DVA-C02 Amazon Web Services AWS Certified Developer - Associate Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)

On Amazon ECS, the fundamental scheduling unit is a task , which is launched from a task definition . A single task definition can include multiple containers that are intended to run together (often called a “sidecar” pattern). When two containers must share data locally —such as an application container writing log files and a separate log/metrics collector container reading those files—the recommended approach is to place both containers in the same task definition and use a shared task volume .

ECS supports defining volumes at the task level (for example, a Docker volume or bind mount depending on the launch type and configuration), and then mounting that volume into multiple containers inside the same task. Because the containers are co-located by ECS scheduling (same task, same underlying host or Fargate environment), they can safely share the mounted directory for file-based handoff. This design keeps the containers tightly coupled for lifecycle management (start/stop together) and avoids cross-task coordination complexity.

Options A and D refer to “pod specifications,” which are Kubernetes concepts, not ECS-native constructs (unless using ECS with EKS/Kubernetes, which is not stated). Option B is not feasible because ECS does not mount a single shared local volume across two separate tasks in the general case; separate tasks can be placed on different hosts, and task-scoped volumes are not shared between tasks by default. If cross-task sharing were required, you would typically use a network filesystem (like EFS) or an external log pipeline (CloudWatch Logs, FireLens, etc.), but the requirement explicitly says each application container needs to share data with another container, which aligns with the sidecar-in-same-task pattern.

Therefore, the correct solution is C : define both containers in one ECS task definition and mount a shared volume into both containers.

The solution that will meet the requirements is to write data to Amazon ElastiCache. This way, the application can write session data to a fast, scalable, and reliable in-memory data store that can be served reliably across multiple requests. The other options either involve writing data to persistent storage, which is slower and more expensive than in-memory storage, or writing data to the root filesystem, which is not shared among multiple EC2 instances.

AWS AppConfig Feature Flags are designed to release features safely with minimal code changes. The lowest operational overhead approach is to use a single feature flag and configure it to deliver the feature to a percentage of users through built-in targeting rules and variants.

With option C, the developer creates one AppConfig feature flag and defines a variant that represents the new feature behavior (for example, enabled=true or a “newExperience” variant). Then the developer creates a rule in AppConfig to target 15% of users. AppConfig feature flags support rules that can evaluate attributes (such as user IDs or other contextual attributes supplied by the application) and apply percentage-based rollout. This avoids building and maintaining custom rollout logic in the application.

Option A and D both require implementing and maintaining custom traffic splitting in code, which increases complexity and operational burden, and risks inconsistent behavior across clients/services.

Option B adds extra configuration overhead and complexity by managing multiple feature flags for “groups” instead of using a single flag with a variant and rule. A single flag with variants is the clean, scalable pattern.

Therefore, create one AppConfig feature flag, define a variant, and configure a rule to target 15% of users.

API Gateway’s canary deployments allow gradual traffic shifting to a new version of a function, minimizing disruption while testing.

Why Option A is Correct:

Gradual Rollout: Reduces risk by incrementally increasing traffic.

Rollback Support: Canary deployments make it easy to revert to the previous version.

Why Not Other Options:

Option B: Redeploying the stage disrupts all users.

Option C & D: Managing new stages and weighted routing introduces unnecessary complexity.

Canary Deployments in API Gateway

If a bucket policy denies delete operations for all principals, but objects are still being removed, the most likely cause is S3 Lifecycle configuration. Lifecycle expiration is an S3-managed action that deletes objects automatically based on rules (such as “expire after N days”). These deletions occur as part of the S3 service’s lifecycle management and are not “someone calling DeleteObject” in the usual way from an IAM principal. As a result, developers often observe objects disappearing even though bucket policies deny deletes.

Therefore, to prevent additional deletions, the developer should review and remove (or modify) any Lifecycle rules that expire or transition/delete objects. This directly stops S3 from automatically deleting the log files.

Option A would not help if the policy already denies deletes and no explicit allow is causing the issue. Also, a deny overrides allow anyway.

Option C is unrelated: access points do not bypass bucket policies.

Option D is unlikely and not the primary control plane mechanism for automated S3 deletions. EventBridge can trigger workflows, but the direct, common AWS-native mechanism for periodic deletion is Lifecycle expiration.

Therefore, removing S3 Lifecycle expiration rules prevents further deletions.

