Ace AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam (2024 Edition)

Book excerpt: Unlock unparalleled technical depth with this book, expertly integrating the proven methodologies of Tutorials Dojo, the insights of Adrian Cantrill, and the hands-on approach of AWS Skills Builder. Unlock success with 'Ace the AWS Solutions Architect Associates SAA-C03 Certification Exam' by Etienne Noumen. With over 20 years in Software Engineering and a deep 5-year dive into AWS Cloud, Noumen delivers an unmatched guide packed with Quizzes, Flashcards, Practice Exams, and invaluable CheatSheets. Learn firsthand from testimonials of triumphs and recoveries, and master the exam with exclusive tips and tricks. This comprehensive roadmap is your ultimate ticket to acing the SAA-C03 exam! Become stronger in your current role or prepare to step into a new one by continuing to build the cloud solutions architecture skills companies are begging for right now. Demand for cloud solutions architect proficiency is only set to increase, so you can expect to see enormous ROI on any cloud learning efforts you embark on. What will you learn in this book? Design Secure Architectures Design Resilient Architectures Design High-Performing Architectures Design Cost-Optimized Architectures What are the requirements or prerequisites for reading this book? The target candidate should have at least 1 year of hands-on experience designing cloud solutions that use AWS services Who is this book for? IT Professionals, Solutions Architect, Cloud enthusiasts, Computer Science and Engineering Students, AWS Cloud Developer, Technology Manager and Executives, IT Project Managers What is taught in this book? AWS Certification Preparation for Solutions Architecture – Associate Level Keywords: AWS Solutions Architect SAA-C03 Certification Etienne Noumen AWS Cloud expertise Practice Exams AWS Flashcards AWS CheatSheets Testimonials Exam preparation AWS exam tips Cloud Engineering Certification guide AWS study guide Solutions Architect Associates Exam success strategies The book contains several testimonials like the one below: Successfully cleared the AWS Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 with a score of 824, surpassing my expectations. The exam presented a mix of question difficulties, with prominent topics being Kinesis, Lakeformation, Big Data tools, and S3. Given the declining cybersecurity job market in Europe post-2021, I'm contemplating a transition to cloud engineering. For preparation, I leveraged Stephane Mareek's course, Tutorial dojo's practice tests, and flashcards. My manager also shared his AWS skill builder account. Post evaluation, I found Mareek's practice tests to be outdated and more challenging than required, with his course delving too deeply into some areas. In contrast, Tutorial dojo's materials were simpler. My scores ranged from 65% on Mareek's tests to 75-80% on Tutorial dojo, with a 740 on the official AWS practice test. Sharing this for those on a similar journey. Sample Questions and Detailed Answers included: Latest AWS SAA Practice Exam - Question 1: A web application hosted on AWS uses an EC2 instance to serve content and an RDS MySQL instance for database needs. During a performance audit, you notice frequent read operations are causing performance bottlenecks. To optimize the read performance, which of the following strategies should you implement? (Select TWO.) A. Deploy an ElastiCache cluster to cache common queries and reduce the load on the RDS instance. B. Convert the RDS instance to a Multi-AZ deployment for improved read performance. C. Use RDS Read Replicas to offload read requests from the primary RDS instance. D. Increase the instance size of the RDS database to a larger instance type with more CPU and RAM. E. Implement Amazon Redshift to replace RDS for improved read and write operation performance. Correct Answer: A. Deploy an ElastiCache cluster to cache common queries and reduce the load on the RDS instance. C. Use RDS Read Replicas to offload read requests from the primary RDS instance. Explanation: Amazon RDS Read Replicas provide a way to scale out beyond the capacity of a single database deployment for read-heavy database workloads. You can create one or more replicas of a source DB Instance and serve high-volume application read traffic from multiple copies of your data, thereby increasing aggregate read throughput. Reference: Amazon RDS Read Replicas Latest AWS SAA Practice Exam - Question 2: Secure RDS Access with IAM Authentication A financial application suite leverages an ensemble of EC2 instances, an Application Load Balancer, and an RDS instance poised in a Multi-AZ deployment. The security requisites dictate that the RDS database be exclusively accessible to authenticated EC2 instances, preserving the confidentiality of customer data. The Architect must choose a security mechanism that aligns with AWS best practices and ensures stringent access control. What should the Architect implement to satisfy these security imperatives? Enable IAM Database Authentication for the RDS instance. Implement SSL encryption to secure the database connections. Assign a specific IAM Role to the EC2 instances granting RDS access. Utilize IAM combined with STS for