Question 1

An application needs to decouple a spike-prone web tier from a slower processing tier so requests aren't lost. Which service fits best?

Accepted Answer

Amazon SQS Amazon SQS is a managed message queue that buffers requests between components, absorbing spikes and preventing loss. SNS is pub/sub fan-out, not a durable work buffer.

Question 2

What is the most cost-effective way to host a purely static website (HTML, CSS, JS)?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 static website hosting, optionally with CloudFront Static sites need no servers. Amazon S3 hosts the files cheaply and CloudFront adds global caching — far cheaper and simpler than running EC2.

Question 3

Multiple Linux EC2 instances must share the same file system concurrently. Which storage service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS Amazon EFS is a shared, elastic file system that many Linux EC2 instances can mount at once. EBS attaches to a single instance; S3 is object, not file, storage.

Question 4

An application team needs to store API keys and database connection strings securely. Values must be encrypted at rest, support versioning, and be retrievable via API calls. Automatic rotation is not required. Which service minimizes cost?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store (SecureString) Parameter Store's SecureString type encrypts values with KMS and supports versioning, and is free for standard parameters. Secrets Manager adds automatic rotation but costs extra per secret — unnecessary here.

Question 5

A solutions architect needs to let AWS Lambda functions in a VPC reach the internet to call a third-party API. What must be configured?

Accepted Answer

Place Lambda in a private subnet with a route to a NAT gateway in a public subnet Lambda functions in a VPC use ENIs in the specified subnets. To reach the internet, they need to sit in a private subnet with a route to a NAT gateway in a public subnet — Lambda in a public subnet doesn't get a public IP automatically.

Question 6

A mission-critical EC2 application must recover automatically from instance failure and keep the same private IP address after recovery. What should the architect implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure EC2 auto-recovery using a CloudWatch alarm on StatusCheckFailed_System EC2 auto-recovery, triggered by a CloudWatch alarm on StatusCheckFailed_System, restores the instance on new hardware while keeping its instance ID, private IP and EBS volumes — Auto Scaling would instead launch a brand-new instance.

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