SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Questions and Answers

AWS Config can continuously monitor and record your AWS resource configurations. It provides AWS Config rules that automatically check the configuration of AWS resources and notify you of compliance and non-compliance.

Steps:

Enable AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console.

Follow the steps to set up AWS Config if it is not already enabled.

Add AWS Managed Rules:

In the AWS Config console, choose "Rules".

Add the s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited managed rule.

Configure the rule to check all S3 buckets.

Set Up SNS Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic.

Subscribe your email or other communication channels to the SNS topic.

In AWS Config, configure the rule to send notifications to the SNS topic whenever there is a compliance change.

This approach ensures operational efficiency as AWS Config will automatically monitor S3 buckets and notify you through SNS if any bucket becomes publicly accessible.

Step Scaling Policy:

Step scaling policies allow you to define scaling actions based on different levels of CloudWatch alarms.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2 Auto Scaling.

Select your Auto Scaling group.

Create or edit a scaling policy and choose "Step scaling."

Define different steps based on CloudWatch alarm thresholds (e.g., CPU usage or request count).

Configure larger adjustments for higher thresholds and smaller adjustments for lower thresholds.

Example Configuration:

For CPU > 80%, increase capacity by 4 instances.

For CPU > 60%, increase capacity by 2 instances.

For CPU > 40%, increase capacity by 1 instance.

Step Scaling for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

To ensure that EC2 instances in private subnets can access the internet for software updates while complying with the security policy that requires instances to be in private subnets, you should use a NAT gateway. A NAT gateway allows instances in private subnets to initiate outbound traffic to the internet but prevents the internet from initiating connections to those instances.

Steps:

Create a NAT Gateway:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "NAT Gateways".

Choose "Create NAT Gateway".

Select the public subnet where you want to create the NAT gateway.

Choose an Elastic IP address for the NAT gateway.

Choose "Create a NAT Gateway".

Update the Route Table for Private Subnets:

Open the Amazon VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Route Tables".

Select the route table associated with your private subnets.

Choose the "Routes" tab and then "Edit routes".

Add a route with the destination 0.0.0.0/0 and the target as the NAT gateway ID.

Save the changes.

This setup ensures that instances in private subnets can access the internet via the NAT gateway in the public subnet.

To optimize the routing of requests to the application for users in different geographic locations, use Amazon Route 53's latency-based routing:

Latency Routing Policy: Modify the Route 53 DNS settings for app.anycompany.com by changing the routing policy to latency. This policy routes user requests to the server that has the lowest latency relative to the user's location.

Configure Latency Records: Create latency records for each ALB—one for the ALB in us-west-2 and another for the new ALB in ap-southeast-2. Route 53 will automatically direct traffic to the endpoint that provides the lowest latency connection to the user.

Seamless User Experience: By using latency routing, the URL remains the same (app.anycompany.com), but the backend service location varies based on which endpoint is likely to respond the fastest. This setup provides a seamless experience for users, reducing latency without requiring any changes to how they access the application.

This method leverages Route 53's advanced DNS capabilities to ensure optimal performance and user experience by dynamically routing traffic based on geographic latency considerations.

When running CloudWatch Synthetics canaries in a private VPC, they require access to:

CloudWatch API (for canary configuration and control) – via interface endpoint

Amazon S3 (to store canary artifacts and logs) – via gateway endpoint

VPC DNS for name resolution – both DNS resolution and hostnames must be enabled

From CloudWatch Synthetics VPC setup documentation:

If your VPC has no internet access, you must configure VPC endpoints and VPC DNS settings for canaries to run successfully.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Each Lambda function generates 1 GB of log data daily in its own CloudWatch Logs log group.

The security team needs a count of application errors, grouped by type, across all log groups.

Analyze the Requirements:

Aggregate and analyze log data across multiple log groups.

Count and group errors by type.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Perform a CloudWatch Logs Insights query.

CloudWatch Logs Insights allows querying and analyzing log data.

The stats command and count function can aggregate and count errors across log groups.

Option B: Perform a CloudWatch Logs search with groupby and count.

CloudWatch Logs search does not support these functions; Logs Insights is needed for advanced queries.

Option C: Perform an Amazon Athena query.

Athena can query data in S3 but is not directly applicable to CloudWatch Logs.

Option D: Perform an Amazon RDS query.

RDS queries are for database data, not applicable to log data in CloudWatch.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: CloudWatch Logs Insights is designed for querying and analyzing log data, making it the appropriate choice for counting and grouping errors.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights

CloudWatch Logs Insights provides powerful querying capabilities to aggregate and analyze log data, including counting and grouping errors.

The simplest and most efficient solution to ensure that EC2 instances are restarted when CPU utilization exceeds 80% is to use Amazon CloudWatch alarms:

Create a CloudWatch Alarm: Navigate to the CloudWatch dashboard in the AWS Management Console and create a new alarm. Set the alarm to monitor the CPU utilization metric of the EC2 instances.

Set the Alarm Condition: Configure the alarm to trigger when the CPU utilization exceeds 80%. You can specify this threshold in the alarm settings.

Configure Alarm Actions: In the actions settings of the alarm, select the option to reboot the instance. This action ensures that the instance is automatically restarted whenever the alarm condition is met, without the need for manual intervention or additional scripts.

This method leverages AWS's native capabilities, minimizing operational overhead and eliminating the need for external tools or custom scripts.

Objective:

Provision Spot Instances with the highest availability while using a wide range of instance types.

Capacity Optimized Strategy:

The capacity optimized strategy ensures that Spot Instances are launched from the pools with the highest available capacity at the time of the request.

This approach minimizes the likelihood of interruptions and increases the chances of launching the desired capacity.

Steps to Implement:

In the Auto Scaling group configuration, set the Spot Allocation Strategy to Capacity Optimized.

Define multiple instance types in the launch template to allow flexibility.

AWS References:

Spot Allocation Strategies:Spot Instance Allocation Strategies

Capacity Optimized Details:Capacity Optimized Spot Instances

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option A: Simply launching up to maximum capacity does not address availability concerns.

Option B: The diversified strategy spreads instances across Spot pools but does not prioritize capacity.

Option D: Spot Instance Advisor provides recommendations but is not a direct allocation strategy.

Evictions in Redis occur when memory is full and new data overwrites older data. To reduce evictions and retain more data:

Increase node size (memory capacity) or

Add more nodes (sharding)

From ElastiCache Redis eviction documentation:

High eviction count suggests memory pressure. To reduce evictions, consider increasing node size.

The presigned URL expiration is the most common reason for access issues after some time. Additionally, if the SysOps administrator’s access key (used to generate the presigned URL) is invalid, the URL will no longer be usable. Block Public Access or ACL settings are irrelevant to presigned URLs.

When you create a hosted zone, Route 53 automatically creates a name server (NS) record and a start of authority (SOA) record for the zone. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/migrate-dns-domain-in-use.html#migrate-dns-create-hosted-zone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOA_record

To provide both incoming and outgoing connectivity to the internet for EC2 instances, you need to ensure that the instances are in a subnet that has a route to an internet gateway. Here are the required steps:

Create an Internet Gateway:

Open the Amazon VPC console at Amazon VPC Console.

In the navigation pane, choose Internet Gateways.

Choose Create Internet Gateway.

Enter a name for the internet gateway and choose Create.

Attach the internet gateway to your VPC by selecting the created internet gateway, then choosing Actions, and Attach to VPC.

Modify Route Table:

In the Amazon VPC console, go to the Route Tables section.

Select the route table associated with the subnet where your EC2 instances are located.

Choose Edit routes and add a new route:

Destination: 0.0.0.0/0

Target: Select the internet gateway you created.

These steps ensure that the instances can send and receive traffic to and from the internet.

Creating and Attaching an Internet Gateway

Route Tables

To improve RDS performance during peak traffic when resources are over-utilized due to read traffic, the SysOps administrator can take the following actions:

Add a Read Replica:

Amazon RDS Read Replicas provide enhanced performance and durability for database instances.

By creating a read replica, you can offload read traffic from the primary database instance to the replica.

This reduces the load on the primary instance and improves overall performance.

Amazon RDS Read Replicas

Modify the Application to Use Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached:

Amazon ElastiCache is a web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud.

By using ElastiCache for Memcached, you can cache frequently accessed data, reducing the number of read requests to the RDS instance.

This can significantly improve the performance of the database during peak traffic.

If a user is unable to connect to an EC2 instance via RDP, the issue could be related to network ACLs or route table configurations.

