SOA-C02 Premium Exam Questions

Amazon EC2 and Availability Zones:

EC2 instances are tied to a specific Availability Zone within a region. Moving an instance directly is not possible.

Creating an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) allows the instance to be recreated in another Availability Zone.

Steps to Migrate an EC2 Instance to a New Availability Zone:

Create an AMI:

Open the EC2 Console.

Select the EC2 instance you want to migrate.

Choose Actions > Image and templates > Create Image.

Configure the AMI creation settings and create the image.

Launch a New Instance:

Navigate to the AMI section in the EC2 Console.

Select the newly created AMI.

Click Launch Instance from Image.

Specify the new Availability Zone during the instance configuration.

Terminate the Original Instance:

After validating that the new instance is functioning correctly, terminate the original instance to avoid additional costs.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

A: Directly copying an instance to another AZ is not supported.

C: There is no AWS CLI command to move an EC2 instance between AZs.

D: Stopping and modifying the AZ of an existing instance is not possible.

Improve S3 Upload Performance:

Using multiple bucket prefixes can improve throughput by allowing parallel upload streams.

Steps:

Modify the application to write files to different prefixes in the S3 bucket.

Example: Instead of writing all files to s3://bucket-name/, write to s3://bucket-name/prefix1/, s3://bucket-name/prefix2/, etc.

Best Practices for Amazon S3 Performance

AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) is designed to protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF can help mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities by allowing users to create rules to filter specific types of HTTP requests.

Create a Web ACL:

Go to the AWS WAF & Shield console.

Click "Create web ACL" and specify a name and the AWS resource to protect (e.g., an Application Load Balancer).

Add Rules to Mitigate XSS:

Within the Web ACL, add a new rule.

Select "Rule builder" and choose a rule type. For mitigating XSS, use "AWS Managed Rules" or create a custom rule.

AWS Managed Rules include a predefined set for XSS that you can enable.

Configure the XSS Rule:

If using a custom rule, configure it to inspect requests and block any that contain XSS patterns.

Use regular expressions or specific patterns to identify malicious scripts.

Deploy the Web ACL:

Once configured, save the Web ACL.

Associate it with your Application Load Balancer or CloudFront distribution to start filtering requests.

Monitor and Adjust:

Monitor the requests being blocked by AWS WAF.

Adjust the rules as necessary to ensure legitimate traffic is not affected and the application remains protected.

AWS WAF Developer Guide

AWS WAF Managed Rules

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that delivers your content with low latency and high transfer speeds. By distributing the static content (images and videos) to CloudFront edge locations, users in the United States and Europe can access the content from the nearest edge location, significantly improving the load times.

Create a CloudFront Distribution:

Open the Amazon CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Choose Create Distribution and select Web.

Specify the S3 bucket as the origin where your static content is stored.

Configure Distribution Settings:

Configure the settings, such as cache behaviors and SSL/TLS settings.

Optionally, configure additional features like geo-restriction and logging.

Update DNS Configuration:

Update your DNS records to point to the CloudFront distribution. This can be done via Amazon Route 53 or your DNS provider.

Monitor Performance:

Use CloudFront reports and logs to monitor the performance and adjust configurations if needed.

Amazon CloudFront Overview

Creating a CloudFront Distribution