Cloud-Deployment-and-Operations WGUCloud Deployment and Operations Questions and Answers

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AWS Client VPN is used to provide remote workers with secure access to AWS resources by establishing a VPN connection to the VPC, ensuring encrypted access to private networks. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.2, Client VPN) states, "Client VPN enables secure remote access to AWS resources within a VPC, using mutual authentication and encryption to protect data for remote workers." Transit Gateway manages inter-VPC routing, Network Firewall filters traffic, and NAT instances handle outbound internet access, none of which are designed for remote worker access.

A Private Hosted Zone in Amazon Route 53 should be used to restrict DNS resolution to instances within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), ensuring that the zone is only accessible internally. This isolates DNS services from public internet access. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.1, Route 53 Hosted Zones) states, "A Private Hosted Zone in Route 53 limits DNS resolution to resources within a specified VPC, preventing external access and enhancing security for internal services." Public Hosted Zones, DNS Zones, and Lightsail DNS Zones do not provide this VPC-specific restriction.

The multivalue routing policy in Amazon Route 53 allows up to 8 healthy records to be returned in response to DNS queries, enabling load balancing across multiple resources. To ensure the maximum allowed number of records is utilized, the administrator should create 8 records. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.1, Route 53 Routing Policies) specifies, "Multivalue answer routing supports up to 8 healthy resource record sets per response, requiring the creation of 8 records to maximize the policy's capability." Options A, C, and D exceed or fall short of this limit.

Amazon Route 53 is the AWS solution that sends DNS queries to separate AWS compute instances by leveraging routing policies to distribute traffic across multiple resources. It acts as a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service, directing queries to healthy instances based on configurations like latency or weighted routing. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.1, Route 53) states, "Route 53 uses DNS to route end-user requests to multiple AWS compute instances, supporting features like health checks and traffic distribution." Elastic Beanstalk, CloudWatch, and EC2 Auto Scaling do not perform DNS query routing.

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) should be used to horizontally scale Amazon EC2 instances by distributing incoming traffic across multiple instances, improving availability and fault tolerance. ELB works in conjunction with Auto Scaling groups to add or remove instances based on demand. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.2, Elastic Load Balancing) notes, "Elastic Load Balancing distributes traffic across EC2 instances, enabling horizontal scaling as part of an Auto Scaling group to handle increased load efficiently." Elastic IPs, elastic network interfaces, and Elastic Beanstalk do not provide this scaling functionality.

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CloudWatch should be used to identify and shut down idle EC2 instances by monitoring metrics such as CPU utilization or network activity. Custom alarms can be set to trigger an AWS Lambda function or Systems Manager automation to terminate idle instances, optimizing costs. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.1, CloudWatch Metrics) states, "CloudWatch can monitor EC2 instance metrics like CPUUtilization; an alarm can be configured to invoke a Lambda function to terminate idle instances, ensuring cost efficiency." CloudFront, CloudSearch, and CloudTrail are not designed for this monitoring and automation task.

AWS Systems Manager should be used to schedule the patching of EC2 instances and on-premises servers with security updates, utilizing features like Patch Manager and maintenance windows. This service supports hybrid environments and automated patch deployment. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 5.2, Systems Manager Patch Manager) states, "Systems Manager provides Patch Manager to schedule and deploy security updates to EC2 instances and on-premises servers during maintenance windows, ensuring consistent patching across hybrid environments." EventBridge, Config, and App Runner do not offer this patching capability.

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The VPC flow log fields indicate the following: the source IP is 192.168.20.1, the destination IP is 203.0.113.66, the source port is 2066, the destination port is 22, and the action is "ACCEPT OK," meaning the traffic was permitted. This shows outbound traffic from the internal network (192.168.20.1) to an external IP (203.0.113.66) with destination port 2066. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.2, VPC Flow Logs) states, "In a flow log, the format includes source IP, destination IP, source port, destination port, and action; for example, 192.168.20.1 to 203.0.113.66 with source port 2066 and destination port 22 indicates permitted outbound traffic." Only option C correctly interprets this flow.

