Define Performant Architectures Question Bank

Q

101

Which of the following EBS volumes is the most performant? A. Provisioned IOPS B. Throughput optimized HDD C. Cold HDD D. General SSD

A

Which of the following is true? A. A multi AZ setup is aimed at fault tolerance, while read replica setup is aimed at scalability B. Both read replicas and Multi AZ configurations are aimed at fault tolerance C. A Multi AZ setup is aimed at scalability, while read replica setup is aimed at fault tolerance D. Both read replicas and Multi AZ configurations are aimed at scalability

A

What engines does ElastiCache provide for caching? (Choose 2) A. memcached B. redis C. cacherm D. gitcache

AB

Which if the following are true about cluster placement groups? (Choose 2) A. All instances in the group must be in the same AZ B. Instances in the group will see lowered network latency in communicating with each other C. Instances in the group will see improved disk write performance when communicating with S3 D. Instances in the group must be of the same instance class

AB

Which of the following are valid reasons to use read replication? (Choose 2) A. You have customers in a region geographically different from your primary instance and want to improved their read performance when they access your applications hosted in regions close to them. B. Your current database instance is showing memory saturation with current traffic loads C. Your boss has asked for an automated backup solution that takes advantage of AWS managed services D. You need to perform additional OLTP queries and want to improve the performance of those queries

AB

Which of the following is a valid reason to use a magnetic EBS volume? (Choose 2) A. You want a low-cost option for your EBS volume. B. You have a set of data that is infrequently accessed but want it stored on an EBS volume rather than S3. C. You need to perform processing to support Oracle installed on a fleet of EC2 instances D. You have low latency apps and want to run them on bootable volume.

AB

Which of the following statements are false? (Choose 2) A. Both read replicas and Multi AZ configurations ensure that you have database instances in multiple AZs B. Both read replicas and Multi AZ provide disaster recovery options for your primary instance C. A single database can both have a read replica and be part of a Multi AZ setup D. A read replica can be promoted to be a stand alone database instance

AB

Which of the following protocols and routing approaches does a classic load balancer support? (Choose 2) A. IPv4 B. IPv6 C. HTTP/2 D. Registering targets in target groups and routing traffic to those groups.

AB C and D are only supported by application load balancers

Which of the following are valid reasons to use read replication? (Choose 2) A. You have a read-heavy database that is peaking in traffic B. You have a large number of errors reported by applications trying to update user entries in your current database and want to reduce these errors. C. You want automated disaster recovery solution in case you lose an AZ D. You have a large number of business reporting queries that are currently interfering with customer application performance

AD

Can you use an ELB to balance load within a VPC? A. Yes, as long as the VPC has an internet gateway B. Yes, by setting the ELB to be internal to the VPC C. No, LB can only route traffic from the internet D. No, LB cannot operate inside a VPC

B

Does a read replica provide any assistance at all in creating a fault tolerant database setup? A. Yes, it provided automated backups to the read replicase. B. Yes, if the primary instance fails, one of the replicas can be manually promoted to a standalone database instance C. Yes, if the primary instance fails, one of the replicas will automatically be promoted to a standalone database instance D. No

B

You have an EC2 instance running a heavy compute process that is constantly writing data to and from cache on disk. How and when should you take a snapshot of the instance to ensure the most complete snapshot? A. Take a snapshot of the instance from the AWS console. B. Shutdown the instance and take a snapshot of the instance C. Take a snapshot of the instance from AWS CLI D. Detach the EBS volume attached to the instance and take a snapshot of both the EC2 and the EBS instance

B

What type of replication occurs in a read replica RDS setup? A. Sequential replication B. Synchronous replication C. Asynchronous replication D. Synchronous replication for full backups and asynchronous replication for incremental backups

C Synchronous replication happens in multi AZ RDS setup

Which of the following is true about an RDS read replica configuration? (Choose 2) A. Only 3 read replicas can be set up for a single database instance. B. Only MariaDB, MySQL and Aurora are supported C. A read replica replicates all databases in the primary instance D. A read replica can exist in a different region than the primary instance

CD You can have up to 5 read replicas of a DB Aurora does not support read replicas

How is data transferred out from a region to a CloudFront edge location charged? A. At normal egress data rates B. At half the price of normal egress rates C. At the lowest available rate for the region from which the data originates D. There is no charge

D

How long is content cached at an edge location? A. 24hrs B. 12 hrs C. 12 hrs by default, but can be changed D. 24hrs by default, but can be changed

D

How many domains can you register and manage with Route 53? A. 50 B. 100 C. There is no limit D. There is a limit of 50, but it can be raised upon request

