Amazon AWS Certified Advanced Networking — Specialty ANS-C01 Exam Dumps and Practice Test Questions Set2 Q16-30
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Question 16:
A SaaS company provides services to multiple customers through a multi-tenant architecture. Each customer’s resources are isolated in separate VPCs. Customers need to connect their on-premises networks to their dedicated VPCs using private connectivity. What solution enables customers to establish private connections without exposing the SaaS provider’s infrastructure?
A) Provide VPN configurations for each customer to connect to their VPC
B) Implement AWS Direct Connect Gateway shared across all customer VPCs
C) Use AWS PrivateLink to expose customer VPC access
D) Configure AWS Transit Gateway with separate attachments for each customer
Answer: D
Explanation:
Configuring AWS Transit Gateway with separate attachments for each customer VPC provides the optimal solution for enabling private connectivity while maintaining isolation between customers and protecting the SaaS provider’s infrastructure. This architecture leverages Transit Gateway’s routing isolation capabilities to create secure, independent network paths for each customer.
Transit Gateway acts as a regional network hub that can connect multiple VPCs, VPN connections, and Direct Connect gateways. The key to implementing multi-tenant connectivity is Transit Gateway’s support for multiple route tables. Each customer can have a dedicated route table associated with their VPC attachment, ensuring complete routing isolation between tenants.
This architecture provides operational benefits for the SaaS provider. Instead of managing individual VPN or Direct Connect configurations for each customer VPC, the provider manages a single Transit Gateway with attached connections. This centralized management simplifies operations, reduces complexity, and enables consistent security policies across all customer connections.
Transit Gateway also provides comprehensive monitoring and logging through VPC Flow Logs and CloudWatch metrics. The provider can monitor each customer’s traffic patterns, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and detect unusual behavior without requiring access to customer VPCs.
Option A while VPN connections can provide connectivity, managing individual VPN configurations for each customer VPC creates significant operational overhead. This approach also requires exposing VPN endpoints for each VPC, increasing the attack surface and complexity of the infrastructure.
Option B Direct Connect Gateway can connect multiple VPCs to Direct Connect connections, but it does not provide the routing isolation capabilities necessary for true multi-tenancy. All VPCs connected to a Direct Connect Gateway can potentially reach each other unless additional controls are implemented.
Option C PrivateLink is designed for exposing services to consumers, not for providing VPC-to-on-premises connectivity. While PrivateLink enables private access to services, it does not address the requirement for customers to connect their on-premises networks to their VPCs.
Transit Gateway’s combination of centralized management, routing isolation, and scalability makes it the ideal solution for multi-tenant SaaS architectures requiring private customer connectivity.
Question 17:
A media company streams live video content to millions of users globally. During major events, viewership spikes cause degraded performance and buffering issues. The company needs a solution to handle traffic surges while maintaining low latency and high availability. Which AWS architecture best addresses these requirements?
A) Auto Scaling Application Load Balancer with EC2 instances
B) Amazon CloudFront with origin shield and Auto Scaling origin servers
C) AWS Global Accelerator with Network Load Balancer
D) Amazon S3 with Transfer Acceleration
Answer: B
Explanation:
Amazon CloudFront with origin shield and Auto Scaling origin servers provides the optimal architecture for handling global live video streaming with traffic surges, low latency, and high availability. This combination leverages AWS edge infrastructure and intelligent caching to minimize load on origin servers while delivering content with minimal latency to viewers worldwide.
CloudFront is AWS’s content delivery network with over 400 points of presence globally. When users request video content, CloudFront serves it from the edge location nearest to them, dramatically reducing latency. For live streaming, CloudFront supports HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming protocols including HLS, DASH, and CMAF, enabling smooth playback across varying network conditions.
The critical component for handling traffic surges is Origin Shield, an additional caching layer that sits between CloudFront edge locations and origin servers. Origin Shield acts as a centralized cache, consolidating requests from multiple edge locations before they reach the origin. During major events when millions of users simultaneously request the same live stream, Origin Shield significantly reduces the number of requests hitting origin servers.
The solution also optimizes costs by reducing data transfer from the origin. Since Origin Shield and edge locations cache content, the same video segments are retrieved from the origin far fewer times, significantly reducing outbound data transfer charges from EC2 instances or other origin services.
Option A does not address the global distribution requirement. Auto Scaling EC2 instances with an ALB provides regional scalability but does not reduce latency for international users or distribute content globally. All users would connect to the same regional endpoint, resulting in high latency for distant viewers.