Network ACL Blocking Traffic:

A network ACL (NACL) associated with the bastion's subnet might be blocking traffic on port 3389 (RDP).

Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Network ACLs.

Check the inbound and outbound rules for the NACL associated with the subnet. Ensure that port 3389 is allowed.

Route Table Missing Route to Internet Gateway:

The subnet's route table may not have a route to the internet gateway, which is necessary for internet connectivity.

Open the Amazon VPC console and navigate to Route Tables.

Check the route table associated with the subnet. Ensure there is a route with destination 0.0.0.0/0 pointing to the internet gateway (igw-xxxxxxxx).

Ensuring proper configuration of network ACLs and route tables will enable the required internet connectivity for RDP access.

Network ACLs

Route Tables

Here are the steps to configure Amazon EventBridge to meet the above requirements:

Log in to the AWS Management Console by using the AWS Management Console shortcut from the VM desktop. Make sure that you are logged in to the desired AWS account.

Go to the EventBridge service in the us-east-2 Region.

In the EventBridge service, navigate to the "Event buses" page.

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

Give a name to your event bus, and select "default" as the event source type.

Navigate to "Rules" page and create a new rule named "RunFunction"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "Schedule" as the event source and set the schedule to run every 15 minutes.

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to Lambda" and choose the existing AWS Lambda function named "LogEventFunction"

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "EC2" as the event source, and filter the events on "EC2 Spot Instance interruption"

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to SNS topic" and create a new standard Amazon SNS topic named "TopicEvents"

In the "Input Transformer" section, set the Input Path to {“instance” : “$.detail.instance-id”} and Input template to “The EC2 Spot Instance has been interrupted on account.

Now all Amazon EC2 events in the default event bus will be replayable for past 90 days.

Note:

You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs to create and manage EventBridge resources.

You can use CloudTrail event history to replay events from the past 90 days.

You can refer to the AWS EventBridge documentation for more information on how to configure and use the service: https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/

Here are the steps to update an existing AWS CloudFormation stack:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the CloudFormation service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

Choose "Replace current template" and upload the updated CloudFormation template from the Amazon S3 bucket named "cloudformation-bucket"

In the "Parameter" section, update the EC2 instance type to us-east-t2.nano and add the IP address range 192.168.100.0/30 for SSH access.

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

In the "Capabilities" section, check the checkbox for "IAM Resources"

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

Once the update is complete, navigate to the stack and click on the "Stack options" button, and select "Prevent updates to prevent accidental deletion"

To get the value of the Prodlnstanceld , navigate to the "Outputs" tab in the CloudFormation stack and find the key "Prodlnstanceld". The value corresponding to it is the value that you need to enter in the text box below.

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation service role to deploy updates.

You can refer to the AWS CloudFormation documentation for more information on how to update and manage stacks: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

Here are the steps to configure an Amazon S3 bucket to serve a static error page in the event of a failure at the primary site:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the S3 service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing S3 bucket named lab-751906329398-26023898.com and click on it.

In the "Properties" tab, click on "Static website hosting" and select "Use this bucket to host a website".

In "Index Document" field, enter the name of the object that you want to use as the index document, in this case, "index.html"

In the "Permissions" tab, click on "Block Public Access", and make sure that "Block all public access" is turned OFF.

Click on "Bucket Policy" and add the following policy to allow public read access:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::lab-751906329398-26023898.com/*"

}

]

}

Now navigate to the Amazon Route 53 service, and find the existing hosted zone named lab-751906329398-26023898.com.

Click on the "A record" and update the routing policy to "Primary - Failover" and add the existing ALB as the primary record.

Click on "Create Record" button and create a new secondary failover alias record for the domain lab-751906329398-26023898.com that routes traffic to the existing S3 bucket.

Now, when the primary site (ALB) goes down, traffic will be automatically routed to the S3 bucket serving the static error page.

Note:

You can use CloudWatch to monitor the health of your ALB.

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

You can use Amazon Route 53 for routing traffic to different resources based on health checks.

You can refer to the AWS documentation for more information on how to configure and use these services:

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

https://aws.amazon.com/route53/

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudtrail-log-file-validation-intro.html

"When you enable log file integrity validation, CloudTrail creates a hash for every log file that it delivers. Every hour, CloudTrail also creates and delivers a file that references the log files for the last hour and contains a hash of each. This file is called a digest file. Validated log files are invaluable in security and forensic investigations"

Using AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager with a maintenance window is a best practice for automating OS patch management across instances in an Auto Scaling group.