D

When replicating data from a primary RDS instance to a secondary one, how much will you be charged, in relation to the standard data transfer charge? A. Your data will be transferred at the standard data transfer charge. B. Your data will be transferred at half of the standard data transfer charge C. Your data will be transferred at half the standard data transfer charge up to 1 GB of transfer per day and then additional data at the standard data transfer charge D. There is no charge for primary to secondary data replication

D

Which of the following databases support read replicas? A. MariaDB B. MySQL C. PostgreSQL D. All of the above

D

Which of the following is a valid reason to use an ALB? A. You want you applications to automatically scale B. You want to balance load across your applications, which reside in containers C. You want to achieve better fault tolerance for your applications D. All of the above

D

Which of the following record sets are supported by Route 53? A. A records B. MX records C. Alias records D. All of the above

D

Which of the following would you use to interact with a CloudFront distribution? A. CloudFormation B. The AWS CLI C. The AWS REST APIs D. Any of these

D

Can you configure a database instance to be both a read replica and a primary database instance for the original instance? A. Yes, as long as the instances are in the same AZ B. Yes, if you turn on circular replication in both primary database instances C. Yes, as long as the instances are not in the same AZ D. No, AWS does not support circular replication

D AWS does not support circular replication through RDS

How quickly can you make changes to the backup window used by your RDS instance? A. Changes to the window via the console take place within 1 hour; changes made via the API take place immediately B. Changes to the window take place after the next complete backup occurs C. Changes to the window via the API take place within 1hr; changes made via console take place immediately D. Changes to the window take place immediately

D All changes, no matter the method, take place immediately.

How do applications communicate with read replica instances? A. Through the read replica REST API provided by RDS B. ELBs and ALBs will automatically translate requests to a read replica to use the read replica REST API provided by RDS C. Each read replica provides a read replica key that allows applications to communicate with the instance as if it were a normal database instance D. Applications communicate with a read replica exactly as they would with a non-read replica

D Applications don't "know" that they're communicating with a read replica other than an inability to make writes

You need a load balancer that supports SSL termination. Which type would you choose? A. Classic ELB B. Application LB C. Network LB D. Either an ALB or ELB would be suitable

D Both ALB and ELB offer SSL termination.

Which of the following do you need to handle when setting up ElastiCache? A. Patching B. Backups C. Monitoring D. None of the above

D ElastiCache, when used through AWS handles all of these tasks and more: hardware provisioning, software patching, setup, configuration, monitoring, failure recovery and backups

Are zone apex records supported by Route 53? A. Yes B. No C. Yes, as long as they point to AWS resources D. Not by default, but you can request support by AWS and then support them.

A

You are a new architect at a company building out a large scale database deployment for web applications that receive thousands of requests per minute. The previous architect suggested a Multi AZ deployment in RDS to ensure maximum responsiveness to the web tier. Is this a good approach for high performance? A. No, because a Multi AZ deployment is no faster in responding to requests than a standard RDS deployment B. Yes, because the additional databases in a Multi-AZ deployment will share the request load from the web tier C. Yes, because Multi AZ deployment will ensure that if the primary database goes down, a secondary database will be current and available D. No, because a Multi AZ deployment can only field requests the AZ in which each database resides

A

You are the solutions architect for a company installing a web application on a set of EC2 instances. The application writes a small amount of user profile data to attached EBS volumes, and accesses that data an average of once every 5mins if the user is still using the web application. Additionally because of the high cost of the applications RDS instance, you would like to minimize your EBS volume costs. Which EBS volume type would you choose to support these applications? A. Magnetic B. Throughput optimized HDD C. Provisioned IOPS SSD D. General SSD

A

You launch an EC2 instance that has 2 volumes attached: a root and an additional volume, both created with default settings. What happens to each volume when you terminate the instance? A. The root volume is deleted and the additional volume is preserved B. Both volumes are deleted C. Both volumes are preserved D. The instance is unable to terminate until the root volume is deleted

A

Can a database instance be a read replica of one database and the source instance for another read replica? A. Yes, as long as the source and replicant database are not the same instance B. No, a database cannot be both a read replica and a source database C. Yes, as long as the source and replicant database are in the same AZ. D. Yes, as long as you enable circular replication on both databases

A Amazon RDS does not support circular replication. However, it is absolutely permissible for one database to replicate another database and then be the source for a third database.

What is the shortest expiration period allowed for a CloudFront edge location? A. 0s B. 5s C. 30s D. 1min

A Effectively meaning no caching happens

How many elastic IP addresses can you create per region by default in a new AWS account? A. 5 B. 10 C. 20 D. There is no preset limit

A The default is 5. Can be increased by contacting AWS.