Option C Global Accelerator optimizes routing to AWS endpoints but does not provide content caching. For streaming media, this means every user’s request travels back to the origin servers, creating enormous load during traffic surges and failing to reduce latency effectively for cached content.
Option D S3 Transfer Acceleration speeds up uploads to S3, not content distribution to end users. While S3 can host video content, it lacks the streaming optimization, adaptive bitrate support, and edge caching that CloudFront provides for live video delivery.
CloudFront with Origin Shield and Auto Scaling origins delivers the performance, scalability, and cost efficiency required for high-quality global live streaming.
Question 18:
A healthcare organization must comply with HIPAA regulations requiring end-to-end encryption of patient data in transit. The application architecture includes Application Load Balancers, EC2 instances, and RDS databases. Which implementation ensures compliance while maintaining the ability to inspect traffic for security threats?
A) Use ACM certificates on ALB with HTTP to backend, SSL from backend to RDS
B) Implement ACM certificates on ALB with SSL re-encryption to EC2, SSL to RDS
C) Deploy SSL certificates on EC2 instances only with passthrough on ALB
D) Configure VPN tunnel from ALB to backend instances
Answer: B
Explanation:
Implementing ACM certificates on the Application Load Balancer with SSL re-encryption to EC2 instances and SSL connections to RDS provides the optimal solution for HIPAA compliance while maintaining security inspection capabilities. This architecture ensures that patient data remains encrypted throughout its entire path from clients to the database while allowing the ALB to perform necessary inspection and routing functions.
HIPAA requires that protected health information (PHI) be encrypted in transit to prevent unauthorized access during transmission. End-to-end encryption means that data must be encrypted at every network hop, not just at the perimeter. The proposed solution achieves this by implementing multiple encryption layers across the application architecture.
The solution also maintains comprehensive logging and monitoring. The ALB logs capture detailed information about each request including client IP, request path, response codes, and processing times. These logs are crucial for security monitoring, troubleshooting, and demonstrating compliance during audits. With passthrough SSL, such logging would not be possible.
From an operational perspective, using ACM certificates significantly simplifies certificate management. ACM automatically renews certificates before expiration and deploys them to associated load balancers and services without downtime. This automation reduces the risk of expired certificates causing outages or security vulnerabilities.
Option A violates the end-to-end encryption requirement by sending unencrypted HTTP traffic between the ALB and backend instances. This plaintext transmission of PHI within the VPC does not comply with HIPAA requirements and exposes data to potential interception.
Option C using SSL passthrough prevents the ALB from inspecting traffic, eliminating the ability to implement content-based routing, AWS WAF protection, or collect meaningful access logs. This approach also shifts certificate management burden to EC2 instances, increasing operational complexity.
Option D VPN tunnels between application tiers are unnecessarily complex, introduce performance overhead, and do not align with cloud-native architecture patterns. VPNs are typically used for site-to-site connectivity, not for encrypting traffic between application tiers within AWS.
Question 19:
A financial services company requires real-time detection and blocking of network-based attacks targeting their web applications. The solution must inspect both inbound and outbound traffic, detect SQL injection attempts, cross-site scripting, and command injection attacks while providing centralized management across multiple VPCs. What is the most comprehensive solution?
A) AWS Network Firewall with custom Suricata rules in each VPC
B) AWS WAF on Application Load Balancer with managed rule groups
C) Security groups with restrictive inbound rules
D) Amazon GuardDuty with automated response actions
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS WAF deployed on Application Load Balancers with managed rule groups provides the most comprehensive solution for detecting and blocking web application attacks in real-time. WAF is specifically designed to protect web applications from common exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources.
AWS WAF operates at the application layer (Layer 7), inspecting HTTP and HTTPS requests before they reach backend application servers. This positioning enables WAF to analyze request content including headers, body, query strings, and cookies to identify malicious patterns indicative of attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and command injection.
The managed rule groups are a key advantage of AWS WAF. AWS and AWS Marketplace sellers provide pre-configured rule sets that protect against OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and other common attack patterns. The Core Rule Set includes protections against SQL injection, cross-site scripting, local file inclusion, remote file inclusion, and many other attack types. These managed rules are continuously updated by security experts as new attack patterns emerge, ensuring ongoing protection without requiring constant manual rule updates.
AWS WAF provides real-time metrics and detailed logging through Amazon CloudWatch and AWS WAF logs. Security teams can monitor blocked requests, analyze attack patterns, and tune rules to reduce false positives. The detailed logs capture information about each inspected request, enabling forensic analysis and compliance reporting.
