Changed SOA-C02 Exam Questions

To securely connect to Amazon S3 buckets from Amazon EC2 instances over a private connection without incurring additional costs, you can use a gateway VPC endpoint for S3. This method allows you to create a single gateway VPC endpoint for all S3 buckets in the same region, ensuring secure, private communication.

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint:

Navigate to the VPC console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Endpoints" and then click "Create Endpoint".

Select "AWS services" and then choose "com.amazonaws..s3" from the service name dropdown.

Select the VPC in which to create the endpoint and the appropriate route tables.

Click "Create endpoint".

Update the Route Tables:

The gateway VPC endpoint will automatically update the selected route tables to include routes that direct S3 traffic through the endpoint.

Ensure that the route tables associated with your subnets include routes for the S3 service pointing to the gateway VPC endpoint.

Verify the Configuration:

Ensure that instances in the VPC can access the S3 buckets using private IP addresses.

Check the routing configuration to confirm that traffic to S3 is routed through the gateway VPC endpoint.

References:

Gateway VPC Endpoints for Amazon S3

Creating a Gateway Endpoint

To ensure that the application running on an Amazon EC2 instance can read, write, and delete messages from the SQS queues in the most secure manner, the recommended approach is to use IAM roles for EC2 instances. This approach avoids the need to embed or export long-term AWS credentials, which can be a security risk.

Create an IAM Role for EC2:

Navigate to the IAM console in the AWS Management Console.

Choose "Roles" in the navigation pane, then click "Create role".

Select "AWS service" as the type of trusted entity and choose "EC2" as the use case. Click "Next: Permissions".

Attach the Required Permissions:

On the "Attach permissions policies" page, you can either select an existing policy or create a custom policy.

For a custom policy, click "Create policy" and use the following JSON policy to allow the required SQS actions:

json

Copy code

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": [

"sqs:SendMessage",

"sqs:ReceiveMessage",

"sqs:DeleteMessage"

],

"Resource": "arn:aws:sqs:region:account-id:queue-name"

}

]

}

Replace region, account-id, and queue-name with appropriate values for your SQS queues.

Assign the Role to the EC2 Instance:

After creating the role with the necessary permissions, navigate to the EC2 console.

Select the instance that needs access to the SQS queues.

In the "Actions" menu, choose "Security", then "Modify IAM role".

Attach the newly created IAM role to the instance.

Verify the Permissions:

Ensure that the IAM role is properly attached to the EC2 instance.

Test the application to confirm that it can successfully perform the required actions (read, write, delete) on the SQS queues.

References:

IAM Roles for Amazon EC2

Amazon SQS Policy Examples

Technology to use is a VPC endpoint - "A VPC endpoint enables private connections between your VPC and supported AWS services and VPC endpoint services powered by AWS PrivateLink. AWS PrivateLink is a technology that enables you to privately access services by using private IP addresses. Traffic between your VPC and the other service does not leave the Amazon network." S3 is an example of a gateway endpoint. We want to see services in AWS while not leaving the VPC.

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.

References:

Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling