Quiz #3 (Test 3)

Which of the following options describes a responsibility of the decider that is used within Amazon’s Simple Workflow Service (SWF)?

• A) Process tasks that have been received.

• B) Return the results of tasks to Amazon SWF.

• C) Schedule activity tasks and provide input data to the activity workers.

• D) Get tasks that collaborate with Amazon SWF.

Answer explanation

One responsibility of the decider is to schedule activity tasks and provide input data to the activity workers. In addition to its normal responsibilities, the decider will execute events that show up while the workflow is executing. The decider will also close the workflow once it validates that the entire objective has been completed. Overall, the decider will coordinate tasks by validating concurrency that exists, processing their order, and scheduling the tasks based on application requirements.

 

A worker service is responsible for getting tasks and sending the task details back to Amazon SWF, not the decider.

 

The worker service, not the decider, processes all tasks that have been received.

 

A worker service also gives the results of the tasks back to Amazon SWF. All of these processes are related to worker services and are not the responsibility of the decider.

As an IT specialist with a cloud background, you are concerned with the overall recoverability of your data within the cloud. What does Amazon S3 offer to alleviate this concern?

• A) Amazon S3 provides strong read-after-write consistency.

• B) Data is replicated to multiple Regions within an Availability Zone

• C) Data within Amazon S3 storage is backed up to tape nightly.

• D) Data is stored in silos in another country.

Answer explanation

 

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) provides strong read-after-write consistency. This means that whenever a new object is written or an existing object is deleted or overwritten, future read requests always get the newest version of the object. Additionally, list operations have strong consistency in Amazon S3. This ensures that you can perform a listing after a write operation and all changes that were done by the write operation will be displayed correctly.

 

Data is replicated to other locations within the same Region. The locations within each Region are called Availability Zones (AZs). You can have many AZs within one Region. An AZ is a specific location within a Region. You must remember that data is only copied to multiple AZs within the same Region and not multiple Regions. This is why Amazon S3 is a highly durable solution for protecting data.

 

Data is not backed up using a tape backup solution, instead data is replicated to other AZs.

 

Data is not stored in silos in another country. Data resides within the AWS infrastructure and within the same Region.

 

Data is not replicated to multiple Regions within an AZ. S3 has multiple AZs within a specific Region.

When does Amazon DynamoDB encrypt data at rest?

• A) When the first rows of data enter the table

• B) Only when you create a new table structure

• C) Only when you use an ALTER TABLE command

• D) Only when you create a new table structure within the US East (Ohio) Region

Answer explanation

Amazon DynamoDB offers encryption at rest by implementing AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Encryption at rest can only be implemented when the new DynamoDB table is created. You cannot alter the table to add it later, it must be done at the time of creation. Amazon recommends the encryption at rest option for data that is considered sensitive. This option reduces the difficulties, such as time and cost, in protecting critical data.

You can create a table with encryption at rest enabled using either the Amazon DynamoDB console or the CLI command aws dynamodb create-table with the SSEDescription parameter set to Status": "ENABLED.

Encryption at rest is not enabled when the first rows of data enter the table because encryption is applied at the structural level, and only during the creation of the table object. For the same reason, it cannot be enabled using an ALTER TABLE command.

Only when you create a new table structure within the US East (Ohio) Region is incorrect because Amazon offers encryption at rest in several AWS Regions. They include US East, US West, Canada, South America, Asia, and many more.

You need to create a historical CPU report on your AWS EC2 instance. How long does Amazon CloudWatch keep resource data?

• A) 1 week

• B) 30 days

• C) 14 days

• D) 2 days

Answer explanation

Amazon CloudWatch keeps data for 2 weeks (14 days). You can monitor disk reads and writes and even CPU information that can help you determine if you need to add additional Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances for load balancing purposes.

 

2 days, 1 week (7 days), and 30 days are all incorrect choices because CloudWatch only keeps 14 days of historical metric analysis.

Which of the following is a database instance type offered by Amazon RDS?

• A) DB2

• B) NoSQL

• C) Amazon Glacier

• D) Oracle

Answer explanation

Oracle is a relational database solution offered by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). Amazon RDS offers several different types of databases, including Microsoft SQL server, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Amazon Aurora, and PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS currently supports Oracle Database versions 21c (21.0.0.0) and 19c (19.0.0.0). Support for Oracle 12c was deprecated in 2022.

 

NoSQL is considered a non-relational database solution and is not offered within Amazon’s RDS product.

 

DB2 is also considered non-relational and is owned by IBM. This database technology focuses on object-oriented applications and is not offered by the Amazon RDS product.

 

Amazon Glacier is an AWS storage solution optimized for infrequently used data or data that is considered cold. This is a storage option and not a database instance type.