The solution also supports custom rules for addressing application-specific vulnerabilities or implementing custom security policies. Rate-based rules can limit requests from individual IP addresses to protect against application-layer DDoS attacks and brute-force login attempts.
Option A Network Firewall operates at layers 3-4 and primarily inspects network traffic rather than application-layer content. While it supports Suricata rules for some application-layer inspection, it is not optimized for web application security and lacks the web-focused managed rule groups that WAF provides. Deploying in each VPC also creates distributed management overhead.
Option C security groups operate at the network transport layer and cannot inspect HTTP request content for application-layer attacks. Security groups can control which sources can reach the application but cannot distinguish between legitimate requests and those containing SQL injection or XSS payloads.
Option D GuardDuty is a threat detection service that analyzes logs and events to identify malicious activity. While valuable for detecting compromised instances and reconnaissance activity, GuardDuty does not provide real-time request inspection and blocking capability for web application attacks. It identifies threats after they occur rather than preventing them.
Question 20:
An enterprise operates a hybrid cloud environment with resources distributed across AWS and multiple on-premises data centers. The network team needs to implement a solution that provides central visibility and control over connectivity between all locations while supporting dynamic routing and multipath redundancy. What architecture should be implemented?
A) Multiple Site-to-Site VPN connections to each VPC
B) AWS Transit Gateway with VPN attachments and BGP routing
C) AWS Direct Connect with static routing to each VPC
D) VPC peering connections with on-premises VPN
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS Transit Gateway with VPN attachments and BGP routing provides the optimal architecture for central visibility, control, and dynamic routing across hybrid cloud environments with multiple locations. This solution creates a hub-and-spoke network topology that simplifies connectivity management while supporting sophisticated routing policies and multipath redundancy.
Transit Gateway serves as the central hub for all network connectivity in AWS. Instead of creating point-to-point connections between each on-premises location and each VPC, you create VPN attachments from each on-premises location to the Transit Gateway and attach your VPCs to the same Transit Gateway. This reduces the number of connections dramatically and creates a single management point for the entire hybrid cloud network.
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) dynamic routing is fundamental to this architecture’s capabilities. When you establish VPN connections to Transit Gateway with BGP enabled, routes are automatically exchanged between your on-premises networks and AWS. This means that when you add new VPCs or subnets, the routes automatically propagate to your on-premises networks without manual configuration. Similarly, new on-premises networks automatically become reachable from AWS when their routes are advertised via BGP.
Option A creating separate VPN connections to each VPC results in a complex mesh topology that becomes unmanageable as the number of VPCs and locations grows. This approach requires N×M connections where N is the number of on-premises locations and M is the number of VPCs. It also requires managing static routes across all connections.
Option C Direct Connect with static routing provides dedicated bandwidth but lacks the dynamic routing capabilities necessary for automatic failover and route propagation. Static routing requires manual updates whenever network changes occur, increasing operational overhead and the risk of misconfigurations.
Option D VPC peering creates point-to-point connections between VPCs but does not provide a central hub for on-premises connectivity. This approach still requires multiple VPN connections and does not simplify the network architecture or provide central management capabilities.
Question 21:
A company deploys microservices across multiple VPCs and needs to implement service discovery and private connectivity between services without exposing them to the internet. Services should be accessible using simple DNS names, and the solution should support automatic registration and deregistration as services scale. What AWS service combination addresses these requirements?
A) AWS Cloud Map with AWS PrivateLink
B) Route 53 private hosted zones with ELB
C) AWS Service Discovery with internal ALB
D) Amazon ECS Service Discovery with VPC peering
Answer: A
Explanation:
AWS Cloud Map combined with AWS PrivateLink provides the optimal solution for service discovery and private connectivity in microservices architectures spanning multiple VPCs. This combination enables services to discover and connect to each other using DNS names while maintaining complete network isolation and security.
AWS Cloud Map is a cloud resource discovery service that enables you to define custom names for application resources and maintains updated location information as resources dynamically change. For microservices, Cloud Map provides a service registry where each microservice registers itself, making it discoverable by other services. Services can be discovered using either DNS queries or API calls, providing flexibility for different application architectures.
When a new instance of a microservice starts, it automatically registers with Cloud Map, including information about its network location, health check endpoints, and any custom attributes. As instances are added or removed due to auto-scaling or deployments, Cloud Map automatically updates the registry. This dynamic registration eliminates the need for hard-coded service locations in application configuration.
Option B Route 53 private hosted zones with ELB can provide basic service discovery within a single VPC or between peered VPCs, but this approach requires manual DNS record management or custom automation. It does not provide the automatic service registration, health-aware service discovery, and multi-VPC private connectivity that Cloud Map and PrivateLink offer.
