WGU Updated Cloud-Deployment-and-Operations Exam Questions and Answers by catherine

To receive emails when a Lambda function returns an error, the administrator should use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the function’s logs and metrics (e.g., errors) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) to send email notifications based on CloudWatch alarms. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.3, CloudWatch and SNS) states, "CloudWatch can detect Lambda errors via logs and trigger an alarm, which integrates with SNS to send email notifications to subscribed endpoints, ensuring timely error alerts." SQS and CloudTrail are not designed for this notification workflow.

Amazon CloudWatch alarms can trigger notifications when a metric breaches a defined threshold. The AWS solution designed to send emails based on these alarms is Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). SNS supports sending notifications via email, SMS, and other protocols when subscribed endpoints are triggered by CloudWatch alarms. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 4.3, Monitoring and Alarms) states that SNS is the primary service for delivering notifications from CloudWatch, allowing users to configure emailsubscriptions for alarm states. Other options like SQS, Amplify, and Kinesis are not designed for this purpose.

Amazon Route 53 is the AWS solution that sends DNS queries to separate AWS compute instances by leveraging routing policies to distribute traffic across multiple resources. It acts as a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service, directing queries to healthy instances based on configurations like latency or weighted routing. The WGU Cloud Deployment and Operations Study Guide (Section 3.1, Route 53) states, "Route 53 uses DNS to route end-user requests to multiple AWS compute instances, supporting features like health checks and traffic distribution." Elastic Beanstalk, CloudWatch, and EC2 Auto Scaling do not perform DNS query routing.

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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.