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The company should use infrastructure as code (IaC) to provision the new infrastructure in the DR Region. The company should create a cross-Region read replica for the DB instance. The company should set up AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to continuously replicate the EC2 instances to the DR Region. The company should run the EC2 instances at the minimum capacity in the DR Region. The company should use an Amazon Route 53 failover routing policy to automatically fail over to the DR Region in the event of a disaster. The company should increase the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group. This solution will meet the requirements most cost-effectively because AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) is a service that minimizes downtime and data loss with fast, reliable recovery of on-premises and cloud-based applications using affordable storage, minimal compute, and point-in-time recovery. AWS DRS enables RPOs of seconds and RTOs of minutes1. AWS DRS continuously replicates data from the source servers to a staging area subnet in the DR Region, where it uses low-cost storage and minimal compute resources to maintain ongoing replication. In the event of a disaster, AWS DRS automatically converts the servers to boot and run natively on AWS and launches recovery instances on AWS within minutes2. By using AWS DRS, the company can save costs by removing idle recovery site resources and paying for the full disaster recovery site only when needed. By creating a cross-Region read replica for the DB instance, the company can have a standby copy of its primary database in a different AWS Region3. By using infrastructure as code (IaC), the company can provision the new infrastructure in the DR Region in an automated and consistent way4. By using an Amazon Route 53 failover routing policy, the company can route traffic to a resource that is healthy or to another resource when the first resource becomes unavailable.

The other options are not correct because:

Using AWS Backup to create cross-Region backups for the EC2 instances and the DB instance would not meet the RPO and RTO requirements. AWS Backup is a service that enables you to centralize and automate data protection across AWS services. You can use AWS Backup to back up your application data across AWS services in your account and across accounts. However, AWS Backup does not provide continuous replication or fast recovery; it creates backups at scheduled intervalsand requires manual restoration. Creating backups every 30 seconds would also incur high costs and network bandwidth.

Creating an Amazon API Gateway Data API service integration with Amazon Redshift would not help with disaster recovery. The Data API is a feature that enables you to query your Amazon Redshift cluster using HTTP requests, without needing a persistent connection or a SQL client. It is useful for building applications that interact with Amazon Redshift, but not for replicating or recovering data.

Creating an AWS Data Exchange datashare by connecting AWS Data Exchange to the Redshift cluster would not help with disaster recovery. AWS Data Exchange is a service that makes it easy for AWS customers to exchange data in the cloud. You can use AWS Data Exchange to subscribe to a diverse selection of third-party data products or offer your own data products to other AWS customers. A datashare is a feature that enables you to share live and secure access to your Amazon Redshift data across your accounts or with third parties without copying or moving the underlying data. It is useful for sharing query results and views with other users, but not for replicating or recovering data.

The application is business-critical with an SLA requirement of 99.95% uptime and is currently limited by an on-premises data center. The architecture includes a PostgreSQL database and separate business logic and presentation layers. Remote users experience high latency when accessing the application, which is latency-sensitive.

To meet or exceed a 99.95% SLA for the database while minimizing operational burden, a managed database service with built-in high availability is preferred. Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-compatible editions provide high availability and durability by automatically replicating data across multiple Availability Zones in a Region. Aurora can offer higher availability and faster failover compared to self-managed databases on EC2, and offloads patching, backups, and maintenance.

For the application and presentation layers, running them on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer preserves the basic architecture (stateless application servers behind a load balancer) while moving to a managed, highly available environment that can scale out and in automatically based on demand. This results in minimal changes to the application components and provides improved resilience compared to on-premises VMs.

Remote users experience slow load times because their desktop clients connect over higher-latency networks to the on-premises servers. By using Amazon AppStream 2.0, the application can be streamed from AWS to end users. AppStream 2.0 runs the desktop application close to the backend database and application servers within AWS, and streams only the display and input over the network. This significantly reduces the effect of latency between the user and the application backend, improving user experience, especially for latency-sensitive desktop applications, without requiring major changes to the application itself.

Option A uses a PostgreSQL database on EC2, which requires the customer to manage availability, backups, patching, and failover. This does not provide the same managed high-availability guarantees as Aurora or RDS Multi-AZ. It also suggests allocating a full Amazon WorkSpaces desktop per user, which can be more expensive and more complex than streaming only the application via AppStream 2.0.

