SAA-C03 Exam Dumps - Amazon Web Services AWS Certified Associate Questions and Answers

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) is a managed file storage service that can be mounted across multiple EC2 instances. It provides a scalable and high-performing solution to share data among instances within a VPC.

High Performance: EFS provides scalable performance for workloads that require high throughput and IOPS. It is particularly well-suited for applications that need to share data across multiple instances.

Ease of Use: EFS can be easily mounted on multiple instances across different Availability Zones, providing a shared file system accessible to all the instances within the VPC.

Security: EFS can be configured to ensure that data remains within the VPC, and it supports encryption at rest and in transit.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option A (Amazon S3 bucket with APIs): While S3 is excellent for object storage, it is not a file system and does not provide the low-latency access required for shared data between instances.

Option B (S3 bucket as a mounted volume): S3 is not designed to be mounted as a file system, and this approach would introduce unnecessary complexity and latency.

Option C (EBS volume shared across instances): EBS volumes cannot be attached to multiple instances simultaneously. It is not designed to be shared across instances like EFS.

AWS References:

Amazon EFS- Overview of Amazon EFS and its features.

Best Practices for Amazon EFS- Recommendations for using EFS with multiple instances.

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection from on-premises to AWS, offering greater bandwidth and more consistent performance than internet-based connections or VPN. AWS PrivateLink enables secure, private connectivity to supported AWS services such as Kinesis Data Firehose over Direct Connect, bypassing the public internet and providing the highest throughput and lowest latency possible. This is the recommended solution for consistently transferring large volumes of data with maximum reliability and performance.

Reference Extract from AWS Documentation / Study Guide:

"AWS Direct Connect and AWS PrivateLink provide private, high-throughput connectivity between on-premises and AWS services, bypassing the public internet and ensuring maximum performance for large data transfers."

Source: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Official Study Guide, Hybrid Networking section.

AWSSecrets Managercan integrate directly with Amazon RDS for automatic and seamless password rotation. Secrets Manager handles the complexity of password management, including generating strong passwords and rotating them at a defined interval (e.g., every 30 days). It also automatically updates the connection information for RDS, minimizing operational overhead.

Option A (Lambda with EventBridge): While possible, this requires custom coding and operational management of Lambda, which introduces additional complexity.

Option B (Manual password change): Using the modify-db-instance command requires manual intervention and is not automated, leading to more operational effort.

Option D (Parameter Store): Systems Manager Parameter Store is less specialized for password management than Secrets Manager and does not have built-in automated rotation for RDS credentials.

AWS References:

AWS Secrets Manager Rotation for RDS

This solution is the most cost-effective and scalable for analyzing large amounts of web traffic logs.

Amazon S3: Storing the logs in Amazon S3 is highly scalable, durable, and cost-effective. S3 is designed to handle large-scale data storage, which is ideal for storing tens of gigabytes of log data generated daily by multiple websites.

Amazon Athena: Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that allows you to analyze data in S3 using standard SQL. It works directly with the data stored in S3, so there’s no need to load the data into a database, which saves on costs and reduces complexity. Athena charges based on the amount of data scanned by queries, making it a cost-effective solution for on-demand analysis that only occurs once a week.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option B (Amazon RDS): Storing logs in a relational database like Amazon RDS would be more expensive due to the storage and I/O costs associated with RDS. Additionally, it would require more management overhead.

Option C (Amazon OpenSearch Service): OpenSearch is a good option for full-text search and analytics on log data, but it might be more costly and complex to manage compared to the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Athena for periodic SQL-based queries.

Option D (Amazon EMR): While EMR can handle large-scale data processing, it involves more operational overhead and might be overkill for the type of ad-hoc, SQL-based analysis required here. Additionally, EMR costs can be higher due to the need to maintain a cluster.

AWS References:

Amazon S3- Information on how to store and manage data in Amazon S3.

Amazon Athena- Documentation on using Amazon Athena for querying data stored in S3 using SQL.

AWS IAM Identity Center:

IAM Identity Centerprovides centralized access management for multiple AWS accounts within an organization and integrates seamlessly with existing identity providers (IdPs) throughSAML 2.0 federation.

It allows users to authenticate using their existing IdP credentials and gain access to AWS resources without the need to create and manage separate IAM users in each account.

IAM Identity Centeralso simplifies provisioning and de-provisioning users, as it can automatically synchronize users and groups from the external IdP to AWS, ensuring secure and managed access.

Integration with Existing IdP:

The solution involves configuringIAM Identity Centerto connect to the company's IdP using SAML. This setup allows employees to log in with their existing credentials, reducing the complexity of managing separate AWS credentials.

Once connected,IAM Identity Centerhandles authentication and authorization, granting users access to the AWS accounts based on their assigned roles and permissions.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Creating separateIAM usersfor each employee is not scalable or efficient. Managing thousands of IAM users across multiple AWS accounts introduces unnecessary complexity and operational overhead.

Option B: Using AWSroot userswith synchronized passwords is a security risk and goes against AWS best practices. Root accounts should never be used for day-to-day operations.

Option D:AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM)is used for sharing AWS resources between accounts, not for federating access for users across accounts. It doesn’t provide a solution for authentication via an external IdP.

AWS References:

AWS IAM Identity Center

SAML 2.0 Integration with AWS IAM Identity Center

By setting upIAM Identity Centerand connecting it to the existing IdP, the company can efficiently manage access for thousands of employees across multiple AWS accounts with a high degree of operational efficiency and security. Therefore,Option Cis the best solution.