Amazon Web Services AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) SOA-C02 Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (October 2025)

Scaling Policies in Auto Scaling:

When multiple scaling policies trigger at the same time, each policy is executed independently.

If both policies are set to add 5 instances when CPU utilization reaches 80%, they will both be executed when the threshold is met.

Therefore, the total number of instances added will be the sum of the instances specified in both policies.

In this case, 5 instances from one policy and 5 instances from the other policy will result in a total of 10 instances being added.

Steps to Configure and Verify Scaling Policies:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to EC2 and select "Auto Scaling Groups."

Select your Auto Scaling group and review the scaling policies.

Ensure that both scaling policies are configured to trigger at 80% CPU utilization.

Monitor the Auto Scaling group's activity to verify the addition of instances when the CPU utilization threshold is reached.

Scaling Policies for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Amazon EFS is an NFS-based file system, designed for Linux/Unix environments. Windows does not natively support NFSv4 without additional configuration (and is often not reliable).

From the Amazon EFS documentation:

Amazon EFS is not designed for use with Microsoft Windows EC2 instances.

For Windows workloads that require shared storage, use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, which supports the SMB protocol.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

B: IAM is not used for mounting file systems like EFS.

C: Windows support for NFS is limited and complex, and not recommended.

D: Opening the NFS port won't help because Windows can't reliably mount NFSv4 volumes.

To deploy and manage an identical Amazon VPC configuration across multiple AWS accounts efficiently:

AWS CloudFormation Template: Create a CloudFormation template that defines the VPC configuration. This template should include all necessary resources like subnets, route tables, internet gateways, etc.

Use CloudFormation StackSets: Utilize AWS CloudFormation StackSets to manage the deployment of the VPC template across the 50 AWS accounts. StackSets allow you to specify management and target accounts, automate deployments, and ensure consistency across all accounts.

Updating VPCs: When updates are required, modify the CloudFormation template and update the stack set. This will automatically apply the changes to all VPCs in the target accounts, ensuring uniformity and reducing operational overhead.

This method provides a centralized, consistent, and scalable way to manage resources across multiple AWS accounts, greatly simplifying the administration and ensuring compliance with organizational standards.

To enable decryption of objects, the role only requires minimal permissions with least privilege:

kms

Necessary for reading and decrypting the data encrypted with KMS.

kms

Allows the role to check key properties, confirming it’s the correct key for decryption.

kms

Useful if multiple keys are in use and validation against an alias is needed.

These permissions are sufficient for decryption without granting additional permissions like encryption or key management.

To meet the requirement of consistent performance of 10,000 IOPS with the least cost, the SysOps administrator should use a General Purpose SSD (gp3) Amazon EBS volume:

General Purpose SSD (gp3) EBS Volume:

The gp3 volume type can be provisioned with the required IOPS without the need for additional capacity, making it a cost-effective solution compared to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes.

To serve static websites using S3 and Route 53, AWS requires the bucket name to match the custom domain name (e.g., www.example.com), not just a random bucket like example-website-hosting-bucket.

From the Amazon S3 Static Website Hosting Guide:

To use Amazon Route 53 to route domain traffic to an S3 bucket that is configured as a static website, the bucket name must match the name of the domain or subdomain.

This means:

To host www.example.com, you must create an S3 bucket named www.example.com

Then configure static website hosting on that bucket

In Route 53, you can then create an alias record pointing to the S3 website endpoint

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A. ARNs are not valid alias targets in Route 53.

B. ARN changes do not affect Route 53; also, you cannot rename an S3 bucket via ARN changes.

C. Access Points do not support static website hosting. They are for programmatic access via APIs.

Objective:

Resolve the failure of the CloudFormation Auto Scaling group resource creation due to a missing wait condition signal.

cfn-signal:

The cfn-signal command is used in user data scripts to signal CloudFormation that the resource has been successfully created or configured.

This ensures the stack creation process continues as expected.

Steps to Implement:

At the end of the user data script in the EC2 launch template:

Add the command: cfn-signal --stack --resource --region

Replace , , and with appropriate values.

AWS References:

cfn-signal:Using cfn-signal to Signal Completion

Why Other Options Are Incorrect:

Option B: While port 443 is necessary for CloudFormation signaling, the main issue is the absence of cfn-signal.

Option C: Reducing DesiredCapacity may bypass the error but does not solve the root cause.

Option D: Associating a public IP may help connectivity but is unrelated to the wait condition.

Weighted routing in Route 53 allows you to direct a percentage of traffic to different resources by configuring specific weights. For this requirement, you can:

Weighted Routing Policy: This is the most suitable approach for gradually rolling out a new version by controlling traffic distribution.

Weight Configuration: Setting a weight of 80 for the original resource and 20 for the new resource ensures that 80% of the traffic continues to go to the existing version, while 20% is directed to the new version.

Other routing policies, such as failover and multivalue answer, are not intended for traffic distribution based on percentage; they serve different use cases.

AWS Config can continuously monitor and record your AWS resource configurations. It provides AWS Config rules that automatically check the configuration of AWS resources and notify you of compliance and non-compliance.

Steps:

Enable AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console.

Follow the steps to set up AWS Config if it is not already enabled.

Add AWS Managed Rules:

In the AWS Config console, choose "Rules".

Add the s3-bucket-public-read-prohibited managed rule.

Configure the rule to check all S3 buckets.

Set Up SNS Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic.

Subscribe your email or other communication channels to the SNS topic.

In AWS Config, configure the rule to send notifications to the SNS topic whenever there is a compliance change.

This approach ensures operational efficiency as AWS Config will automatically monitor S3 buckets and notify you through SNS if any bucket becomes publicly accessible.

To refer to resources created by the first CloudFormation template in the second template with minimal administrative effort, using the export and import functionality is the most efficient approach.

Exporting Outputs in the First Template:

In the first CloudFormation template, add an Outputs section to export the required values.

Use the Export field to specify the name of the exported value.

Example:

Outputs:

VPCID:

Description: The VPC ID

Value: !Ref MyVPC

Export:

Name: VPCID

Importing Values in the Second Template:

In the second CloudFormation template, use the Fn::ImportValue function to import the exported values from the first template.

Example:

Resources:

MySubnet:

Type: AWS::EC2::Subnet

Properties:

VpcId: !ImportValue VPCID

Efficiency and Best Practices:

This method ensures a clean separation of resources and allows easy reference to outputs from other stacks.

It simplifies the management and deployment process by leveraging CloudFormation's built-in export and import mechanisms.

AWS CloudFormation Exporting Stack Output Values

AWS CloudFormation Importing Values