Option C uses Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ configuration, which provides high availability and is a valid managed option. However, it runs the application and presentation layers on Fargate containers behind a Network Load Balancer. NLB is typically used for TCP-level load balancing and is better suited for protocols that require low-level handling, whereas HTTP/HTTPS web applications are commonly placed behind an Application Load Balancer, which provides advanced HTTP routing features. Also, ElastiCache can reduce database load and improve response times but does not directly solve the end-user network latency issue in a desktop client scenario.

Option D is incorrect because Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse service, not an operational PostgreSQL-compatible database for transaction processing. It is not appropriate for hosting the application’s primary relational database. CloudFront accelerates delivery of static and cached web content, not interactive desktop client-server traffic.

Therefore, migrating the database to Aurora PostgreSQL, running the application and presentation layers on EC2 Auto Scaling behind an Application Load Balancer, and using Amazon AppStream 2.0 to deliver the application to remote users (option B) meets the availability requirements, improves user experience, requires relatively little change to the application architecture, and minimizes operational costs compared to more complex or less-managed alternatives.

This option allows the company to use a single VPC to host multiple test environments that are isolated from each other by using different subnets and security groups1. By including a transit gateway attachment and related routing configurations, the company can enable the test environmentsto communicate with the central server in the on-premises data center through a VPN connection2. By using AWS CloudFormation to deploy all test environments into the VPC, the company can automate the creation and deletion of test environments without any manual intervention3. This option also minimizes the operational overhead by reducing the number of VPCs, accounts, and resources that need to be managed.

Working with VPCs and subnets

Working with transit gateways

Working with AWS CloudFormation stacks

This solution will give the Lambda function access to the internet by routing its outbound traffic through the NAT gateway, which has a public Elastic IP address. This will allow the external provider to whitelist the single public IP address associated with the NAT gateway, and enable the application to access the new service

Deploying a NAT gateway and associating an Elastic IP address with it, and then configuring the VPC to use the NAT gateway, will give the application the ability to access the new service. This is because the NAT gateway will be the single public IP address that the external provider needs for the allow list. The NAT gateway will allow the application to access the service, while keeping the underlying Lambda functions private.

When configuring NAT gateways, you should ensure that the route table associated with the NAT gateway has a route to the internet gateway with a target of the internet gateway. Additionally, youshould ensure that the security group associated with the NAT gateway allows outbound traffic from the Lambda functions.

The best solution is to create an AWS WAF web ACL and configure a rule to block any requests that do not originate from the specified country. This will ensure that only users from the allowed country can access the application. AWS WAF also provides logging capabilities that can capture the access requests that have been blocked. This solution requires the least possible maintenance as it does not involve updating IP ranges or security group rules. References: [AWS WAF Developer Guide], [AWS Shield Developer Guide]

"Save your custom error pages in a location that is accessible to CloudFront. We recommend that you store them in an Amazon S3 bucket, and that you don’t store them in the same place as the rest of your website or application’s content. If you store the custom error pages on the same origin as your website or application, and the origin starts to return 5xx errors, CloudFront can’t get the custom error pages because the origin server is unavailable."https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/GeneratingCustomErrorResponses.html

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/implementing-canary-deployments-of-aws-lambda-functions-with-alias-traffic-shifting/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/configuration-aliases.html

(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/controltower/latest/userguide/strongly-recommended-guardrails.html)

This explanation is based on AWS documentation and best practices but is paraphrased, not a literal extract.

The company needs two things:

To serve static content from the AWS Region geographically closest to each customer.

To send data from on premises to Amazon S3 with minimal latency and without traversing the public internet, while keeping operational overhead low.

S3 Multi-Region Access Points provide a single global endpoint that fronts multiple S3 buckets in different Regions. Multi-Region Access Points use latency-based routing and failover capabilities to direct client requests automatically to the closest healthy Regional S3 bucket that is part of the Multi-Region Access Point. This directly addresses the requirement to serve content from the closest Region with high performance and reliability, and it avoids the need to build and maintain custom routing logic.

Behind the scenes, S3 Multi-Region Access Points rely on S3 Replication between the Regional buckets that participate in the Multi-Region Access Point. When you configure a Multi-Region Access Point, you set up the participating buckets and replication configuration once; AWS then manages routing and failover, reducing operational overhead compared to manually configuring and managing multiple S3 endpoints and application logic.