Requirement Summary:

Developer uses AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO) with AWS CLI / SDKs

Initially working fine

Now receiving AccessDenied errors

No changes to config or scripts

Key Understanding:

IAM Identity Center credentials are temporary and time-limited. When you use SSO-based access via the AWS CLI (aws sso login), it obtains temporary credentials stored in the local cache.

By default, these expire in 1 hour (can be extended).

Evaluate Options:

A. Permissions to CLI binary changed

Unlikely – this would produce execution errors, not AccessDenied from AWS API

B. Permission set lacks required permissions

Then the error would have occurred from the beginning, not after time

C. IAM Identity Center credentials expired

Most likely – user hasn ' t refreshed credentials using aws sso login again

After expiration, API calls fail with AccessDenied

D. Developer is calling the wrong AWS account

Would likely show different types of errors (AccountNotFound, etc.)

SSO and AWS CLI: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-configure-sso.html

Troubleshooting SSO CLI: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/sso-configure-profile-token.html

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store is a service that provides secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets management. The developer can update the application to retrieve the variables from Parameter Store by using the AWS SDK or the AWS CLI. The developer can use unique paths in Parameter Store for each variable in each environment, such as /dev/api-url, /test/api-url, and /prod/api-url. The developer can also store the credentials in AWS Secrets Manager, which is integrated with Parameter Store and provides additional features such as automatic rotation and encryption.

The IAM policy shown in the image is a resource-based policy that grants or denies access to an S3 bucket based on certain conditions. The first statement allows access to any S3 action on any object in the “DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET” bucket when the request is made over HTTPS (the value of aws:SecureTransport is true). The second statement denies access to the s3:GetObject and s3:PutObject actions on any object in the “DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/secrets” prefix when the request is made over HTTP (the value of aws:SecureTransport is false). Therefore, the policy allows access on all objects in the “DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET” bucket except on objects that start with “secrets”. Reference: Using IAM policies for Amazon S3

The requirement is to keep profile pictures private in S3 while allowing the browser to display them each time an employee logs in. The standard AWS pattern is to store objects in a private bucket and provide time-limited access through S3 presigned URLs . A presigned URL grants temporary permission to perform a specific operation (such as GET) on a specific object, and it expires automatically after a configured duration. This prevents public access while still allowing simple browser retrieval.

Option D is the viable long-term solution because it stores only the S3 object key (a stable identifier) in DynamoDB and generates a fresh presigned URL at login time . This is important because presigned URLs expire; storing a presigned URL (option A) would eventually store an expired URL and force extra complexity to refresh records. Generating a new presigned URL when needed ensures the link is always valid and keeps the expiration window tight, which improves security.

Option B is not appropriate for employee browsers in general: a VPC endpoint is for traffic from resources inside a VPC (EC2, Lambda in VPC, etc.). Employee browsers on the public internet cannot use a private VPC endpoint to reach S3. Option C is not viable for “no size limit” images: DynamoDB has strict item size limits, base64 inflates data size, and storing large binary blobs in DynamoDB is inefficient and expensive compared to S3.

Therefore, D best meets the requirement: keep images private in S3, store the S3 key in DynamoDB, and generate a presigned URL on each login to provide secure, temporary access for display.

Amazon EFS: A network file system (NFS) providing shared, scalable storage across multiple Lambda functions and other AWS resources.

Lambda Mounting: EFS file systems can be mounted within Lambda functions to access a shared storage space.

Log Appending: EFS supports appending data to existing files, making it ideal for the log file scenario.

The correct answer is C because AWS AppConfig provides built-in support for feature flags , allowing developers to enable or disable features dynamically without redeploying application code. This is exactly what the question requires: keeping features hidden from end users until the features are ready for release, and then selectively activating them when appropriate.

AWS documentation describes AppConfig as a service for managing application configuration in a safe and controlled way. Feature flags in AppConfig let teams separate deployment from release , which is a core best practice in modern application development. A developer can deploy code that contains unfinished or hidden functionality, while the actual visibility and activation of that functionality is controlled through feature flag values stored in an AppConfig configuration profile. When the feature is ready, the flag can be turned on without changing the application package.

Option A is incorrect because AWS AppSync is a managed GraphQL service and is not the AWS feature flag service for application configuration management. Option B is incorrect because DynamoDB Streams are used for capturing item-level changes and reacting to table updates, not for controlled feature activation. Option D is incorrect because Amplify DataStore is intended for client-side data synchronization and offline access patterns, not centralized production feature flag management.