Which Amazon storage option is a good solution if you need storage that offers block-level encryption, high reliability, and is highly available, while using applications that use fine-grained updates to raw unformatted data?

• A) AWS Snowball Edge

• B) Amazon Glacier

• C) Amazon S3

• D) Amazon EBS

Answer explanation

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides block-level storage volumes for Amazon's EC2 instances. These volumes are very reliable, highly available, and can be attached to a running instance, but only in the same Availability Zone (AZ). These storage volumes can have a life outside an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance. This storage is primarily used to support database file systems as their primary storage but can also be used for file systems. These EBS volumes can handle random writes and reads while managing increased throughputs with longer execution of writes and reads.

 

Amazon S3 provides object-level storage where data is accessed more frequently. This option would not be efficient enough to serve as a database or file system storage.

 

Amazon Glacier is an AWS storage solution used for data that is infrequently used or that is considered cold. This storage solution would not be viable to use as a storage solution for accessing data through a database.

 

AWS offers various devices as part of its Snow Family for migrating data into and out of AWS. The Snow Family moves data in a secure manner and with good throughput. Snowball Edge is ideal for large-scale migration of data, workflows that need data transfer, and high-capacity local computing.

What is the main reason for using an Elastic IP address associated with your virtual private cloud account?

• A) You have the ability to move network attributes from one instance to another in one single step.

• B) You can assign an Elastic IP address to all your EC2 instances for easier management of your EC2 infrastructure.

• C) You can never deallocate an Elastic IP address because it stays associated with your AWS account for auditing purposes and is considered a static IP address.

• D) Elastic IP addresses can be used with IPv6 or IPv4 network components.

Answer explanation

The main benefit of using an Elastic IP address is the ability to move network attributes from one instance to another in one single step. The first step is to request an Elastic IP address and associate it with your virtual private cloud (VPC). Then, within your VPC, associate the address with a specific instance. Also, your Elastic IP address is really associated with your AWS account and must be explicitly removed when you are finished with it. Amazon limits you to five Elastic IP addresses associated with your AWS account. You can also use tags within your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) console to associate your Elastic IP address with your instance.

You need to analyze several terabytes worth of unstructured data using columnar storage. Which type of database would you use?

• A) Amazon Aurora

• B) Amazon DynamoDB

• C) Amazon RDS

• D) Amazon Redshift

Answer explanation

Amazon Redshift is a petabyte-scaled infrastructure that is considered a data warehouse solution. Amazon Redshift has the ability to process both structured and unstructured data. It uses columnar storage for query performance, which reduces the amount of data loaded from disk to memory, lessening the amount of I/O needed for processing.

Amazon Aurora is a relational database that offers PostgreSQL- and MySQL-compatible database solutions. This database is a relational database system, not a data warehouse environment.

An Amazon DynamoDB database provides a NoSQL database service that delivers millisecond returns on data to the end user or application. It is a non-relational database rather than a data warehouse environment.

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is a database cloud solution for applications that require Oracle, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora. Amazon Redshift is better suited for processing terabytes worth of data.

Which perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework would you use to gain knowledge on updating the skills of the company staff and all company processes?

• A) Governance

• B) Operations

• C) People

• D) Business

Answer explanation

The People perspective helps the Human Resources (HR) department of a company to prepare their teams to move to the cloud by updating staff skills and organizational processes to ensure cloud competency.

 

The Governance perspective provides knowledge on how you can orchestrate your initiatives on your cloud deployment and reduce risks related to transformation. and application portfolio, ensure cost benefits, track and manage risks, and govern and curate your data. Some aspects of the Governance perspective include project and benefits management, data governance, risk management, financial management of the cloud, curation of data and application portfolio management.

 

The Business perspective allows you to gain knowledge to help you move your organization to a model that integrates IT strategy and business.

 

The Operations perspective provides insight into how you can use agile best practices for working in a cloud environment.

Which of these would you use for running programs that can automatically retrieve key costs related to various AWS services?

• A) AWS Pricing API

• B) AWS Cost Explorer

• C) AWS Services Catalog

• D) AWS Simple Monthly Calculator

Answer explanation

You will use the AWS Pricing Application Programming Interface (API). The AWS Pricing API, also referred to as Price List API, provides a means for programmatic access to AWS pricing data. This is useful for accurately predicting and managing the costs of using AWS services. The API allows access to a pricing index that a customer can use to retrieve detailed pricing information for the listed AWS service. The service index can be downloaded as a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file. There are APIs offered by AWS for querying prices:

 

AWS Price List Bulk API – allows you to retrieve the prices of AWS services in bulk through a JSON or CSV file. This API keeps historical records of the price list.

 

AWS Price List Query API – allows you to use AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) or Command Line Interface (CLI) to retrieve pricing data for specific AWS services and process. An example is getting pricing data for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances with specific CPU, memory, and regional configurations.