💿 Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) - SOA-C03 Practice Questions

SOA-C03 EBS Question Bank (28 Questions)

Browse all 28 practice questions covering Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) for the SOA-C03 certification exam. Answers are intentionally hidden on this page so you can self-test first before checking results in quiz mode.

1. Question 1Cost & Performance Optimization

   A company runs 50 gp2 EBS volumes, each provisioned at 100 GiB. The team wants to improve I/O performance and reduce costs where possible. The volumes currently use approximately 500 IOPS and 200 MiB/s throughput each. Which recommendation should the administrator make?

   AConvert all volumes to io2 Block Express for maximum performance

   BMigrate volumes from gp2 to gp3, then configure the baseline 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s throughput, scaling up only volumes that need more

   CIncrease the gp2 volume size to 500 GiB each to get higher baseline IOPS

   DUse instance store volumes instead of EBS for higher throughput

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2. Question 2Cost & Performance Optimization

   A SysOps administrator needs to select the most cost-effective EBS volume type for a throughput-intensive big data analytics workload that involves sequential reads of large files. The workload does not require high IOPS but needs sustained throughput of 500 MB/s. Which EBS volume type should the administrator choose?

   AThroughput Optimized HDD (st1), which is designed for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads and supports up to 500 MB/s throughput.

   BGeneral Purpose SSD (gp3) with provisioned throughput increased to 500 MB/s.

   CProvisioned IOPS SSD (io2) with enough IOPS provisioned to support the required throughput.

   DCold HDD (sc1), which provides the lowest-cost storage for infrequently accessed data.

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3. Question 3Select All That ApplyCost & Performance Optimization

   A company runs data-intensive analytics workloads on EC2 instances using EBS volumes. The team experiences two types of bottlenecks: some workloads are limited by random read/write operations (IOPS), while others are limited by sequential large-block data transfer speed (throughput). Which approach should the SysOps Administrator take to optimize EBS volume selection? (Select TWO.)

   AFor IOPS-intensive workloads (e.g., transactional databases), select io2 Block Express volumes which support up to 256,000 IOPS per volume.

   BFor throughput-intensive workloads (e.g., big data analytics with large sequential reads), select st1 (Throughput Optimized HDD) volumes which provide up to 500 MiB/s throughput at lower cost.

   CUse gp2 volumes for all workloads and rely on burst credits to handle peak IOPS.

   DIncrease the EC2 instance type rather than changing the volume type, as EBS performance is entirely determined by the instance.

   EUse EBS Multi-Attach with io2 volumes for all workloads to double the available IOPS.

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4. Question 4Cost & Performance Optimization

   A company runs a large I/O-intensive PostgreSQL database on an EC2 instance using a 2 TB gp2 EBS volume. The database team reports inconsistent read latency during peak hours. The current volume provides a baseline of 6,000 IOPS. Which change would provide the MOST cost-effective performance improvement?

   AMigrate from gp2 to gp3 and configure 10,000 IOPS and 400 MB/s throughput, since gp3 allows independent IOPS provisioning at lower cost than gp2

   BMigrate to an io2 Block Express volume with 16,000 IOPS provisioned

   CAdd a second gp2 volume and configure RAID 0 for increased IOPS

   DIncrease the gp2 volume size to 4 TB to double the baseline IOPS to 12,000

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5. Question 5Cost and Performance Optimization

   A SysOps administrator notices EBS gp2 volumes at high IOPS utilization. They want to reduce costs while maintaining performance. Which upgrade improves performance and reduces cost per IOPS?

   AUpgrade to gp3 — independently configurable IOPS (up to 16,000) and throughput at lower cost per IOPS than gp2

   BUpgrade to io1 for dedicated IOPS

   CIncrease the gp2 volume size to get more baseline IOPS

   DSwitch to st1 (throughput optimized HDD)

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6. Question 6Reliability & Business Continuity

   A company frequently creates EBS snapshots for disaster recovery. When they restore a snapshot to a new volume and immediately start a database, the initial read performance is significantly degraded for the first several minutes. Which EBS feature eliminates this initial performance penalty?

   AEnable EBS Multi-Attach on the volume to distribute the I/O load.

   BEnable EBS Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) on the snapshot in the target Availability Zone.