Where is the data stored when placed into S3-IA? (Choose 2) A. In the region specified at bucket creation B. In a special AWS "global" region for S3 storage C. In at least 3 AZs D. In a single AZ within at least 3 regions

AC

Which of the following accurately describe ElastiCache? (Choose 2) A. An in memory data store B. A runtime engine for data distribution C. A mechanism for sharding application demands D. A monitoring solution for large data sets

AC

Which of the following are SQL based options in RDS? (Choose 2) A. Aurora B. DynamoDB C. MariaDB D. Redshift

AC

Which of the following are characteristics of SSD-backed volumes? (Choose 2) A. Transactional workloads B. Streaming workloads C. Small I/O size D. Throughput focused

AC

Which of the following can you do with CloudFront? (Choose 2) A. Quickly deploy a global network for your content without contracts or startup requirements B. Quickly create websites that are dynamic and low latency C. Distribute content with low latency and high transfer rates D. Provide storage for static files that are frequently accessed.

AC

Which of the following is true about read replica? (Choose 2) A. It is a read only instance of a primary database B. It can only exist in the same region as the primary database, although it can be in a different availability zone. C. It is updated via asynchronous replication from the primary instance. C. It is updated via synchronous replication from the primary instance.

AC

Which of the following are origin sources usable with a CloudFront distribution? (Choose 2) A. An ALB B. DynamoDb C. AWS Shield D. An Oracle RDS instance

AC CloudFront can front a number of AWS services: AWS Shield, S3, ELBs, EC2 instances, and Lambda@Edge

Which of the following are the advantages of using a CloudFront distribution? (Choose 2) A. Performance B. Fault tolerance C. Integration with AWS managed services D. Disaster recovery

AC CloudFront is typically associated with performance and not a lot else. However, CloudFront also provides deep integration with many managed AWS services such as S3, EC2, ELBs and even Route 53

Which of the following provide ways to automate the backup of your RDS database? (Choose 2) A. Automated snapshots B. S3 lifecycle management policies C. Automated backups D. Data pipeline

AC RDS provides only 2 methods for backing up RDS databases at this point

In which of the following ways can you create a read replica? (Choose 2) A. Through the AWS console B. Through the AWS online support system C. Through the AWS API D. Through Elastic Beanstalk

AC You can create a read replica through the AWS console, AWS API and the AWS CLI.

Which of the following are available to use as an EBS boot volume? (Choose 2) A. General SSD B. Cold HDD C. Throughput optimized HDD D. Provisioned IOPS

AD HDD types are not available to use as boot volumes

How many S3 buckets can you add to a account? A. 100 B. 100 by default, but this can be increased by contacting AWS C. It depends on the default set for the new account by AWS D.It depends on how the account is configured at account creation

B

What is the longest backup retention window that Amazon RDS allows? A. 30 days B. 35 days C. 45 days D. 365 days

B

Which of the following databases support read replicas? A. Oracle B. MySQL C. DynamoDB D. All of the above

B

Which of the following is a valid reason to use a cold HDD EBS volume? A. You need a performant solid-state drive. B. You are trying to choose the lowest cost EBS volume possible C. You are performing data warehousing using the volume D. You need an inexpensive boot volume

B

You are an architect working on adding scalability to an application based on EC2 instances within a public facing VPC. You want max amount of flexibility in weighting and load balancing options, as you plan to experiment with various routing types to see which handles load more evenly. Which type of LB should you use? A. Classic LB B. Application LB C. Network LB D. Either an ALB or ELB would be suitable.

B ALBs offer the most flexibility in routing and load distribution.

What is the max allowable RDS volume size when using provisioned IOPS storage? A. 8 TB B. 16TB C. 12 TB D. 1 PB

B All major databases supported by RDS - MariaDB, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL - allow up to 16 TB of storage for a provisioned IOPS volume.

What type of replication occurs in a Multi AZ RDS setup? A. Sequential replication B. Synchronous replication C. Asynchronous replication D. Synchronous replication for full backups and asynchronous replication for incremental backups

B Asynchronous backup occurs only in read replica setup.

How are automated backups related to read replicas? A. They are not; read replicas and automated backups have no relationship at all B. Read replicas do not create automated backups, but the primary database instance must have automatic backups to create read replicas C. Read replicas cause the primary database instance to automatically begin backing up D. Each read replica is automatically backed up after an initial read from the primary database instance

B Read replicas are not a backup strategy, nor do they cause automatic backups to be setup. However you must turn on automatic backups for the primary database instance to enable read replicas.

