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

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Documents:

Amazon EFS encryption at rest is a file system creation attribute; an unencrypted EFS file system cannot be “turned on” for encryption in place. Therefore, meeting the requirement (“encrypt an existing EFS using an existing KMS customer managed key”) requires creating a new encrypted file system and migrating data.

Option A is the most operationally efficient because EFS replication is a managed mechanism that continuously copies data and metadata from a source file system to a destination file system. By specifying the existing KMS customer managed key for the destination, the new file system is encrypted at rest under the required key. After replication has caught up, the administrator can perform a controlled cutover (failover) so applications mount the encrypted destination instead of the original source. This reduces manual copying effort, supports ongoing synchronization during migration, and simplifies the cutover window.

Option B is not possible because encryption-at-rest settings for EFS cannot be modified after creation. Option C is irrelevant because TLS certificates relate to encryption in transit and are not configured as part of EFS replication in the manner described. Option D can work functionally, but it requires building and operating a copy workflow, which is more manual and error-prone than managed replication.

The AWS Cloud Operations and Governance documentation defines that enabling Organizational View in AWS Health allows the management account in AWS Organizations to view and aggregate health events from all member accounts.

This feature provides a single-pane-of-glass view of service health issues, account-specific events, and planned maintenance across the organization — without requiring additional automation or data pipelines.

Alternative options (B, C, and D) require custom integration and ongoing maintenance. CloudTrail does not natively forward AWS Health events, and custom Lambda or DynamoDB approaches increase complexity.

Therefore, Option A — enabling the Organizational View feature in AWS Health — is the most operationally efficient and AWS-recommended solution.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Documents:

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) are Region-specific resources. AWS CloudOps documentation explicitly states that an AMI created in one Region cannot be used to launch instances in another Region unless it is copied to the target Region. Therefore, the SysOps administrator must copy the AMI to both us-east-1 and us-east-2.

The AMI copy process creates a new AMI in each destination Region and automatically copies the underlying snapshots. Once the AMIs exist in the target Regions, they can be referenced in launch templates, Auto Scaling groups, or AWS CloudFormation templates for consistent multi-Region deployments.

Option B is incorrect because making an AMI public does not replicate it across Regions. Option C is incorrect because sharing an AMI only grants account-level access within the same Region. Option D is incorrect because AMIs cannot be launched from Amazon S3 directly.

This approach aligns with AWS CloudOps automation practices for multi-Region application deployment and disaster recovery readiness.

The AWS Cloud Operations and Monitoring documentation specifies that the Amazon CloudWatch Agent is the recommended tool for collecting system and application logs from EC2 instances. The agent pushes these logs into a centralized CloudWatch Logs group, providing durable storage and real-time monitoring.

Once the logs are centralized, a CloudWatch Metric Filter can be configured to search for specific error keywords (for example, “ERROR” or “FAILURE”). This filter transforms matching log entries into custom metrics. From there, a CloudWatch Alarm can monitor the metric threshold and publish notifications to an Amazon SNS topic, which can send email or SMS alerts to subscribed recipients.

This combination provides a fully automated, managed, and serverless solution for log aggregation and error alerting. It eliminates the need for manual cron jobs (Option B), custom scripts (Option D), or Lambda-based log streaming (Option C).

Per the AWS Cloud Operations and Security Automation documentation, Security Hub integrates with Amazon EventBridge to publish findings in real time. These events can trigger automated responses using AWS Lambda functions or AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks.

In this scenario, the correct CloudOps approach is to configure the existing EventBridge rule to invoke a Lambda function that inspects the event payload, identifies the affected security group, and removes the offending inbound rule (e.g., port 21 open to 0.0.0.0/0).

This event-driven remediation provides continuous compliance and eliminates manual intervention. Cron jobs (Options B and C) contradict event-driven design and add operational overhead. Stopping instances (Option A) doesn’t address the root cause — the insecure security group.

Thus, Option D aligns with AWS best practices for automated security remediation through EventBridge and Lambda.