   CChange the EBS volume type from gp3 to io2 for higher baseline IOPS.

   DPre-warm the volume by reading all blocks using `dd` or `fio` after the restore.

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7. Question 7Reliability & Business Continuity

   A SysOps administrator needs to create automated backups for Amazon EBS volumes attached to production EC2 instances. The backups must be retained for 30 days and older snapshots must be automatically deleted. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

   ACreate a Lambda function triggered by CloudWatch Events to create snapshots daily and delete snapshots older than 30 days

   BUse Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) to create a lifecycle policy with a 30-day retention rule

   CUse AWS Backup to create a backup plan with a 30-day retention period

   DWrite a script using the AWS CLI that runs as a cron job on an EC2 instance

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8. Question 8Reliability & Business Continuity

   A company requires that all EBS volumes attached to production EC2 instances have a snapshot taken immediately before any instance termination. What is the BEST way to automate this?

   ACreate an EventBridge rule matching EC2 instance state-change events to "shutting-down" state and trigger a Lambda function that creates EBS snapshots

   BCreate an ASG lifecycle hook for instance termination that triggers a Lambda function via EventBridge to snapshot all attached EBS volumes before completing the lifecycle action

   CEnable DLM with a 1-hour snapshot schedule to ensure recent snapshots always exist

   DConfigure the instances with a shutdown script that calls the AWS CLI to create EBS snapshots

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9. Question 9Cost & Performance Optimization

   A company needs an EBS volume that delivers consistent sub-millisecond latency and up to 256,000 IOPS for a high-performance database running on an `r6i.metal` instance. Which EBS volume type meets these performance requirements?

   A`io2 Block Express`, which supports up to 256,000 IOPS, 4,000 MB/s throughput, and sub-millisecond latency on supported Nitro-based instances.

   B`io1` with provisioned IOPS up to 64,000.

   C`gp3` with provisioned IOPS up to 16,000.

   D`st1` optimized for high-throughput sequential workloads.

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10. Question 10Reliability & Business Continuity

    A company requires that all EBS volumes are backed up daily with a retention period of 30 days. The SysOps administrator wants an automated solution that works across multiple accounts and regions with minimal management overhead. Which solution best meets these requirements?

    ACreate an AWS Backup plan with a daily backup rule and 30-day retention, and use AWS Organizations integration to apply it across all accounts.

    BWrite a Lambda function triggered by a daily CloudWatch Events rule to create EBS snapshots and delete snapshots older than 30 days.

    CUse Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) policies in each account configured with a 24-hour schedule and 30-day retention.

    DCreate a CloudFormation StackSet that deploys snapshot automation Lambda functions to every account and region.

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11. Question 11Deployment, Provisioning & Automation

    A company uses AWS Service Catalog to provide approved products to development teams. A new compliance requirement mandates that all launched EC2 instances must use encrypted EBS volumes. How should the SysOps Administrator enforce this through Service Catalog?

    AAdd a launch constraint to the Service Catalog product that uses an IAM role with permission to create only encrypted volumes.

    BUpdate the CloudFormation template in the Service Catalog product to specify `Encrypted: true` on all EBS volume resources and add a template constraint that prevents users from changing it.

    CCreate an SCP that denies `ec2:CreateVolume` if the encryption flag is not set to true.

    DUse AWS Config rules to detect unencrypted volumes after launch and terminate non-compliant instances.

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12. Question 12Monitoring, Logging & Remediation

    A SysOps Administrator configures a CloudWatch alarm to automatically recover an EC2 instance when the `StatusCheckFailed_System` metric triggers. The instance is backed by an EBS volume. After a system status check failure, the alarm transitions to ALARM but the instance does not recover. What is the MOST LIKELY reason?

    AThe alarm action was set to `Stop` instead of `Recover`.

    BThe instance uses instance-store volumes, and the recover action only works with EBS-backed instances.

    CThe IAM role attached to the instance does not include the `ec2:RecoverInstances` permission.

    DThe alarm evaluation period is too long and the instance auto-healed before the action executed.

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13. Question 13Reliability & Business Continuity

    A company needs to attach a single Amazon EBS volume to multiple EC2 instances simultaneously in the same Availability Zone so that a clustered application can perform concurrent read/write operations. Which EBS configuration supports this?