Which domain name should you use to take advantage of CloudFront? A. The domain name registered to your S3 buckets in Route 53 B. The domain name registered in CloudFront as the origin for your static and dynamic content C. The domain name registered in your ALB or ELB pointing to your content D. The domain name from the AWS console for your CloudFront distribution

B When you create a CloudFront distribution, you register a domain name for your static and dynamic content. This domain should then be used by clients.

You have a fleet of web hosting EC2 instances. Currently, you have SSL certificates installed for each EC2 instance, but the cost of maintaining these certificates and installing new ones has become higher over recent years. You want to architect a solution for SSL termination that doesn't involve multiple certificates. Which load balancer would you suggest? A. Classic ELB B. Application LB C. Network LB D. Either an ALB or ELB would be suitable

B An ALB offers SSL termination and makes the SSL offload process very simple through tight integration with SSL processes. While an ELB will handle SSL termination, it does not offer the management features that ALBs do.

Which of the following is a valid reason to use a provisioned IOPS EBS volume? (Choose 2) A. You want a low cost option for your EBS volume B. You need to support a large MongoDB database workload C. You need massive performance and throughput for your applications. D. You have applications that need a bootable environment but can fail from time to time and be re-created.

BC

Which of the following protocols are supported by an application load balancer? (Choose 2) A. SSH B. HTTP C. HTTPS D. FTP

BC

Which of the following statements are true about spread placement groups? (Choose 2) A. All instances in the group must be in the same AZ B. Instances in the group will see lowered network latency in communicating with each other C. You can have up to 7 instances in multiple AZs in the group D. AWS provisions the hardware rather than having you specify the distinct hardware for the group

BC

Your web based application uses a large RDS data store to write and read user profile information. The latest marketing campaign has increased traffic to the application by an order of magnitude. Users are reporting long delays when logging in after having signed up. Which solutions are valid approaches to addressing this lag? (Choose 2) A. Set up a Multi AZ configuration for your RDS and round robin requests between the 2 RDS instances to spread out traffic B. Employ ElastiCache to cache users' credentials after their initial visit to reduce trips to the database from the web application C. Set up a read replica configuration for your RDS and round robin requests between all the replicas to spread out the traffic D. Increase the number of EC2 instances allocated to your Auto Scaling group to spread out traffic on the web application tier.

BC

In what scenarios would you install an Oracle database on an EC2 instance rather than using RDS? (Choose 2) A. You want to use an ALB to support multiple instances and round robin request distribution B. Your database size is greater than 80% of the maximum database size in RDS C. You have custom plug-ins that will not run on RDS D. You want to ensure that your database is only accessible through your private subnet

BC AD are about network routes and can be accomplished without affecting the EC2 vs RDS decision. If you have a very large database and it will grow, then sizing restraints on RDS can be a limiting factor

Which of the following are true about a read replica setup? (Choose 2) A. Automated backups are taken from the read replicas rather than the primary instance B. The database engine on all instances is active C. Each read replica instance can upgrade its database engine separate from the primary instance D. Replication is synchronous

BC No backups are taken from any instance automatically, including the primary instance Replication is asynchronous

For which of the following would ElastiCache offer performance improvements? (Choose 2) A. Gaming B. ElastiCache can improve any application's performance when used properly C. Financial services D. A and C

BD

Which of the following content types can be served by CloudFront? (Choose 2) A. The returned rows from a SQL query B. The response from a PHP script C. A Lambda function D. HTML and CSS

BD

Which of the following is a valid reason to use a General Purpose SSD EBS volume? (Choose 2) A. You need to support large database workloads B. You want a blend of a performant SSD and cost sensitive SSD volume C. You are performing data warehousing using the volume D. You have low latency apps and want to run them on a bootable volume.

BD

How does CloudFront increase the security of content at the edge? (Choose 2) A. Requires HTTPS at all edge locations B. Integration with AWS WAF (if configured) C. Automatic client keys encrypted with KMS D. Automatic deployment of AWS Shield

BD CloudFront automatically provide AWS Shield(standard) to protect from DDoS, and it can also integrate with AWS WAF and AWS Shield advanced. HTTPS is not required, and there is no KMS involvement.