Option C using internal ALB for service discovery requires services to share a VPC or establish VPC peering, which may not be desirable for network isolation. It also does not provide the same level of automatic service registration and discovery that Cloud Map offers.
Option D Amazon ECS Service Discovery is built on Cloud Map but does not include the cross-VPC private connectivity component. VPC peering creates broader network access than necessary for service-to-service communication and introduces complexity in managing routing tables as the number of VPCs grows.
Question 22:
A global e-commerce platform experiences unpredictable traffic patterns with sudden spikes during flash sales and promotional events. The platform requires protection against DDoS attacks at multiple layers, automatic traffic scaling, and consistent low latency for users worldwide. What solution provides comprehensive protection and performance?
A) AWS Shield Standard with CloudFront
B) AWS Shield Advanced with CloudFront and Route 53
C) AWS WAF with Application Load Balancer
D) Network ACLs with Auto Scaling groups
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS Shield Advanced combined with CloudFront and Route 53 provides comprehensive DDoS protection and performance optimization for global e-commerce platforms experiencing unpredictable traffic patterns. This solution protects against attacks at multiple network layers while maintaining low latency and high availability for legitimate users worldwide.
AWS Shield Advanced is a managed DDoS protection service that provides protection against sophisticated volumetric attacks, protocol-based attacks, and application-layer attacks. Unlike Shield Standard, which is automatically included with CloudFront and Route 53, Shield Advanced provides enhanced detection and mitigation capabilities, real-time attack visibility, and 24/7 access to the AWS DDoS Response Team.
When Shield Advanced is enabled on CloudFront distributions and Route 53 hosted zones, it creates multiple layers of protection. CloudFront’s global network of edge locations absorbs volumetric DDoS attacks by distributing attack traffic across hundreds of locations, preventing any single location from being overwhelmed. The distributed nature of CloudFront means that even attacks generating terabits of traffic can be mitigated before reaching origin servers.
Route 53 provides DNS-level protection against infrastructure DDoS attacks targeting name resolution. Shield Advanced monitors Route 53 for query floods and uses sophisticated algorithms to distinguish between legitimate DNS traffic and attack patterns. The service automatically implements mitigations without impacting legitimate DNS queries, ensuring that customers can always resolve your domain names.
Shield Advanced includes application-layer DDoS protection through automatic AWS WAF rule creation. When the service detects HTTP flood attacks or other application-layer threats, it automatically generates and deploys WAF rules to block the attack traffic. This automatic mitigation significantly reduces response time compared to manual rule creation and prevents attacks from consuming application resources.
The global network infrastructure ensures consistent low latency for users worldwide. CloudFront serves content from edge locations nearest to users, minimizing round-trip time. Route 53’s latency-based routing can direct users to the optimal origin location based on real-time network conditions, further optimizing performance.
Option A Shield Standard provides basic protection against common network and transport layer attacks but lacks the advanced mitigation capabilities, WAF integration, and DDoS Response Team support that Shield Advanced provides. For e-commerce platforms vulnerable to sophisticated attacks, Standard protection may be insufficient.
Option C AWS WAF provides application-layer protection but does not address volumetric network-layer attacks that could overwhelm infrastructure. WAF alone cannot protect against DNS query floods or network-layer DDoS attacks, leaving critical vulnerabilities.
Option D network ACLs and Auto Scaling cannot provide comprehensive DDoS protection. While Auto Scaling can add capacity in response to increased traffic, it cannot distinguish between legitimate users and attack traffic, resulting in wasted resources and potential service degradation for legitimate users. Network ACLs require manual rule updates and cannot react quickly enough to dynamic attack patterns.
Question 23:
A healthcare provider needs to share large medical imaging files with partner hospitals across different AWS accounts. The files are highly sensitive and must be transferred securely without traversing the public internet. The solution should support high-throughput transfers and maintain detailed access logs. What is the most appropriate AWS solution?
A) Amazon S3 with cross-account bucket policies
B) AWS PrivateLink with S3 interface endpoints and cross-account access
C) Amazon S3 with pre-signed URLs and CloudFront
D) AWS DataSync between accounts over VPN
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS PrivateLink with S3 interface endpoints and cross-account access provides the most appropriate solution for securely sharing large medical imaging files between healthcare organizations while meeting privacy requirements and maintaining high throughput. This architecture ensures that all data transfers occur over the AWS private network without internet exposure.
