their identity to access your API. To set up mTLS, you would typically use AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to create a private certificate authority (CA) and provision a client certificate signed by this private CA. The root CA certificate is then uploaded to an Amazon S3 bucket and configured in API Gateway as the trust store12.

References:

• Introducing mutual TLS authentication for Amazon API Gateway1.
• Configuring mutual TLS authentication for a REST API2.
• AWS Private Certificate Authority details3.
• AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority updates4.

• Option A is incorrect because creating an Amazon EventBridge rule that invokes an AWS Lambda function to query the applications on a 5-minute interval is not a valid solution. EventBridge rules can only trigger Lambda functions based on events, not on time intervals. Moreover, querying the applications on a 5-minute interval might incur unnecessary costs and network overhead, and might not detect performance issues in real time.
• Option B is correct because creating an Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics canary that runs a custom script to query the applications on a 5-minute interval is a valid solution. CloudWatch Synthetics canaries are configurable scripts that monitor endpoints and APIs by simulating customer behavior. Canaries can run as often as once per minute, and can measure the latency and availability of the applications. Canaries can also send notifications to an Amazon SNS topic when they detect errors or performance issues1.
• Option C is incorrect because creating an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that uses the AWS/ApplicationELB namespace RequestCountPerTarget metric is not a valid solution. The RequestCountPerTarget metric measures the number of requests completed or connections made per target in a target group2. This metric does not reflect the application response time, which is the requirement. Moreover, configuring the CloudWatch alarm to send a notification when the number of connections becomes greater than the configured number of threads that the application supports is not a valid way to measure the application performance, as it depends on the application design and implementation.
• Option D is incorrect because creating an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that uses the AWS/ApplicationELB namespace RequestCountPerTarget metric is not a valid solution, for the same reason as option C. The RequestCountPerTarget metric does not reflect the application response time, which is the requirement. Moreover, configuring the CloudWatch alarm to send a notification when the average response time becomes greater than the longest response time that the application supports is not a valid way to measure the application performance, as it does not account for variability or outliers in the response time distribution.

References:

• 1: Using synthetic monitoring
• 2: Application Load Balancer metrics