For the on-premises environment, the company wants to send data to S3 with minimal latency and without using the public internet. AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection from the on-premises network into AWS, avoiding the public internet and generally providing lower and more consistent latency. AWS PrivateLink allows private connectivity to supported AWS services (such as S3 Multi-Region Access Points via interface endpoints) from within a VPC using private IP addresses. When you combine Direct Connect with PrivateLink, traffic flows from on-premises over a private dedicated connection into a VPC and then privately to the Multi-Region Access Point through an interface VPC endpoint, satisfying the requirement for no public internet exposure.

Therefore, implementing S3 Multi-Region Access Points (option A) addresses the global content serving and Regional routing, and using AWS PrivateLink together with AWS Direct Connect (option E) provides low-latency, private network connectivity from on premises to the Multi-Region Access Point with minimal operational overhead.

Option B, S3 Cross-Region Replication alone, would replicate data across Regions but would not automatically route customers to the closest Region; application changes and manual routing would be required, increasing operational overhead.

Option C would require building and maintaining a custom Lambda-based routing system, which is unnecessary when S3 Multi-Region Access Points provide managed routing and failover.

Option D, AWS Site-to-Site VPN, encrypts traffic over the public internet; it does not satisfy the explicit requirement to avoid public internet exposure and typically has less predictable latency than Direct Connect.

The most effortless way to ensure that all new Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes are encrypted at rest is to enable EBS encryption by default in all AWS Regions. This setting automatically encrypts all new EBS volumes and snapshots created in the account, thereby ensuring compliance with encryption policies without the need for manual intervention or additional monitoring.

AWS Documentation on Amazon EBS encryption provides guidance on enabling EBS encryption by default. This approach aligns with AWS best practices for data protection and compliance, ensuring that all new EBS volumes adhere to encryption requirements with minimal operational effort.

The best solution for this problem is to update the visibility timeout for the SQS queue to 3 hours. This is because when the visibility timeout is set to 1 hour, it means that if the EC2 instance doesn't process the message within an hour, it will be moved to the dead-letter queue. By increasing the visibility timeout to 3 hours, this should give the EC2 instance enough time to process the message before it gets moved to the dead-letter queue. Additionally, configuring scale-in protection for the EC2 instances during processing will help to ensure that the instances are not terminated while the messages are being processed.

To meet the requirements for automatic key rotation of EC2 SSH key pairs with minimal downtime, storing the keys in AWS Secrets Manager and defining a rotation schedule is the most suitable solution. AWS Secrets Manager supports automatic rotation of secrets, including SSH keys, by invoking a Lambda function that can handle the creation of new key pairs and the replacement of public keys on EC2 instances. Updating the corresponding private keys in Secrets Manager ensures secure and centralized management of SSH keys, complying with the key rotation policy and minimizing operational overhead.

AWS Secrets Manager Documentation: Describes how to store and rotate secrets, including SSH keys, using Secrets Manager and Lambda functions.

AWS Lambda Documentation: Provides information on creating Lambda functions for custom secret rotation logic.

AWS Best Practices for Security: Highlights the importance of key rotation and how AWS services like Secrets Manager can facilitate secure and automated key management.

To improveresiliency and fault tolerance, place aNAT Gateway in each AZ, and route each private subnet to its local NAT gateway. This ensures local AZ failure won't break internet access.

VPC NAT Gateway High Availability

The correct answer is B. This option uses IAM Identity Center to create permission sets that map to the existing IAM roles in each account. This way, the company can leverage the existing policies and roles that are already configured for the expected activities of each group of users in each account. The company also needs to create a customer managed policy that allows the group to assume the roles and attach it to thepermission set. This policy grants the necessary permissions for IAM Identity Center to assume the roles on behalf of the users. Finally, the company can assign user access to the AWS accounts in IAM Identity Center, which will automatically create IAM users and groups in each account based on the permission sets.

Option A is incorrect because it requires creating new policies in each account and giving them the same name. This is not necessary and adds complexity and overhead. The company can use the existing IAM roles and policies that are already configured for each account.

Option C is incorrect because it requires creating new policies in each account and giving them unique names. This is also not necessary and adds complexity and overhead. The company can use the existing IAM roles and policies that are already configured for each account.

Option D is incorrect because it requires adding the OU to the accounts configuration in IAM Identity Center. This is not supported by IAM Identity Center, which only allows adding individual accounts or all accounts in an organization.