Pearson SOA-C02 New Attempt

To efficiently monitor and identify noncompliant resources in terms of tagging within AWS, using AWS Config with a managed rule for required tagging is most appropriate:

AWS Config Setup: Configure AWS Config to monitor and record configurations of AWS resources within your environment.

Managed Rule for Required Tags: Utilize the "required-tags" managed rule in AWS Config, which checks whether your resources have the specific tags you define as mandatory. This rule can be customized to specify which tags are required and can automatically evaluate all existing and new resources in your environment.

Compliance Reporting: AWS Config provides detailed compliance reporting that helps you identify resources that do not meet the tagging requirements, facilitating easy remediation.

This approach leverages AWS Config’s capabilities for continuous monitoring and evaluation without needing to write custom code or manage additional services, providing an operationally efficient solution for compliance management.

To minimize cost while maintaining immediate retrievability for files stored in Amazon S3, you can use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition objects to different storage classes based on their access patterns. Given that files are frequently accessed in the first 30 days and rarely accessed afterward, transitioning to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days is the most cost-effective solution.

Understand S3 Storage Classes:

S3 Standard: Suitable for frequently accessed data.

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA): Suitable for data that is less frequently accessed but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower storage costs compared to S3 Standard but has a retrieval fee.

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA): Similar to S3 Standard-IA but stores data in a single Availability Zone, making it less resilient.

S3 Glacier: Suitable for archival storage where data retrieval time is not critical (minutes to hours).

Requirements and Solution:

Access Pattern: Frequent access in the first 30 days, rare access afterward.

Retrievability: Immediate access required for one year.

Cost Efficiency: Minimize storage costs after the first 30 days.

Implementing Lifecycle Policy:

Lifecycle Policy: Configure a lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.

Step-by-Step Implementation:

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to the Bucket:

Select the bucket where the files are stored.

Configure Lifecycle Policy:

Go to the Management tab.

Choose Lifecycle and then + Add lifecycle rule.

Enter a rule name and scope (e.g., apply to all objects in the bucket or specific prefixes).

Under Lifecycle rule actions, choose Transition current versions of objects between storage classes.

Add a transition:

Days after object creation: 30

Storage class: S3 Standard-IA

Optionally, add expiration actions if objects should be deleted after a certain period.

Review and Save:

Review the configuration and save the lifecycle rule.

References:

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

Lifecycle Configuration Elements

Transitioning Objects Using Amazon S3 Lifecycle

Encrypt the snapshot copies by using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS). This solution will allow the company to automatically create encrypted snapshots of the EBS volumes and copy them to different AWS Regions with minimal effort.

To ensure high availability and failover for RDS, converting the instance to a Multi-AZ deployment is the best practice. Multi-AZ configurations provide automated standby in a different Availability Zone, automatically failing over to the standby in case of instance or Availability Zone issues.

Modify DB instance: AWS allows for seamless conversion of an existing Single-AZ RDS instance to a Multi-AZ deployment, making it more resilient to outages without requiring significant application changes.

Failover mechanism: In Multi-AZ, failover is managed automatically by AWS, minimizing application downtime.