What is the primary purpose of a read replica RDS configuration? A. Disaster recovery B. Fault tolerance C. Performance D. Security

C

You are charged with installing Oracle on a fleet of EC2 instances due to custom Java based plug-ins you need to install along with Oracle. Which EBS volume would you choose to best support your Oracle installation? A. Magnetic B. Throughput optimized HDD C. Provisioned IOPS SSD D. General SSD

C

You are consulting for a company that wants to migrate its 85TB data store into S3. It is willing to upload the data to S3 every night in small batches but is concerned that overseas customers using its other applications might experience network latency as they are transferring files into S3. What solution would you recommend to move the company's data? A. Enable Transfer Acceleration on S3 B. Direct Connect C. Snowball D. Set up a VPN that uses a VPG for transferring data

C

In which of the following situations would you recommend using a placement group? A. Your fleet of EC2 instances requires high disk IO B. Your fleet of EC2 instances requires high network throughput across 2 AZs C. Your fleet of EC2 instances requires high network throughput within a single AZ D. Your fleet of EC2 instances require high network throughput to S3 buckets

C A placement group is concerned primarily with network throughput and reducing latency among EC2 within an AZ. AWS does support a placement group spanning multiple AZs via spread placement groups, but unless "spread" is specifically mentioned, you should assume the question references a normal placement group.

At what level of the TCP stack does an ALB operate? A. Level 1 B. Level 4 C. Level 7 D. Level 8

C ALB - Level 7, the individual request(application) level NLB - Level 4, the connection(transport level) Classic LB - both 4 & 7

You have a host of EC2 instances all with dedicated IP addresses serving results from complex computations. You want to load balance across these instances, each of which receives hundreds of thousands of requests a second currently. Which load balancer would you employ? A. Classic ELB B. Application LB C. Network LB D. Either an ALB or ELB would be suitable

C NLB can handle the high request load mentioned as well as route between static IP address instances

You need to perform a large amount of OLAP. Which AWS service would you choose? A. DynamoDB B. RDS Aurora C. Redshift D. Oracle installed on EC2 instances

C OLAP - Online Analytical Processing

To how many EBS volumes can a single EC2 instance attach? A. 1 B. 2 C. 27 D. Unlimited

C Officially instances can have up to 28 attachments, one of which is the Network Interface Attachment, leaving 27 available for EBS attachments

You have an Oracle installation using a custom geospatial plug-in. You also want to ensure the maximum throughput for database operations once those operations are begun by the plug-in. How would you set up Oracle to meet these requirements? A. Set up Oracle using RDS with provisioned IOPS B. Set up Oracle using RDS with magnetic storage. C. Install Oracle on an EC2 instance with a provisioned IOPS EBS volume D. Install Oracle on an EC2 instance with a magnetic EBS volume

C While RDS is a better option in the general case, it is likely not possible to use RDS in this scenario due to the custom plug-in required. Given an installation of EC2, the question becomes which storage class is faster. The answer here is always provisioned IOPS.

Your users are now storing all of their photos in your cloud based application. CloudWatch metrics suggest that photos are written an average of 5 times per user per day and read 100 times per user per day. If photos are lost, user surveys indicate that users are not typically upset and simply upload the missing photo or ignore the missing photos altogether. What is the most cost effective recommendation for the S3 storage class to use? A. Standard S3 B. S3-IA C. S3 One Zone IA D. S3 RRS

C both A and B are more expensive that C, as it is more available and resilient, both of which are not required for this question.

Which of the following are true about a read replica setup? (Choose 2) A. Backups are configured by default when you set up read replicas B. They provide a highly scalable solution for your on premises databases C. They can exist within a single AZ, cross AZ, or cross region. D. A read replica can be promoted to a standalone database instance.

CD

Which of the following options are valid options for where an RDS read replica is set up in relation to the primary instance? (Choose 2) A. In the same region as the primary instance B. In a separate region from the primary instance C. In an instance running on premises D. Both A and B

CD All of them are valid options. Although it is not particularly common, you can set up a read replica in an on premise instance. Additionally, read replicas are often created in separate regions from the primary instance, to improve performance for clients closer to different regions than the primary instance.

You have a primary database set up to use read replicas on an instance in US East 1. You have 3 read replicas also in US East 1 and 2 additional replicas in US West 2. You are trying to create a new replica in EU West 1 and are getting an error. What do you need to do to resolve this error and successfully create a new read replica in EU West 1? A. Turn on the Multi-AZ option for your primary instance. B. You can't create the replica in EU West 1. Instead, create the replica in another US region to avoid regulations about read replicas in the EU C. Contact AWS about raising the number of read replicas allowed from 5 to 8. D. Turn off one of the read replicas in US East 1 and then you can create the instance in EU West 1

D The read replica setup allows for a maximum of 5 read replicas, which is a hard limit.