February 2, 2021
AWS Associate Solution Architect FAQ’s Part – 1
As a disclaimer, there is no better preparation than hands-on experience. However, the below practice question and answer should give some insight into the type of scenario you could expect part of the exam.
| 1 | Can I delete a snapshot of the root device of an EBS volume used by a registered AMI? |
| A | To delete an EBS Snapshot attached to a registered AMI, first, remove the AMI, then the snapshot can be deleted. |
| 2 | EBS Snapshots are backed up to S3 in what manner? |
| A | EBS snapshots use incremental backups and are stored in S3. |
| 3 | Standard Reserved Instances can be moved between regions? |
| A | Standard Reserved Instances cannot be moved between regions. You can choose if a Reserved Instance applies to either a specific Availability Zone, or an Entire Region, but you cannot change the region |
| 4 | Will an Amazon EBS root volume persist independently from the life of the terminated EC2 instance to which it was previously attached? In other words, if I terminated an EC2 instance, would that EBS root volume persist? |
| A | You can control whether an EBS root volume is deleted when its associated instance is terminated. The default delete-on-termination behaviour depends on whether the volume is a root volume, or an additional volume. By default, the DeleteOnTermination attribute for root volumes is set to ‘true.’ However, this attribute may be changed at launch by using either the AWS Console or the command line. For an instance that is already running, the DeleteOnTermination attribute must be changed using the CLI. |
| 5 | Which EC2 feature uses SR-IOV? |
| A | Enhanced networking uses single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to provide high-performance networking capabilities on supported instance types. |
| 6 | What type of storage are Amazon’s EBS volumes based on? |
| A | Block-based |
| 7 | If an Amazon EBS volume is attached as an additional disk (not the root volume), can I detach it without stopping the instance? |
| A | Since the additional disk does not contain the operating system, you can detach it in the EC2 Console while the instance is running. However, any data on that drive would become inaccessible, and possibly cause problems for the EC2 instance |
| 8 | When can you attach/replace an IAM role on an EC2 instance? |
| A | IAM Roles can be attached to instances in the stopped or running state, or replaced for instances in the running state. Prior to early 2017, you would only be able to attach an IAM role at launch, and if you wanted to attach a role, you would have to terminate and re-launch the instance. |
| 9 | The use of a cluster placement group is ideal ___ |
| A | Cluster Placement Groups are primarily about keeping you compute resources within one network hop of each other on high speed rack switches. This is only helpful when you have compute loads with network loads that are either very high or very sensitive to latency. |
| 10 | Is it possible to perform actions on an existing Amazon EBS Snapshot? |
| A | You can use AWS APIs, CLI or the AWS Console to copy snapshots, share snapshots, and create volumes from snapshots |
Summary & Next Steps
We would strongly encourage you to refer to the remaining part in this series if you are aiming for the certification and also the “cloud computing and services section” for a good read on the related solutions.
Happy learning
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About Author
Ashraf Abdulla
Founder of Hiraanet group, IT enthusiast & engineer with more than 10 years in the industry - Proven record of generating and building relationships, managing projects from concept to completion, designing educational strategies, and coaching individuals to success. Currently, enjoys blogging and solving customer issues