AWS PrivateLink enables private connectivity to S3 through interface VPC endpoints. When configured, applications and users can access S3 buckets through private IP addresses within their VPC rather than through S3’s public endpoints. All traffic between the VPC and S3 travels over the AWS network backbone, never traversing the public internet. This satisfies healthcare data privacy requirements and reduces exposure to internet-based threats.
The interface endpoint for S3 creates an elastic network interface in designated subnets within your VPC. Applications connect to S3 using the endpoint’s private IP addresses or through the PrivateLink DNS name. The endpoint handles millions of requests per second and scales automatically to accommodate high-throughput workloads like large medical imaging file transfers.
Option A using cross-account bucket policies without PrivateLink means that file transfers occur over the internet through S3’s public endpoints. Even though the connection uses HTTPS, healthcare organizations typically prefer private connectivity to avoid any internet exposure of patient data.
Option C CloudFront caches content at edge locations, which is inappropriate for sensitive medical images that should not be cached in multiple locations globally. Pre-signed URLs provide temporary access but still require transfers over the internet unless used with PrivateLink, and they introduce operational complexity in generating and distributing URLs.
Option D DataSync is designed for large-scale data migrations and synchronization tasks. While it can transfer files between accounts, it adds unnecessary complexity for simple file sharing scenarios. DataSync over VPN would require managing VPN connections between accounts, whereas PrivateLink provides a simpler, more scalable solution for cross-account S3 access.
Question 24:
A financial trading application requires sub-millisecond latency between application servers and the exchange’s API endpoints. The application is deployed in AWS, and the exchange provides Direct Connect connectivity to their infrastructure. What network architecture minimizes latency while maintaining high availability?
A) Multiple Direct Connect connections with BGP local preference
B) Direct Connect with VPN backup connection
C) AWS Global Accelerator to exchange endpoints
D) Site-to-Site VPN with optimized routing
Answer: A
Explanation:
Multiple Direct Connect connections configured with BGP local preference minimizes latency while providing high availability for the latency-sensitive trading application. This architecture leverages dedicated network paths and sophisticated routing protocols to ensure optimal performance and automatic failover.
AWS Direct Connect establishes dedicated network connections between your AWS environment and external networks, in this case, the financial exchange’s infrastructure. Unlike internet-based connections, Direct Connect provides consistent network performance with predictable, low latency. For trading applications where milliseconds matter, this consistency is essential for fair order execution and competitive advantage.
Using multiple Direct Connect connections provides redundancy and eliminates single points of failure. Financial trading cannot tolerate downtime, and having multiple connections ensures that a failure of one connection, one Direct Connect location, or even on-premises equipment does not disrupt trading operations. AWS recommends using at least two connections terminating at different Direct Connect locations for maximum resilience.
Option B using VPN as a backup connection introduces significantly higher latency compared to Direct Connect. VPN connections traverse the internet with variable performance and encryption overhead. For sub-millisecond latency requirements, VPN backup is unsuitable as failover would result in unacceptable performance degradation.
Option C Global Accelerator is designed to optimize routing from end users to AWS applications, not from AWS to external destinations like exchange APIs. Global Accelerator improves inbound traffic performance but does not reduce latency for outbound connections to external networks.
Option D Site-to-Site VPN operates over the internet with variable latency that cannot meet sub-millisecond requirements. Even with optimized routing, internet-based connections experience jitter, packet loss, and congestion that make them unsuitable for high-frequency trading applications.
Multiple Direct Connect connections with BGP local preference provide the predictable, low-latency networking that financial trading applications require while ensuring continuous availability.
Question 25:
A company operates microservices in Amazon ECS clusters across multiple availability zones. The microservices need service discovery to locate each other dynamically, health checking to route traffic only to healthy instances, and load balancing across all healthy endpoints. What AWS service combination provides this functionality with minimal operational overhead?
A) AWS App Mesh with X-Ray integration
B) Amazon ECS Service Discovery with Cloud Map and Application Load Balancer
C) Route 53 with custom health checks and DNS routing
D) Consul service mesh on EC2 instances
Answer: B
Explanation:
Amazon ECS Service Discovery with Cloud Map and Application Load Balancer provides comprehensive service discovery, health checking, and load balancing capabilities with minimal operational overhead. This integrated solution leverages AWS managed services to handle the complexity of microservices networking without requiring additional infrastructure or third-party tools.
Amazon ECS Service Discovery is built on AWS Cloud Map and automatically registers and deregisters tasks as they start and stop. When you create an ECS service with service discovery enabled, ECS automatically registers each task’s IP address and port in Cloud Map under a specified service name. As tasks scale up or down or get replaced due to failures, the Cloud Map registry stays synchronized without manual intervention.