    ACreate a `gp3` volume and attach it to multiple instances using the `--multi-attach` flag.

    BCreate an `io2` volume with Multi-Attach enabled and attach it to up to 16 Nitro-based instances in the same AZ.

    CCreate an EFS file system instead, as EBS does not support multi-attach.

    DCreate an `io1` volume and use NFS sharing from one instance to the others.

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14. Question 14Reliability & Business Continuity

    A company needs to implement a disaster recovery strategy for EBS volumes in us-east-1 with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 1 hour in eu-west-1. The solution should be automated and require minimal operational effort. Which approach meets these requirements?

    ACreate EBS snapshots every hour using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) and configure a cross-region copy rule to eu-west-1 in the same DLM policy.

    BUse AWS Backup with a backup plan that takes hourly EBS snapshots and a copy rule that replicates them to eu-west-1.

    CCreate a Lambda function on an hourly EventBridge schedule that calls `CreateSnapshot` and `CopySnapshot` with the destination region parameter.

    DEnable EBS replication to eu-west-1 using EBS Multi-Region replication.

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15. Question 15Reliability & Business Continuity

    A company with multiple accounts in an AWS Organization wants to enforce a consistent backup policy for all RDS databases and EBS volumes across every account. The backup policy should be managed centrally and automatically applied without manual configuration in each account. Which solution achieves this?

    ACreate an AWS Backup policy in the AWS Organizations management account and attach it to the organization root or specific OUs; AWS Backup automatically applies the policy to all member accounts.

    BCreate an AWS Backup plan in each account using a CloudFormation StackSet.

    CCreate an SCP that requires all RDS and EBS resources to have a `backup:enabled` tag, and then use AWS Backup in each account to back up tagged resources.

    DUse AWS Config organization rules to detect unprotected resources and trigger remediation with AWS Backup.

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16. Question 16Deployment, Provisioning & Automation

    A SysOps Administrator needs to orchestrate a multi-step workflow: first create an EBS snapshot, then wait for the snapshot to complete, then copy it to another region, then notify the team. If any step fails, a different notification should be sent. Which AWS service is BEST suited for orchestrating this workflow?

    AAn EventBridge rule chain where each step triggers the next rule.

    BAWS Step Functions with a state machine that includes Task states for each API call, a Wait state, and Catch/Retry error handling.

    CA single Lambda function that performs all steps sequentially with try/catch blocks.

    DAn SSM Automation document with sequential steps.

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17. Question 17Security & Compliance

    A company requires that all data stored in Amazon EBS volumes be encrypted. The SysOps administrator needs to enforce this policy across the entire AWS account. Which approach is the MOST effective?

    AEnable EBS encryption by default for the AWS account in each region

    BCreate an IAM policy that denies `ec2:CreateVolume` unless the `encrypted` condition is true

    CUse AWS Config with the `encrypted-volumes` managed rule to detect non-compliant volumes

    DCreate an SCP that denies creation of unencrypted EBS volumes

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18. Question 18Reliability & Business Continuity

    An administrator manages EBS snapshot lifecycle using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM). The current policy retains snapshots for 30 days. The compliance team now requires that monthly snapshots be retained for 1 year while daily snapshots continue to be retained for 30 days. How should the administrator configure this?

    ACreate two separate DLM policies: one with a daily schedule and 30-day retention, and another with a monthly schedule and 365-day retention

    BModify the existing DLM policy to add a cross-region copy rule with extended retention

    CAdd a schedule to the existing DLM policy with a monthly frequency and a retention count that covers 12 months, keeping the daily schedule unchanged

    DUse AWS Backup with a backup plan that has two rules: daily with 30-day retention and monthly with 1-year retention

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19. Question 19Security & Compliance

    An administrator needs to implement automatic KMS key rotation for a customer-managed symmetric KMS key used to encrypt EBS volumes. Which statement about KMS automatic key rotation is correct?