The most secure pattern is to use an IAM role for Amazon EC2 with the minimum required permissions. AWS guidance states: “Use roles for applications that run on Amazon EC2 instances” and “grant least privilege by allowing only the actions required to perform a task.” By attaching a role to the instance, short-lived credentials are automatically provided through the instance metadata service; this removes the need to create long-term access keys or embed secrets. Granting only sqs:SendMessage, sqs:ReceiveMessage, and sqs:DeleteMessage against the specific SQS queues enforces least privilege and aligns with CloudOps security controls. Options A and B rely on IAM user access keys, which contravene best practices for workloads on EC2 and increase credential-management risk. Option C uses a role but grants sqs:*, violating least-privilege principles. Therefore, Option D meets the security requirement with scoped, temporary credentials and precise permissions.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Doocuments:

Amazon Aurora supports up to 15 Aurora Replicas that share the same storage volume and provide read scaling and improved availability. Official guidance states that replicas “offload read traffic from the writer” and that you should direct read-only workloads to the reader endpoint, reducing CPU pressure and connection counts on the primary. Aurora also supports Replica Auto Scaling through Application Auto Scaling policies using metrics such as CPU utilization or connections to add or remove replicas automatically. This design addresses both high CPU and maximum connections by moving reporting traffic to read replicas while keeping a single write primary for OLTP. Option B creates a separate cluster with independent storage, increasing operational overhead and data synchronization complexity. Options C and D introduce application-layer caching changes that may not guarantee data freshness or relieve the write node directly. Therefore, adding read replicas and routing reporting to the reader endpoint, with auto scaling based on load, is the least intrusive, CloudOps-aligned way to stabilize performance.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Documents:

The requirement is preventative: stop users from launching from unapproved AMIs. The most scalable approach with 75 approved AMIs is to tag all approved AMIs (for example, ApprovedAMI=true) and enforce usage through an IAM policy condition that only allows ec2:RunInstances when the ec2:ImageId resource (the AMI) includes the required tag. This avoids maintaining long allow/deny lists of AMI IDs and supports continuous updates: as new approved AMIs are created, tagging them automatically brings them under the policy without policy rewrites.

Option B is incorrect because service-linked roles are used by AWS services, not assigned to users for interactive authorization enforcement in this way. Option C and D are detective/remedial controls that act after instances are already launched, which does not satisfy “must prevent.” They also increase operational overhead and risk disruptions.

The AWS Cloud Operations and Security documentation confirms that AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) is designed to protect web applications from application-layer threats, including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities.

When integrated with an Application Load Balancer, AWS WAF inspects incoming traffic using rule groups. The AWS Managed Rules for SQL Injection Protection provide preconfigured, continuously updated filters that detect and block malicious SQL patterns.

AWS Shield (Standard or Advanced) defends against DDoS attacks, not application-layer SQL attacks, and vulnerability scanners (Option C) only detect, not prevent, exploitation.

Thus, Option D provides the correct, managed, and automated protection aligned with AWS best practices.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of AWS CloudOps Documents:

The correct answer is D because Amazon S3 Express One Zone with directory buckets and zonal endpoints is specifically designed for single–Availability Zone, high-performance workloads such as HPC, machine learning, and analytics applications running on Amazon EC2. AWS CloudOps documentation states that S3 Express One Zone delivers single-digit millisecond latency and up to 10x higher request performance compared to general purpose S3 buckets when data is accessed from the same Availability Zone.

An S3 directory bucket is required to use the S3 Express One Zone storage class. These buckets are explicitly associated with a single Availability Zone and use zonal endpoints, which eliminate cross-AZ network hops and significantly reduce latency. Importing the data from the existing general purpose bucket ensures compatibility while achieving maximum throughput and lowest latency.

Option A is incorrect because S3 Transfer Acceleration is optimized for long-distance, internet-based transfers, not for in-Region HPC workloads. Option B is incorrect because lifecycle policies cannot move objects into S3 Express One Zone, and S3 Express One Zone does not use Regional endpoints. Option C is incorrect because general purpose buckets do not support zonal endpoints and therefore cannot achieve the same performance benefits.

AWS CloudOps performance optimization guidance clearly identifies S3 directory buckets with S3 Express One Zone and zonal endpoints as the optimal architecture for high-throughput, low-latency workloads in a single Availability Zone.