The Application Load Balancer complements service discovery by providing sophisticated load balancing across healthy tasks. While Cloud Map enables service-to-service discovery, ALB handles incoming traffic from external clients and distributes it across backend microservices. ALB performs its own health checks and automatically stops routing traffic to unhealthy targets.
The integration between these services creates a robust microservices architecture. External traffic reaches the ALB, which distributes it to healthy frontend microservice tasks. Those frontend services use Cloud Map to discover backend services, establishing direct connections to healthy backend tasks. This architecture minimizes latency by enabling direct service-to-service communication after initial discovery.
Option A AWS App Mesh provides advanced service mesh capabilities like traffic routing, retries, and circuit breaking, but it adds complexity that may be unnecessary for basic service discovery and load balancing requirements. App Mesh is valuable for sophisticated traffic management but requires more configuration and operational expertise.
Option C using Route 53 with custom health checks requires manually managing DNS records and implementing custom automation to register and deregister services. This approach significantly increases operational overhead and is error-prone compared to the automatic registration provided by ECS Service Discovery.
Option D running Consul on EC2 instances requires managing additional infrastructure for the service registry, configuring high availability for Consul servers, and implementing Consul agents on all instances. This third-party solution introduces operational complexity and maintenance burden that managed AWS services eliminate.
Question 26:
An organization needs to implement network segmentation to isolate production, development, and testing environments while allowing controlled communication between them for specific use cases. The solution should provide centralized policy enforcement and support expansion to include new environment types in the future. What AWS architecture best addresses these requirements?
A) Separate VPCs with VPC peering and security groups
B) AWS Transit Gateway with separate route tables for each environment
C) Subnets within a single VPC using network ACLs
D) AWS Network Firewall in a dedicated inspection VPC
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS Transit Gateway with separate route tables for each environment provides the optimal architecture for network segmentation with centralized policy enforcement and scalability. This approach creates logical isolation between environments while maintaining flexible, centralized control over inter-environment communication.
Transit Gateway enables a hub-and-spoke network architecture where multiple VPCs attach to a central gateway. Instead of requiring complex mesh topologies with VPC peering connections between every pair of VPCs, all VPCs connect to Transit Gateway, which handles routing between them. This significantly simplifies network architecture and management as the number of environments grows.
The powerful feature for network segmentation is Transit Gateway route tables. You can create separate route tables for different categories of environments such as production, development, and testing. Each VPC attachment associates with a specific route table, determining which other VPCs it can reach. This creates logical network segmentation based on routing policy rather than physical network separation.
Option A using VPC peering with security groups requires creating peering connections between every pair of VPCs that need to communicate. As the number of environments grows, this creates a complex mesh that becomes difficult to manage. Security group rules are distributed across VPCs, making centralized policy enforcement challenging.
Option C using subnets within a single VPC provides physical network separation but lacks true environment isolation. All resources share the same VPC CIDR range, and misconfigured security groups or network ACLs could enable unauthorized access. This approach also limits IP address planning flexibility and doesn’t scale well to multiple environments.
Option D Network Firewall in an inspection VPC provides traffic filtering but doesn’t inherently create network segmentation. Without separate route tables or VPCs, all environments would still be able to reach each other at the network layer. Network Firewall is valuable as an additional security layer but doesn’t replace routing-based segmentation.
Question 27:
A media streaming company delivers video content to subscribers globally and needs to implement user-based access control to prevent content sharing and ensure only authorized users can access premium content. The solution must work at the edge to minimize latency and integrate with the existing authentication system. What AWS service combination provides this capability?
A) CloudFront with signed URLs and Lambda@Edge for authentication validation
B) AWS WAF rate limiting with CloudFront
C) Application Load Balancer with Cognito authentication
D) API Gateway with IAM authorization
Answer: A
Explanation:
CloudFront with signed URLs and Lambda@Edge for authentication validation provides the optimal solution for implementing user-based access control at the edge while minimizing latency for global video streaming. This architecture enables secure, authorized content delivery without requiring requests to traverse back to origin servers for authentication checks.
CloudFront signed URLs are cryptographically secured URLs that grant time-limited access to specific content. When a subscriber requests premium video content, your authentication system generates a signed URL containing the content path, expiration time, and optional IP address restrictions. The signature is created using a private key that only your system possesses, ensuring that URLs cannot be forged or modified.