Using AppConfig also provides operational benefits such as deployment strategies, configuration validation, and rollback support, which make it safer than building a custom feature toggle mechanism. For these reasons, AWS AppConfig feature flags are the most appropriate and AWS-recommended solution for hiding prerelease features and selectively enabling them later.

Therefore, C is the correct answer.

To meet the requirement:

Users must be able to upload (PutObject) and read (GetObject) files but not delete them.

Option D ensures users cannot delete files by omitting the s3:DeleteObject action while allowing s3:GetObject and s3:PutObject.

Option A: Includes s3:DeleteObject, which allows users to delete files and does not meet the requirement.

Option B: Contains unrelated actions like CreateBucket, which is not relevant here.

Option C: Adds s3:PutObjectRetention, which is unnecessary and does not restrict DeleteObject.

The correct answer is C because Amazon SNS subscription filter policies are the native AWS feature for ensuring that only messages with matching attributes are delivered to a specific subscription. In this scenario, the Lambda function should process only refund messages from an SNS topic that contains multiple payment activity message types. By applying a subscription filter policy to the Lambda subscription, SNS delivers only the refund-related notifications to the function.

This is the most operationally efficient solution because filtering happens before invocation of the Lambda function. That means the Lambda function is not triggered for irrelevant payment events, which reduces unnecessary invocations, lowers compute cost, and simplifies the function code. AWS documentation recommends using subscription filter policies with SNS when subscribers should receive only a subset of messages based on message attributes.

Option A is incorrect because Lambda event filtering is available for some event sources, but for SNS-to-Lambda integration , the AWS-native filtering point is the SNS subscription itself. Option B is less efficient because it still invokes the Lambda function for every message and then discards non-refund messages in code. That increases operational overhead and cost. Option D is unrelated to the requirement because batching changes invocation behavior but does not filter by message type.

Therefore, the best design is to publish all payment activity events to SNS with appropriate message attributes and configure an SNS subscription filter policy so that only refund messages invoke the Lambda function. This approach is simple, scalable, and aligns with AWS event-driven architecture best practices.

For rapid prototyping with the least operational overhead, Lambda function URLs are the best fit. A Lambda function URL provides a built-in HTTPS endpoint directly in front of a Lambda function, allowing the frontend team to invoke each endpoint without requiring additional infrastructure. This is ideal when the overall architecture is not finalized and the team needs a quick way to test.

AWS describes Lambda function URLs as a simple way to “add an HTTPS endpoint to your Lambda function” without requiring API Gateway, load balancers, or custom proxy layers. This substantially reduces setup time and avoids the operational tasks associated with provisioning, configuring, and managing an API layer during early-stage development.

Option B (API Gateway REST API) introduces more operational overhead: creating resources, methods, integrations, deployments, stages, and potentially authorization and throttling configuration. API Gateway is powerful, but it is more than needed for quick endpoint testing.

Option C (AppSync) is designed for GraphQL-based APIs and requires schema design and resolvers. That is unnecessary complexity for simply testing three Lambda-backed endpoints.

Option D (ECS proxy) adds the most operational burden because it requires container orchestration, networking, scaling, and patching—completely misaligned with “least operational overhead.”

Therefore, the fastest and simplest approach is to create a function URL per Lambda endpoint, allowing immediate testing from the frontend with minimal additional AWS configuration.

Why Option B is Correct:

Amazon S3 Standard provides immediate access to files and is cost-effective for files that need to be accessed within 5 minutes.

By adding the S3 location to the SQS queue, you avoid transferring large files directly, which is both more efficient and scalable.

Why Other Options are Incorrect:

Option A: S3 Glacier Deep Archive is designed for archival storage with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours, which does not meet the 5-minute requirement.

Option C: Amazon EBS is designed for block storage attached to EC2 instances, which adds unnecessary complexity and cost.

Option D: SQS is not designed to handle large file content directly and has message size limits (256 KB).

AWS Documentation References:

Amazon S3 Overview

Amazon SQS Best Practices

The requirement is to redact PII before the object content reaches the consumer, while the analytics service continues to use standard S3 GET requests. The most operationally efficient way is Amazon S3 Object Lambda.