    AWhen automatic rotation is enabled, KMS generates new key material annually by default, but old key material is retained indefinitely to decrypt previously encrypted data

    BKMS automatic rotation changes the key ID and ARN after each rotation, requiring updates to all resource policies

    CKMS automatic rotation is only supported for asymmetric keys

    DAutomatic rotation immediately re-encrypts all existing EBS volumes with the new key material

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20. Question 20Reliability & Business Continuity

    A SysOps administrator configured AWS Backup to protect production RDS instances and EBS volumes. The compliance team requires that backups in the vault cannot be deleted by anyone — including administrators — for a minimum retention period of 365 days. How should the administrator configure this?

    ACreate a vault access policy that denies the `backup:DeleteRecoveryPoint` action for all principals

    BEnable AWS Backup vault lock in compliance mode with a minimum retention period of 365 days; once the lock cooling-off period expires, the vault lock becomes immutable

    CEnable S3 Object Lock on the underlying S3 bucket where AWS Backup stores recovery points

    DConfigure IAM policies that deny all `backup:Delete*` actions and attach them to every IAM role and user in the account

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21. Question 21Security & Compliance

    A company deployed AWS Config rules to ensure that all EBS volumes are encrypted. A Config rule reports several volumes as non-compliant. The administrator wants to automatically remediate non-compliant volumes. What should the administrator configure?

    AConfigure the Config rule with an automatic remediation action using an SSM Automation document that snapshots the unencrypted volume, creates an encrypted copy, and replaces the original

    BCreate an EventBridge rule that triggers when Config detects non-compliant EBS volumes and invokes an SSM Run Command document to encrypt them in-place

    CEnable EBS default encryption for the Region, which automatically encrypts all existing non-compliant volumes

    DUse AWS Backup to create encrypted snapshots of non-compliant volumes on a schedule

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22. Question 22Security & Compliance

    A company requires that all EBS volumes must be encrypted. The security team wants to implement a preventive control that automatically blocks the creation of unencrypted EBS volumes. Which solution is a preventive control?

    AAn AWS Config rule that evaluates EBS volume encryption and flags non-compliant volumes

    BA CloudWatch Events rule that triggers a Lambda function to encrypt unencrypted volumes after creation

    CAn SCP that denies `ec2:CreateVolume` when `ec2:Encrypted` is not `true`

    DAn Amazon GuardDuty finding for unencrypted EBS volumes

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23. Question 23Reliability and Business Continuity

    A SysOps administrator is configuring automated EBS snapshot policies. Which service provides policy-based snapshot scheduling with retention management?

    AAWS Backup

    BAmazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM)

    CCloudWatch Events + Lambda

    DBoth A and B

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24. Question 24Security and Compliance

    A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that EBS volumes are encrypted for all new EC2 instances launched in an account. Which setting enforces this?

    AIAM policy denying ec2:RunInstances without encryption

    BEnable EBS encryption by default at the account/region level

    CUse AWS Config to detect and auto-remediate unencrypted volumes

    DCreate a launch template with encrypted volumes

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25. Question 25Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation

    A SysOps administrator wants to monitor the bytes read/written per second for EBS volumes. Which CloudWatch metrics are used?

    AEBS VolumeReadOps and VolumeWriteOps

    BEBS VolumeReadBytes and VolumeWriteBytes

    CEBS BurstBalance

    DEBS Throughput

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26. Question 26Reliability and Business Continuity

    A SysOps administrator wants to implement a backup strategy where EBS snapshots are stored in a different AWS region automatically. Which service provides this?

    AEBS snapshot console — manual copy to another region

    BAmazon DLM with cross-region copy rules

    CAWS Backup with cross-region copy in the backup plan

    DBoth B and C

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27. Question 27Security and Compliance

    A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all EC2 instances use an encrypted EBS volume and cannot have unencrypted volumes attached after launch. Which control prevents attaching unencrypted volumes?

    AEnable EBS encryption by default at the account level

    BIAM policy denying ec2:AttachVolume for unencrypted volumes

    CAWS Config rule ec2-encrypted-volumes with auto-remediation

    DBoth A and B

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28. Question 28Security and Compliance

    A SysOps administrator uses KMS for EBS volume encryption. What happens to data in an encrypted EBS volume if the KMS key is deleted?

    AThe data becomes permanently inaccessible once the key is deleted

    BEBS automatically creates a new key for decryption

    CThe data is automatically decrypted and stored unencrypted

    DAWS recovers the key from a backup

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