The signed URL approach prevents content sharing because each URL is unique to the requesting user and typically has a short expiration time. Even if a user shares the URL, it expires quickly, and IP address restrictions can prevent it from being used from different locations. This satisfies content licensing agreements that require preventing unauthorized distribution.
Lambda Edge functions execute at CloudFront edge locations in response to CloudFront events, enabling sophisticated request processing at the edge without origin round-trips. For content access control, you deploy Lambda Edge functions that execute on viewer requests, before CloudFront checks its cache. The function validates the user’s authentication state by checking cookies, JWT tokens, or session identifiers.
The workflow operates as follows: when a subscriber requests video content, the Lambda Edge function intercepts the request and validates the user’s authentication. If authentication is valid, the function either allows the request to proceed to CloudFront (which then checks for a signed URL) or generates a signed URL and redirects the user to it. If authentication is invalid, the function returns a 401 Unauthorized response immediately at the edge.
This edge-based authentication dramatically reduces latency compared to origin-based validation. Users anywhere in the world receive authentication responses from nearby edge locations within milliseconds, rather than waiting for round-trips to centralized authentication servers. For video streaming where every millisecond impacts user experience, this performance advantage is significant.
Option B AWS WAF rate limiting prevents abuse through excessive requests but does not implement user-based authentication. Rate limiting alone cannot distinguish between authorized and unauthorized users or enforce content access policies based on subscription status.
Option C Application Load Balancer with Cognito authentication provides authentication but operates at origin rather than edge. Every request requires a round-trip to the ALB for authentication, significantly increasing latency for global users. This approach also doesn’t leverage CloudFront’s caching benefits effectively.
Option D API Gateway with IAM authorization is designed for API access control rather than content delivery. It operates in specific AWS regions rather than at global edge locations, resulting in higher latency. API Gateway is also not optimized for large media file delivery like video streaming.
Question 28:
A SaaS provider operates a multi-tenant application where customer data must be strictly isolated at the network level to meet compliance requirements. Each customer’s resources run in dedicated VPCs, and customers occasionally need to connect their on-premises networks to their AWS resources using private connectivity. The solution must scale to thousands of customers efficiently. What architecture provides the required isolation and scalability?
A) Shared Transit Gateway with separate route tables per customer
B) Dedicated Transit Gateway per customer
C) VPC peering connections between customer VPCs and shared services
D) AWS Direct Connect with separate virtual interfaces per customer
Answer: A
Explanation:
A shared Transit Gateway with separate route tables per customer provides the optimal balance of network isolation, scalability, and operational efficiency for multi-tenant SaaS architectures. This approach creates complete routing isolation between customers while maintaining centralized management and avoiding the operational overhead of dedicated networking infrastructure for each customer.
Transit Gateway’s route table isolation is the key to achieving true multi-tenancy at the network layer. Each customer’s VPC attaches to the shared Transit Gateway and associates with a dedicated route table created specifically for that customer. The route table contains only routes relevant to that customer’s resources, typically including their VPC CIDRs and any on-premises networks they connect via VPN or Direct Connect.
Option B dedicated Transit Gateway per customer provides complete isolation but introduces massive operational overhead and cost. Managing thousands of separate Transit Gateways becomes unmanageable, and the cost multiplies linearly with the number of customers, making this approach economically infeasible for large-scale SaaS providers.
Option C VPC peering connections create point-to-point links that don’t scale well for multi-tenant architectures. Each customer would need peering connections to shared services, resulting in a complex mesh. VPC peering also doesn’t support transitive routing, limiting architectural flexibility.
Option D Direct Connect with separate virtual interfaces per customer doesn’t address intra-AWS connectivity between customer VPCs and shared services. It only solves the on-premises to AWS connectivity component and doesn’t provide the routing isolation needed within AWS.
Question 29:
A financial services company operates a trading platform that requires consistent sub-10ms latency between application components for order processing. The application uses microservices deployed across three availability zones for high availability. What networking configuration minimizes inter-service latency while maintaining fault tolerance?
A) Place all microservices in a single availability zone with placement groups
B) Deploy microservices across AZs with cluster placement groups within each AZ
C) Use partition placement groups across multiple availability zones
D) Deploy microservices in multiple AZs without placement groups
Answer: B
Explanation:
Deploying microservices across availability zones with cluster placement groups within each AZ provides the optimal balance between minimizing inter-service latency and maintaining fault tolerance. This architecture leverages AWS placement group capabilities to reduce network latency while preserving multi-AZ high availability.