restricted RDS access with a temporary credentialing system. Correct Answer: A. Enable IAM Database Authentication for the RDS instance. Here's the detailed explanation and reference link for the answer provided: Enable IAM Database Authentication for the RDS instance. IAM database authentication is used to control who can connect to your Amazon RDS database instances. When IAM database authentication is enabled, you don’t need to use a password to connect to a DB instance. Instead, you use an authentication token issued by AWS Security Token Service (STS). IAM database authentication works with MySQL and PostgreSQL. It provides enhanced security because the authentication tokens are time-bound and encrypted. Moreover, this method integrates the database access with the centralized IAM service, simplifying user management and access control. By using IAM Database Authentication, you satisfy the security requirements by ensuring that only authenticated EC2 instances (or more precisely, the applications running on them that assume an IAM role with the necessary permissions) can access the RDS database. This method also preserves the confidentiality of customer data by leveraging AWS’s robust identity and access management system. Reference: IAM Database Authentication for MySQL and PostgreSQL The other options provided are valuable security mechanisms but do not fulfill the requirements as directly or effectively as IAM Database Authentication for the given scenario: Implement SSL encryption to secure the database connections. While SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption secures the data in transit between the EC2 instances and the RDS instance, it does not provide an access control mechanism on its own. SSL encryption should be used in conjunction with IAM database authentication for a comprehensive security approach. Assign a specific IAM Role to the EC2 instances granting RDS access. Assigning an IAM role to EC2 instances to grant them access to RDS is a good practice and is required for the EC2 instances to use IAM Database Authentication. However, it is not the complete answer to the question of which security mechanism to implement. Utilize IAM combined with STS for restricted RDS access with a temporary credentialing system. AWS Security Token Service (STS) is indeed used when implementing IAM Database Authentication, as it provides the temporary credentials (authentication tokens) for database access. While the use of STS is inherent to the process of IAM Database Authentication, the answer needed to specify the enabling of IAM Database Authentication as the method to meet the security requirements. Latest AWS SAA Practice Exam - Question 3: A microservice application is being hosted in the ap-southeast-1 and ap-northeast-1 regions. The ap-southeast-1 region accounts for 80% of traffic, with the rest from ap-northeast-1. As part of the company’s business continuity plan, all traffic must be rerouted to the other region if one of the regions’ servers fails. Which solution can comply with the requirement? A. Set up an 80/20 weighted routing in the application load balancer and enable health checks. B. Set up an 80/20 weighted routing in the network load balancer and enable health checks. C. Set up an 80/20 weighted routing policy in AWS Route 53 and enable health checks. D. Set up a failover routing policy in AWS Route 53 and enable health checks. Correct Answer: C. Establish an 80/20 weighted routing policy in AWS Route 53 and incorporate health checks. Explanation: The correct solution for this scenario is to use AWS Route 53's weighted routing policy with health checks. This setup allows the distribution of traffic across multiple AWS regions based on assigned weights (in this case, 80% to ap-southeast-1 and 20% to ap-northeast-1) and automatically reroutes traffic if one region becomes unavailable due to server failure. Option C is correct because AWS Route 53’s weighted routing policy allows you to assign weights to resource record sets (RRS) which correspond to different AWS regions. When combined with health checks, Route 53 can monitor the health of the application in each region. If a region becomes unhealthy, Route 53 will reroute traffic to the healthy region based on the configured weights. Option A and B are incorrect because application and network load balancers operate at the regional level, not the global level. Therefore, they cannot reroute traffic between regions. Option D, while involving Route 53, suggests a failover routing policy, which is not suitable for distributing traffic with a specific percentage split across regions. Failover routing is typically used for active-passive failover, not for load distribution, which doesn't align with the requirement to handle traffic in an 80/20 proportion. The weighted routing policy of AWS Route 53, with appropriate health checks, satisfies the business requirement by distributing traffic in the specified ratio and ensuring business continuity by redirecting traffic in the event of a regional failure. Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/routing-policy.html Get the Print version of the Book at Amazon at https://amzn.to/40ycS4c (Use Discount code Djamgatech2024 for 50% OFF)