Patch Manager: Allows for scheduled patching according to maintenance windows, ensuring minimal impact on application uptime.

RebootOption parameter: Setting this to RebootIfNeeded ensures patches are applied fully when a reboot is required.

AWS-RunPatchBaseline: This document automates the patching process and can be customized based on compliance requirements.

To launch EC2 instances when there are no available private IPv4 addresses in the VPC, the SysOps administrator should associate a secondary IPv4 CIDR block with the VPC and create a new subnet for the VPC.

Associate a Secondary IPv4 CIDR Block:

Open the VPC console.

Select the VPC and choose "Actions" -> "Edit CIDRs."

Add a secondary IPv4 CIDR block to increase the number of available IP addresses.

Create a New Subnet:

After adding the secondary CIDR block, create a new subnet within this CIDR block.

This new subnet will provide additional private IP addresses for launching new EC2 instances.

Associating a CIDR Block with Your VPC

Creating a Subnet

To route traffic based on the URL path during a transition period where both an EC2-based legacy application and a new AWS Lambda function are in use:

Use of Application Load Balancer (ALB): ALBs support advanced request routing based on the URL path, among other criteria. This capability allows the ALB to evaluate the URL path of incoming requests and route them appropriately to either the legacy EC2 instances or the Lambda function.

Path-Based Routing Rules: Configure the ALB with rules that specify which URL paths should be directed to the EC2 instances and which should be routed to the Lambda function. For example, requests to /legacy/* might go to the EC2 instances, while /new/* could be directed to the Lambda function.

Integration with Lambda: ALBs can directly invoke Lambda functions in response to HTTP requests, making them ideal for scenarios where both server-based and serverless components are used in tandem.

This setup not only facilitates a smooth transition by enabling simultaneous operation of both components but also leverages the native capabilities of ALBs to manage traffic based on application requirements effectively.

To meet the requirements of logging all access attempts to the S3 bucket and receiving immediate notification about any delete events, the company can enable S3 server access logging and set up an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) notification for the S3 bucket. The S3 server access logs will record all access attempts to the bucket, including delete events, and the SNS notification can be configured to send an alert when a DeleteObject event occurs.

To handle the increased message load with minimal operational effort, implementing an Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) queue between the frontend and backend is an ideal solution. SQS decouples the frontend and backend by queuing messages, enabling the backend to process messages at its own pace without losing any.

SQS Queue: Acts as a buffer, ensuring messages are not lost if the backend application cannot immediately process them.

Decoupling: With SQS, the frontend can continue sending messages without concern for the backend's processing speed, providing a scalable solution with minimal management requirements.

Low Operational Overhead: SQS is fully managed, reducing the need for infrastructure management.

To improve the performance of the website with long loading times, leveraging Amazon CloudFront for caching static content and implementing EC2 Auto Scaling are effective strategies.

Add Amazon CloudFront Caching:

Navigate to the CloudFront console and create a new distribution.

For the origin, specify the S3 bucket where the static content is stored.

Configure caching settings to ensure that static content is cached at edge locations for faster delivery to end users.

Update the DNS settings in Amazon Route 53 to point to the CloudFront distribution for static content.

Implement EC2 Auto Scaling:

Go to the EC2 console and create a new launch configuration or launch template for the web servers.

Set up an Auto Scaling group using the launch configuration/template.

Configure the Auto Scaling group to use health checks, and specify the desired, minimum, and maximum number of instances.

Define scaling policies to add or remove instances based on CPU utilization or other metrics.

Distribute instances across multiple Availability Zones for high availability.

Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Several factors can affect the availability of an S3 object through a presigned URL:

Expiration of Presigned URL: A presigned URL is valid only until its specified expiration time. Once expired, it becomes inaccessible.

Invalid Access Key: If the access key of the SysOps administrator who generated the presigned URL is revoked or rotated, the URL will no longer be valid.

Other options like enabling Block Public Access or changing the object ACL to All Users are not necessary for presigned URLs, as these URLs temporarily grant access regardless of public bucket settings.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Share an AMI with other AWS accounts while ensuring it is encrypted with AWS KMS keys and accessible only to authorized accounts.

