My post on 25 Cloud Practitioner Mock Exam Questions proved really popular with readers. So I thought I’d put out another one around the Architect Associate course.
If you have the time, after going through these exam questions, check out that post as it has some great tips and techniques on how to approach questions and apply common sense logic to answering them.
I put these exam questions together based on my learnings and experiences taking the exam itself.
So without further ado, here are my 25 AWS Architect Associate mock exam questions totally free of charge.
d) RDS with binary blog versioning
Answer – a
Amazon S3 has versioning built in, by default it is not enabled though. I wrote an entire 2 part blog post on S3 Ultimate guide where I give a detailed explanation of how to enable versioning on S3 and much more.
Answer a & b
You could host files on S3 and use lambda functions wrapped in an API to provide content to users. You would only be charged when you use the service and it would scale.
c) Storage Gateway
Answer a
EFS is similar to EBS in that is block storage and therefore suitable for running operating systems or databases. They differ only in that EBS can only be attached to one EC2 instance at a time. EFS drives can be mounted across multiple instances.
b) S3 Infrequently Accessed
d) Glacier Expedited Retrieval
Answer c
Standard Glacier storage would be the most appropriate. The S3 options would costs to much and since the retrieval isn’t time bound, glacier expedited retrieval seems unnecessary.
a) attach a VPC endpoint with routes 0.0.0.0/0
b) use a NAT gateway with routes 0.0.0.0/0
c) use an Internet gateway
d) move the services into your VPC
Answer a
A VPC will provide access to services hosted on AWS without needing to access the internet.
P.s. When I was revising, I found NATs and VPC’s the most difficult part to understand. This could possibly be due to me not coming from a networking background.
a) Put your instances behind an application load balancer
b) Create an auto scaling group with a minimum number of instances set to 2
c) Create 2 EC2 instances and manually add more based on CloudWatch alerts
d) Create 2 EC2 M4 10xLarge instance to have enough processing power to handle peak loads
Answer a & b
A Load balancer will distribute traffic between the instances that sit behind it, while an auto scaling group will add more instances based on demand. I.e. scaling based on CPU load above 90% would trigger a new EC2 instance.
a) prefix the file names of the files uploaded to the bucket.
b) postfix the file names of the files uploaded to the bucket.
c) use S3 region replication
d) encrypt the files prior to uploading to S3
Answer a
Prefixing the file names prevents S3 grouping them and ensures the S3 bucket performs as efficiently as it can. This allows S3 to handle parallel requests on the same S3 bucket.
c) Create multiple EBS volumes
d) Chop the videos into shorter lengths.
Answer a
CloudFront enables you to cache content at various edge locations across the globe. Dramatically reducing the latency from user requesting a resource to it being delivered.
a) Upload the files to an EC2 instance which processes them and then push them eventually to s3.
b) Push the files to S3 and run a lambda function triggered by the upload on the file.
c) Upload the files to an EC2 instance which processes them and then store them on the EC2 instances EBS volume.
d) Store the files in a RDS aurora instance as blobs.
Answer b
Storing the files in S3 and then triggering a lambda function will scale massively and will be the most cost efficient solution.
c) S3 bucket with a life cycle policy to delete files after 6 months
d) S3 bucket with life cycle policy to move files into Glacier after 6 months
Answer c
S3 is extremely versatile for versioning, archival and data removal policies. You can create a policy to delete all content from a bucket that is 6 months or older. AWS handles the rest.
d) Cloud Formation
Answer d
Cloud Formation allows you to script the deployment and AWS resources and infrastructure. This means you can create a new complex architectural setup and tear it down simply by running an cloud formation script.
Answer c
Simple notification service (SNS) allows users to send notifications when triggered. This would be the most suitable solution to the problem described above.
Answer a
DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that lets you store JSON data directly to the database. It is well suited for software products where their schema is not fixed. They also scale extremely well
a) Run an EC2 instance with a scheduled task to copy the S3 bucket content to another S3 bucket.
b) Download the buckets content and copy them to data centre located in a different geographic region.
c) Enable Cross-Region replication that will copy the contents of the bucket to another region.
d) Manually copy the content from one bucket to another bucket located in a different region.
Answer c
S3 has cross region replication disabled by default. When enabled it will copy the contents of one bucket to another preconfigured bucket. Bucket versioning must be enabled for this feature to be enabled. You should consider your storage costs will double due to storing the data twice.
c) Storage Gateway
Answer b
A VPC endpoint allows you to privately connect to your VPC. This means you’re not required to use an internet gateway.
c) EC2 instance with a Message queue installed
d) There is no service for this scenario
Answer a
AWS Kinesis is specifically designed for this scenario. You can process data feeds in real time.
d) The Management Console
Answer a
CloudTrail lets you monitor all sorts of
a) Elastic beanstalk
Answer a
Elastic beanstalk (ebs) provides a convenient scalable way to host docker containers with little to no configuration.
a) EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)
b) EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2)*
c) Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
Answer a
EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) is the most performant EBS option currently available. It will be suitable for running high throughput transactional operations such as hosting a database.
a) EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)
b) EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2)*
c) Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
Answer d
Cold HDD (sc1) is the least performant EBS option currently available. It will be suitable for running low transaction less frequently accessed workloads.
a) Create an amazon storage gateway link and begin transferring data that way.
b) Request an AWS snowball, transfer the data to it and mail it back to amazon so they can upload it directly to their infrastructure.
c) Drive to a datacenter and load the data yourself.
d) Purchase several broadband internet connections and run the upload in parallel.
Answer b
Snowball will let you copy your data to the portable storage solution. You can then ship it back to amazon where they will then connect the snowball directly to their server infrastructure over high speed data link.
a) The NAT gateway
b) The EC2 instances
d) The VPC itself
Answer a
The elastic load balancer would not be a problem, nor would the EC2 instances. The NAT gateway however is limited in its bandwidth. This can not be easily scaled and would ba limitation to be aware of when designing a system such as this one.
a) S3 (simple storage solution)
b) Route53 pointing to the S3 bucket
d) Route53 pointing to the EC2 instance
Answer a & b
A combination of S3 and Route53 would allow for a static website that can scale to massive levels. This is a simple and cost effective way of hosting a site with high traffic demands.
Raja YOU’RE CREATING AN APPLICATION IN YOUR STARTUP THAT LETS USERS SIGN UP AND CONSUME ONLINE ELEARNING COURSES. YOU WANT TO DELIVER CONTENT ON DEMAND BUT YOU HAVE REQUIREMENTS FOR IT TO BE HIGHLY SCALABLE AND THE MOST COST EFFICIENT SOLUTION. SELECT THE MOST APPROPRIATE AWS SERVICES TO MEET THESE REQUIREMENTS. CHOOSE 2.
a) Lambda b) S3 c) EC2 d) EFS Answer c & d ANSWER MUST BE A & B
