Cloud-Deployment-and-Operations WGUCloud Deployment and Operations Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

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To deploy a static website to AWS, the bucket properties of an Amazon S3 bucket should be configured, specifically enabling static website hosting. This involves setting the bucket policy to allow public read access and configuring the index and error documents. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 2.1, S3 Static Website Hosting) states, "Configuring bucket properties for static website hosting in S3 involves enabling the website endpoint, setting an index document (e.g., index.html), and applying a bucket policy for public access, making it suitable for hosting static content." RDS Proxy, S3 Versioning, and CloudTrail events are not relevant to this use case.

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.

AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations to help follow AWS best practices, analyzing the environment for cost optimization, security, performance, and fault tolerance. It offers actionable insights to improve resource usage. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 6.4, Trusted Advisor) states, "Trusted Advisor evaluates your AWS environment against best practices, providing recommendations in categories like cost optimization and security (e.g., enabling MFA or removing unused resources)." Options A, B, and C overstate or misrepresent its role, as it does not focus solely on unused IAM roles, holistic health overviews, or patch recommendations.

The latency routing policy in Amazon Route 53 should be used to direct customer requests to the website with the shortest round-trip time (RTT). This policy routes traffic to the AWS region with the lowest latency based on the user's location, optimizing performance. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.1, Route 53 Routing Policies) states, "The latency-based routing policy in Route 53 measures RTT to direct users to the region with the lowest latency, improving user experience across multiple websites." Geolocation, geoproximity, and weighted policies do not prioritize RTT in this manner.

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To protect critical data on EBS volumes with a maximum tolerable data loss of one hour, the company should schedule automated volume snapshots using CloudWatch Events. Snapshots capture the state of the volume at a point in time, and regular scheduling (e.g., every hour) ensures data loss is limited to the snapshot interval. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 7.3, EBS and Snapshots) states, "Automated EBS snapshots can be scheduled using CloudWatch Events rules to create backups at defined intervals, ensuring an RPO of one hour by capturing volume data regularly." Local storage, Cloud Control backups, and Block Express are not viable solutions for this automated snapshot requirement.

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The Mappings section in a CloudFormation template should be used to set values based on region-specific AMI IDs. Mappings allow the template to define a lookup table that associates regions with corresponding AMI IDs, enabling dynamic selection during stack creation across multiple regions. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 5.3, CloudFormation Mappings) states, "The Mappings section enables region-specific configurations, such as mapping AMI IDs to regions (e.g., 'us-east-1': 'ami-123456'), ensuring the correct AMI is used based on the deployment region." Outputs, WaitCondition, and Resources do not provide this mapping functionality.

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Spot Instances are the most suitable EC2 instance type for this workload pattern, offering the lowest cost for short, interruptible tasks like 3D rendering, where work can be redistributed if interrupted. This aligns with the company’s cost-plus pricing model. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 7.3, EC2 Instance Types) states, "Spot Instances provide significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand) for fault-tolerant, short-term workloads like rendering, where interruptions can be handled by redistributing tasks to other nodes." On-Demand, Dedicated, and Reserved Instances are more expensive and less flexible for this use case.

Multipart uploads must be used when uploading files larger than 5 GB to Amazon S3, as this method splits the file into smaller parts for parallel upload, improving reliability and performance. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 2.1, S3 Uploads) states, "For files exceeding 5 GB, multipart upload is required in S3, allowing the file to be divided into parts (minimum 5 MB each) for concurrent uploads, ensuring efficient and resumable transfers." Glacier Select, Transfer Acceleration, and Intelligent-Tiering are not designed for this upload optimization.

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To make the EC2 instance accessible via a public DNS hostname like ec2-public-54.18.127.233.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com, the administrator must set the VPC attribute enableDnsHostnames to true. This enables the automatic assignment of public DNS hostnames to instances with public IP addresses in the VPC. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.2, VPC Configuration) states, "Setting enableDnsHostnames to true in the VPC configuration ensures that EC2 instances with public IPs receive a public DNS hostname (e.g., ec2-public-..compute.amazonaws.com), facilitating internet accessibility." Resource tags, disabling DNS support, and resource-based names do not enable this functionality.