Analyze the Requirements:

Encrypt the AMI with a customer-managed key (CMK).

Share the AMI securely with specific AWS accounts.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Create a CMK and modify the key policy but do not create a copy of the AMI.

This does not re-encrypt the AMI with the CMK.

Option B: Create a CMK, modify the key policy, create a copy of the AMI, and specify the CMK.

This ensures the AMI is encrypted with the CMK and shared securely.

Option C: Create a CMK, modify the key policy, create a copy of the AMI, and make it public.

Making the AMI public does not meet the requirement of sharing with specific accounts only.

Option D: Modify the key policy of the AWS managed key and share the AMI.

AWS managed keys cannot have their key policies modified to add permissions for other accounts.

Select the Best Solution:

Option B: Creating a CMK, modifying the key policy, creating a copy of the AMI with the CMK, and specifying the permissions ensures the AMI is securely shared with specific AWS accounts.

Copying an AMI

Creating and Managing Keys

Sharing AMIs

This solution ensures the AMI is encrypted with a customer-managed key and shared securely with the specified AWS accounts.

Enable deletion protection for the DynamoDB tables:

Deletion protection is a feature that prevents accidental deletion of DynamoDB tables. When enabled, it requires an additional step to disable this protection before the table can be deleted.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to DynamoDB.

Select the table you want to protect.

Choose the "Overview" tab.

Under "Deletion protection," click "Enable deletion protection."

AWS DynamoDB Deletion Protection

Enable point-in-time recovery (PITR) for the DynamoDB tables:

PITR provides continuous backups of your DynamoDB tables. You can restore the table to any point in time within the last 35 days.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to DynamoDB.

Select the table you want to enable PITR for.

Choose the "Backups" tab.

Click on "Enable Point-in-Time Recovery."

If a table is accidentally deleted, you can restore it using PITR.

Go to the DynamoDB console.

Select "Backups" from the navigation pane.

Find the table backup and choose "Restore."

To monitor free space on Amazon EBS volumes attached to Microsoft Windows-based Amazon EC2 instances and receive email alerts before low storage space affects performance, follow these steps:

Install the Amazon CloudWatch Agent:

Download and install the CloudWatch agent on your Windows EC2 instances.

The most likely reason for being unable to authenticate an AWS CLI call to an AWS service is the absence of an access key. AWS CLI requires an access key and secret key to authenticate requests.

Access Key and Secret Key:

AWS uses access keys to identify and authenticate the identity of the requester.

Ensure that the AWS CLI is configured with a valid access key and secret key.

Check AWS CLI Configuration:

Use the aws configure command to set up the AWS CLI with the necessary credentials.

Verify that the ~/.aws/credentials file contains the correct access key and secret key.

AWS CLI Configuration

Managing Access Keys

To ensure all objects in the S3 bucket are encrypted, including future objects, the following steps should be taken:

Enable Default Server-Side Encryption:

Edit the properties of the S3 bucket to enable default server-side encryption. This ensures that all new objects written to the bucket are encrypted by default.

Navigate to the S3 console, select the bucket, go to the "Properties" tab, and under "Default encryption", select the encryption method (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, etc.).

To enable debug or info-level logging in Lambda Insights, you need to configure an environment variable that controls the log level.

From AWS Lambda Insights Documentation:

To enable debug logging for Lambda Insights, set the environment variable:

LAMBDA_INSIGHTS_LOG_LEVEL=debug or info.

This variable allows you to adjust the verbosity of telemetry logs, which helps in performance analysis.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A: pdb.set_trace() is a Python-level debugger, not related to Lambda Insights.

B and D: These are invalid parameters and not recognized by the Lambda runtime or Insights agent.

To ensure that the AWS CloudFormation template works in every region, you should use the Mappings section to specify region-specific AMI IDs. This allows the template to dynamically reference the correct AMI ID based on the region where the stack is being deployed.

Steps:

Add Mappings to the Template:

Define the AMI IDs for each region in the Mappings section of the CloudFormation template.

json

Copy code

{

"Mappings": {

"RegionMap": {

"us-east-1": { "AMI": "ami-0123456789abcdef0" },

"us-west-2": { "AMI": "ami-abcdef0123456789" }

}

}

}

Reference the Mapping in the Template:

Use the Fn::FindInMap function to reference the correct AMI ID based on the region.

json

Copy code

{

"Resources": {

"MyEC2Instance": {

"Type": "AWS::EC2::Instance",

"Properties": {

"ImageId": { "Fn::FindInMap": [ "RegionMap", { "Ref": "AWS::Region" }, "AMI" ] },

}

}

}

}

Deploy the Template:

Deploy the CloudFormation stack in any region, and it will use the correct AMI ID.