Cluster placement groups are logical groupings of instances within a single availability zone that are placed in close proximity to each other. Instances in a cluster placement group can achieve low latency, high throughput network connectivity because they’re physically located near each other in the AWS data center, often connected through high-bandwidth, low-latency network links.
For latency-sensitive trading applications, the sub-10ms requirement is challenging to meet reliably across availability zones due to the physical distance between AZs. While inter-AZ latency within a region is typically low (single-digit milliseconds), it’s variable and depends on traffic load and distance between specific AZs. Cluster placement groups provide more predictable, consistently low latency.
The architecture works by deploying instances of each microservice in all three availability zones, with each AZ’s instances placed in a cluster placement group. For example, the order processing service has instances in AZ-A (in a cluster placement group), AZ-B (in another cluster placement group), and AZ-C (in a third cluster placement group). Similarly, all other microservices deploy across all three AZs with cluster placement groups in each.
Within an availability zone, microservice-to-microservice communication benefits from the cluster placement group’s low latency characteristics. The order processing service instance in AZ-A communicates with other microservices’ instances in AZ-A at consistently low latency. This intra-AZ, intra-placement-group communication meets the sub-10ms requirement reliably.
Option A placing all microservices in a single AZ achieves the lowest possible latency but completely eliminates fault tolerance. Any AZ-level issue would cause total application failure, which is unacceptable for financial trading platforms that require high availability.
Option C partition placement groups distribute instances across logical partitions within each availability zone to reduce correlated failures. However, they don’t provide the same low-latency characteristics as cluster placement groups because instances in different partitions may not be physically co-located.
Option D deploying across multiple AZs without placement groups maintains fault tolerance but doesn’t optimize for low latency. Inter-service communication within an AZ would have higher and more variable latency compared to using cluster placement groups, making it difficult to reliably meet sub-10ms requirements.
Question 30:
A company migrating to AWS needs to integrate their existing on-premises Active Directory for user authentication with AWS resources. Users should authenticate once and access AWS Management Console, EC2 instances via RDP/SSH, and AWS applications using their corporate credentials. The solution must maintain all authentication policies and comply with security requirements for centralized user management. What AWS service configuration accomplishes this?
A) AWS Directory Service AD Connector with IAM identity federation
B) AWS Managed Microsoft AD with trust relationship to on-premises AD
C) Amazon Cognito user pools synchronized with AD
D) IAM users with SAML-based federation
Answer: B
Explanation:
AWS Managed Microsoft AD with a trust relationship to on-premises Active Directory provides the most comprehensive solution for integrating existing corporate authentication with AWS resources. This architecture creates a managed Active Directory environment in AWS that trusts the on-premises AD, enabling seamless single sign-on while maintaining centralized user management and existing authentication policies.
AWS Managed Microsoft AD (also called AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory) is a fully managed, highly available Active Directory running in the AWS cloud. It provides actual Active Directory domain controllers that run Microsoft Active Directory software, making it fully compatible with AD-dependent applications and services.
The trust relationship is the key to integration. You establish either a one-way trust where AWS trusts on-premises AD, or a two-way trust where both directories trust each other. With this trust in place, users authenticated in the on-premises AD can access resources in AWS without requiring separate authentication. The trust leverages standard Active Directory trust mechanisms, so existing authentication policies, group memberships, and security settings apply seamlessly to AWS resource access.
For AWS Management Console access, AWS Managed Microsoft AD integrates with AWS IAM through SAML-based federation or AD Connector. Users sign in with their corporate credentials, and the directory service authenticates them against the on-premises AD through the trust relationship. Once authenticated, users receive temporary AWS credentials and access the console with permissions defined by their AD group memberships mapped to IAM roles.
Option A AD Connector acts as a proxy to on-premises AD but does not create an AD environment in AWS. While it enables authentication through on-premises AD, it has limitations for applications that need to join a domain or perform LDAP operations. AD Connector requires consistent network connectivity to on-premises, and any network disruption impacts authentication.
Option C Amazon Cognito user pools are designed for consumer-facing applications and mobile apps rather than enterprise authentication integration. While Cognito can federate with SAML identity providers, it does not provide the deep Active Directory integration needed for domain-joined EC2 instances, WorkSpaces, or other directory-aware AWS services.
Option D IAM users with SAML federation enables console access but does not address domain joining for EC2 instances or native AD integration for AWS services. This approach requires managing a separate identity provider for SAML assertions and does not leverage existing Active Directory infrastructure for application-level authentication.
AWS Managed Microsoft AD with trust relationships provides the most complete, secure, and manageable solution for enterprises migrating to AWS while maintaining their existing Active Directory investments and authentication policies.