S3 Object Lambda lets you add your own code to process and transform data as it is retrieved from S3. Instead of the analytics service reading directly from the bucket, it reads through an S3 Object Lambda Access Point. When the service performs a GET request, S3 invokes the associated Lambda function, which can modify the object payload on the fly—for example, by calling an external or internal PII redaction API and returning a redacted version of the report. The original object remains unchanged in the bucket, while consumers receive the transformed (redacted) response.

This approach is operationally efficient because it avoids:

duplicating and storing redacted copies of every report,

refactoring the analytics service to use a different datastore or ingestion path,

building a separate proxy service layer.

Option A requires significant refactoring and ongoing ETL/warehouse ops.

Option C provides confidentiality via encryption but does not perform redaction (analytics would still see PII after decryption).

Option D changes the access pattern completely (analytics no longer uses GET) and adds messaging complexity without directly returning redacted object content.

Therefore, S3 Object Lambda + Object Lambda Access Point is the most efficient solution to redact data at retrieval time.

To run a containerized job hourly in ECS with minimal infrastructure management, the best choice is AWS Fargate. Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that runs ECS tasks without the developer needing to provision, patch, or scale EC2 instances.

With option C, the developer defines an ECS task definition using the Fargate launch type and schedules it (commonly via Amazon EventBridge Scheduler / EventBridge rule triggering RunTask). ECS handles the placement, networking, and execution of the task on managed infrastructure. This is the least operational overhead approach because there are no instances to manage and no capacity planning required, which fits an hourly job with small CPU/RAM needs.

Option A (capacity providers) is primarily for managing EC2 capacity for ECS and still requires underlying instances, which increases operational burden.

Option B runs the app on an EC2 instance, which requires instance lifecycle management, OS patching, scaling considerations, and failure handling.

Option D refers to managed node groups (an EKS concept) and does not apply cleanly to ECS. Even in a Kubernetes context, nodes still need management compared to Fargate.

Therefore, defining a Fargate task is the simplest and lowest-management solution.

The error message " Task timed out after 3.01 seconds " indicates that the Lambda invocation exceeded the function’s configured timeout setting, which appears to be set to approximately 3 seconds . Larger images ( > 2 MB) take longer to transfer between services (due to network latency, throughput, and downstream service response time), so the runtime crosses the timeout threshold and Lambda forcibly terminates the execution. This is a configuration problem, not necessarily a code defect.

To resolve the issue without modifying the function code , the developer should increase the Lambda function’s timeout value . Lambda allows configuring the maximum runtime per invocation (up to the service limit). By increasing the timeout to a value that comfortably covers the expected transfer and processing initiation time for larger payloads, the function can complete its work successfully. This directly addresses the failure mode while keeping the existing implementation unchanged.

Option D (provisioned concurrency) reduces cold start latency by keeping execution environments initialized, but it does not extend the allowed runtime for a single invocation. If the function consistently needs more than 3 seconds for larger images, provisioned concurrency will not prevent timeouts. Option C (concurrency quota increase) increases the number of concurrent executions allowed, which can help throughput under load, but again does not affect per-invocation runtime limits. Option B avoids the problem by skipping large images, but it violates the functional need to process them and is not a general solution.

Therefore, the correct solution is A : increase the Lambda timeout so the function has sufficient time to move larger images between AWS services.

The GenerateDataKey API returns a data key that is encrypted under a symmetric encryption KMS key that you specify, and a plaintext copy of the same data key1. The data key is a random byte string that can be used with any standard encryption algorithm, such as AES or SM42. The plaintext data key can be used to encrypt or decrypt data outside of AWS KMS, while the encrypted data key can be stored with the encrypted data and later decrypted by AWS KMS1.

In this scenario, the developer needs to use the GenerateDataKey API to encrypt the PDF file so that it can be decrypted later. The developer also needs to use an AWS KMS symmetric customer managed key for encryption. To achieve this, the developer can follow these steps:

Call the GenerateDataKey API with the symmetric customer managed key ID and the desired length or specification of the data key. The API will return an encrypted data key and a plaintext data key.

Write the encrypted data key to disk for later use. This will allow the developer to decrypt the data key and the PDF file later by using AWS KMS.

Use the plaintext data key and a symmetric encryption algorithm to encrypt the PDF file. The developer can use any standard encryption library or tool to perform this operation, such as OpenSSL or AWS Encryption SDK.

Discard the plaintext data key from memory as soon as possible after using it. This will prevent unauthorized access or leakage of the data key.

The AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) comes built-in with CodeDeploy to provide gradual AWS Lambda deployments1. The DeploymentPreference property in AWS SAM allows you to specify the type of deployment that you want. The Canary10Percent10Minutes option means that 10 percent of your customer traffic is immediately shifted to your new version. After 10 minutes, all traffic is shifted to the new version1. The AutoPublishAlias property in AWS SAM allows AWS SAM to automatically create an alias that points to the updated version of the Lambda function1. Therefore, option A is correct.

The solution that will meet the requirements with the least development effort is to set the image resize Lambda function as a destination of the avatar generator Lambda function for the events that fail processing. This way, the fallback mechanism is automatically triggered by the Lambda service without requiring any additional components or configuration. The other options involve creating and managing additional resources such as queues, topics, state machines, or rules, which would increase the complexity and cost of the solution.

Step 1: Understanding the Requirements

Best Practices for Security:

Minimize the use of hardcoded credentials or long-lived access keys.

Use IAM roles for EC2 instances to securely grant permissions to applications running on the instance.

Access Scope: The application needs read-only access to an S3 bucket.

Step 2: Solution Analysis

Option A:

Define an IAM policy with the required s3:GetObject permissions.

Attach this policy to an IAM role.

Assign the role to the EC2 instance profile.

This approach follows security best practices by eliminating the need for static credentials and using temporary, scoped credentials provided by the instance profile.

Correct option.

Option B:

IAM groups are used for organizing users, not for EC2 instances or instance profiles.

Not suitable.

Option C:

IAM users are associated with specific individuals or applications and require static credentials.

This violates security best practices for temporary credentials and roles.

Not suitable.

Option D:

IAM web identity federation is used for applications that authenticate users via third-party identity providers.

This is unnecessary for EC2 instances and does not align with the requirements.

Not suitable.

Step 3: Implementation Steps

Create an IAM Policy:

Grant read-only access to the S3 bucket:

json

Copy code

{

" Version " : " 2012-10-17 " ,

" Statement " : [

{

" Effect " : " Allow " ,

" Action " : " s3:GetObject " ,

" Resource " : " arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/* "

}

]

}

Attach the Policy to an IAM Role:

Create an IAM role and attach the policy to the role.

Associate the Role with the EC2 Instance:

Attach the role to the instance profile used by the EC2 instance.

AWS Developer References:

IAM Roles for Amazon EC2

Amazon S3 Permissions Reference

The requirement here is to ensure that Lambda functions are executed in a specific order. AWS Step Functions is a low-code workflow orchestration service that enables you to sequence AWS services, such as AWS Lambda, into workflows. It is purpose-built for situations like this, where different steps need to be executed in a strict sequence.

AWS Step Functions: Step Functions allows developers to design workflows as state machines, where each state corresponds to a particular function. In this case, the developer can create a Step Functions state machine where each step (order processing, inventory management, etc.) is represented by a Lambda function.

Operational Overhead: Step Functions have very low operational overhead because it natively handles retries, error handling, and function sequencing.

Alternatives:

Amazon SQS (Option A): While SQS can manage message ordering, it requires more manual handling of each step and the logic to sequentially invoke the Lambda functions.

Amazon SNS (Option B): SNS is a pub/sub service and is not designed to handle sequences of Lambda executions.

EventBridge (Option D): EventBridge Scheduler allows you to invoke Lambda functions based on scheduled times, but it doesn’t directly support sequencing based on workflow logic.Therefore, AWS Step Functions is the most appropriate solution due to its native orchestration capabilities and minimal operational complexity.

AWS Step Functions documentation

Why Option B is Correct:Amazon ECS does not natively process docker-compose.yml files. Instead, the configurations from docker-compose.yml must be converted into ECS-compatible configurations within a task definition. Task definitions are the primary way to specify container configurations in ECS, including service dependencies like databases, caches, and volumes.

Steps to Resolve the Error:

Extract the configurations from the docker-compose.yml file.

Map the dependencies and settings to the appropriate ECS task definition fields.

Deploy the task definition to the ECS cluster.

Why Other Options are Incorrect:

Option A: Docker labels do not directly impact ECS task execution or integrate with ECS service configurations.

Option C: ECS namespaces do not exist as a feature.

Option D: Changing the service type to REPLICA does not resolve the issue of missing service dependency configurations.

AWS Documentation References:

Amazon ECS Task Definitions

Migrating Docker Compose Workloads to ECS