The most operationally efficient way to capture DHCP log files on 50 of the 100 EC2 instances is to create an additional CloudWatch agent configuration file and use AWS Systems Manager Run Command to update the CloudWatch agent configuration.

Create an Additional CloudWatch Agent Configuration File:

Create a new CloudWatch agent configuration file that includes the settings to capture DHCP log files.

Use AWS Systems Manager Run Command:

AWS Systems Manager Run Command allows you to remotely and securely manage the configuration of your managed instances.

Use the Run Command to restart the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance with the append-config option to apply the additional configuration file.

Steps:

Open the Systems Manager console.

Choose "Run Command."

Create a new command document or use an existing one that restarts the CloudWatch agent with the append-config option.

Target the 50 specific EC2 instances.

Amazon CloudWatch Agent Configuration

AWS Systems Manager Run Command

To minimize cost while maintaining immediate retrievability for files stored in Amazon S3, you can use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition objects to different storage classes based on their access patterns. Given that files are frequently accessed in the first 30 days and rarely accessed afterward, transitioning to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days is the most cost-effective solution.

Understand S3 Storage Classes:

S3 Standard: Suitable for frequently accessed data.

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA): Suitable for data that is less frequently accessed but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower storage costs compared to S3 Standard but has a retrieval fee.

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA): Similar to S3 Standard-IA but stores data in a single Availability Zone, making it less resilient.

S3 Glacier: Suitable for archival storage where data retrieval time is not critical (minutes to hours).

Requirements and Solution:

Access Pattern: Frequent access in the first 30 days, rare access afterward.

Retrievability: Immediate access required for one year.

Cost Efficiency: Minimize storage costs after the first 30 days.

Implementing Lifecycle Policy:

Lifecycle Policy: Configure a lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.

Step-by-Step Implementation:

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to the Bucket:

Select the bucket where the files are stored.

Configure Lifecycle Policy:

Go to the Management tab.

Choose Lifecycle and then + Add lifecycle rule.

Enter a rule name and scope (e.g., apply to all objects in the bucket or specific prefixes).

Under Lifecycle rule actions, choose Transition current versions of objects between storage classes.

Add a transition:

Days after object creation: 30

Storage class: S3 Standard-IA

Optionally, add expiration actions if objects should be deleted after a certain period.

Review and Save:

Review the configuration and save the lifecycle rule.

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

Lifecycle Configuration Elements

Transitioning Objects Using Amazon S3 Lifecycle

The error message indicates that the current quota for the number of EC2 instances allowed in the specified region has been reached. To resolve this issue, a quota increase must be requested.

Request Quota Increase:

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to Amazon EC2 service.

Find the specific quota for the instance type family that you need to increase.

Select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Provide the necessary details and submit the request.

This action will initiate a request to AWS to increase the limit, allowing you to launch additional instances once the request is approved.

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

To monitor usage and quotas across multiple accounts, CloudWatch now supports cross-account observability with delegated administrators.

From CloudWatch cross-account observability:

A delegated administrator can monitor CloudWatch data from linked accounts in a central monitoring account.

Also:

You can use the SERVICE_QUOTA() function in a metric math expression to create alarms on quota utilization.

Storing the credentials in AWS Secrets Manager and configuring automatic rotation with a rotation interval of 30 days is the most efficient way to meet the requirements with the least operational overhead. AWS Secrets Manager automatically rotates the credentials at the specified interval, so there is no need for an additional AWS Lambda function or manual rotation. Additionally, Secrets Manager is integrated with Amazon RDS, so the credentials can be easily used with the RDS database.

AWS Budgets can be used to create a Savings Plans budget and track the daily utilization of the company's Savings Plans. By creating a budget, it will trigger an action when the utilization drops below 90%, which in this case will be to send an email notification via an Amazon SNS topic. This will ensure that the company is notified when their Savings Plans utilization drops below 90%, allowing them to take action if necessary.