Amazon CloudWatch supports several monitoring and management solutions, including event response and instance monitoring. Event response is facilitated through CloudWatch Events, which can trigger actions based on predefined rules, such as invoking AWS Lambda functions. Instance monitoring involves collecting and tracking metrics from Amazon EC2 instances, providing visibility into performance and health. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.1, CloudWatch Overview) highlights that CloudWatch is designed for instance monitoring and event-driven responses, while load balancing and threat detection are handled by services like Elastic Load Balancing and GuardDuty, respectively.

The Wait event view in Amazon RDS Performance Insights provides information on hardware resources (e.g., CPU, I/O, memory) that may be causing bottlenecks by showing wait times for database operations. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 7.2, Performance Insights) states, "The Wait event view in Performance Insights identifies resource bottlenecks (e.g., I/O wait times) by analyzing wait states, helping optimize database performance on hardware resources." Users, Hosts, and Statement views focus on different aspects and do not directly address hardware bottlenecks.

Amazon RDS Performance Insights supports retention periods of 7 days and 1 year for storing performance data, depending on the configuration and edition. The default retention is 7 days for standard monitoring, while enabling enhanced monitoring or the Performance Insights extended retention feature allows data to be retained for up to 1 year. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 7.2, Performance Insights) states, "Performance Insights offers a 7-day retention period by default, with an option to extend to 1 year for detailed historical analysis, supporting cost and performance optimization." Options A (1 day) and D (2 years) are not supported retention periods.

Security group rules in AWS support the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for defining inbound and outbound traffic rules. These protocols are commonly used for network communication and monitoring. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.2, Security Groups) states, "Security groups support protocols like ICMP for diagnostic traffic and UDP for streaming or low-latency applications, allowing fine-grained control over instance access." BGP and MPLS are routing or network layer protocols not supported by security group rules.

To deploy a NAT gateway in an existing VPC subnet, the administrator must assign an elastic IP address to the NAT gateway for public internet access and configure the route table associated with the subnet to route traffic through the NAT gateway. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.2, NAT Gateway) states, "Deployment of a NAT gateway requires an elastic IP address for outbound internet connectivity and a route table update to direct private subnet traffic to the NAT gateway (e.g., 0.0.0.0/0 via NAT)." Private IP assignment and ACL configuration are not required steps.

A metric filter in Amazon CloudWatch Logs can be used to search for specific terms in log data and create metrics based on the matches. To include log events with the word "ERROR" and exclude those with the word "WARNING," the correct syntax involves using a filter pattern with a positive match for "ERROR" and a negation for "WARNING." The correct pattern is "ERROR -WARN," where the minus sign (-) indicates exclusion of log events containing "WARN." According to the WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.2, CloudWatch Logs), metric filters use a pattern-based syntax where terms are included or excluded using positive matches and the negation operator (-). This ensures that only logs with "ERROR" and without "WARN" are processed into the metric.

The AWS monitoring feature used to process events with AWS Lambda is CloudWatch Events, specifically through the use of rules. Rules define the events to monitor (e.g., based on event patterns) and specify targets like AWS Lambda functions to process those events. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.3, CloudWatch Events) explains that rules are the core component for event-driven architectures, enabling automation by linking events to Lambda for processing. Metrics, targets, and logs are related but not the primary feature for this function.

To receive emails when a Lambda function returns an error, the administrator should use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the function’s logs and metrics (e.g., errors) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) to send email notifications based on CloudWatch alarms. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.3, CloudWatch and SNS) states, "CloudWatch can detect Lambda errors via logs and trigger an alarm, which integrates with SNS to send email notifications to subscribed endpoints, ensuring timely error alerts." SQS and CloudTrail are not designed for this notification workflow.

AWS Config can directly invoke an AWS Lambda function to cause remediation of findings by triggering automated responses to configuration changes or non-compliant resources. This integration enables real-time corrective actions. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 6.1, AWS Config) states, "AWS Config can invoke a Lambda function as a remediation action, allowing automated fixes for non-compliant resources (e.g., terminating unauthorized instances)." Control Tower guardrails, CloudWatch alarms, and Systems Manager documents are not directly invoked by Config for this purpose.