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AWS CloudFormation uses YAML and JSON languages to define infrastructure as code (IaC) templates, specifying resources, parameters, and configurations. These formats are human-readable and support the creation of stacks for provisioning AWS resources. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 5.3, CloudFormation) states, "CloudFormation templates can be written in YAML or JSON, both of which are supported for defining infrastructure resources like EC2 instances and S3 buckets." XML and C# are not supported languages for CloudFormation templates.

A patch baseline in Patch Manager defines the patches that should and should not be installed on EC2 instances, specifying approval rules for security updates, other updates, and exclusions. This ensures controlled and compliant patching. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 5.2, Patch Manager) states, "A patch baseline specifies which patches are approved for installation and which are excluded, allowing customization of patch deployment (e.g., approving only critical security updates)." Options A, B, and D misrepresent the baseline's role, as it does not auto-install, assign IAM roles, or notify Config directly.

The `Ref` function in an AWS CloudFormation template is used to obtain values of components defined within the template, such as resource IDs, parameters, or outputs. This function allows dynamic referencing of resources during stack creation. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 5.3, CloudFormation Functions) states, "The `Ref` function is used to reference the logical IDs of resources, parameters, or mappings defined in the template, enabling dynamic value retrieval (e.g., `Ref: MyEC2Instance` returns the instance ID)." ImportValue is used for cross-stack references, Cidr for IP range calculations, and GetAZs for availability zone lists, making them unsuitable here.

To meet the requirements, the administrator should use an Amazon RDS Multi-AZ DB instance for multiple Availability Zones and failover support, and an Amazon Aurora DB instance with Aurora Replica for a read-only connection. The RDS Multi-AZ configuration automatically provisions a standby instance in a different AZ for failover, while Aurora Replicas provide read-only instances for scaling read traffic. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 7.1, RDS and Aurora) states, "RDS Multi-AZ deploys a standby instance across AZs for failover, and Aurora Replicas are read-only instances that enhance performance by offloading read traffic from the primary instance." Options A and D are incorrect as multi-master replication and Multi-AZ clusters do not align with the read-only requirement.

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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.

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.

To notify a response team when a high-security web server returns a 403 Forbidden error, two key steps are required. First, define a metric filter for Apache logs in CloudWatch to detect the 403 error code within the log data. This involves setting up a filter pattern to match "403" in the Apache access logs. Second, create an alarm for the metric filter and configure it to deliver alerts using Amazon SNS, which supports email or other notifications to the response team. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.2, CloudWatch Logs and Alarms) confirms that metric filters and SNS-integrated alarms are the standard approach for monitoring and alerting on log-based events. Options B and D are incorrect as they involve unnecessary or unsupported configurations (e.g., binding Lambda to Apache or using SQS for alarms).

To route requests to a healthy endpoint without requesting additional Elastic IP addresses, the company should register a DNS name to an auto-assigned public IP address using a service like Route 53. This leverages dynamic DNS to distribute traffic, reducing reliance on fixed EIPs. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.1, Route 53) states, "Registering a DNS name with an auto-assigned public IP in Route 53 allows traffic routing to healthy instances, avoiding the need for additional Elastic IP addresses." TTL adjustment, route table edits, and Systems Manager are not relevant solutions.

To create a metric filter in the Amazon CloudWatch console, the first step is to select a log group from which the log data will be analyzed. A log group contains log streams, and metric filters are applied to the log data within these groups to extract metrics based on patterns. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.2, CloudWatch Logs) specifies that the process begins by navigating to the CloudWatch console, selecting a log group, and then defining the filter pattern. Actions like enabling an alarm, defining a trace, or specifying a stream are subsequent or unrelated 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.