Amazon Web Services DOP-C02 - AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

The core problem described is deployment inconsistency and lack of reliability caused by using AWS Systems Manager Run Command for application deployment. Run Command executes ad hoc commands and does not provide deployment orchestration, version tracking, lifecycle hooks, or health-based traffic control, which commonly leads to drift between EC2 instances.

The most reliable AWS-native solution is to adopt AWS CodePipeline combined with AWS CodeDeploy . Option B introduces a structured CI/CD pipeline with a clear build stage followed by a test stage , ensuring that only tested artifacts progress to deployment. Sequential build and test stages are preferred for reliability and deterministic behavior, especially when test results must gate deployments.

Option C is essential because AWS CodeDeploy is the service specifically designed to deploy application revisions consistently across EC2 fleets. By creating a CodeDeploy application and deployment group and integrating it with the ALB, deployments gain support for lifecycle events, health checks, instance synchronization, and automatic rollback. This ensures that all EC2 instances receive the same application version and that traffic is managed safely during deployments.

Option A introduces unnecessary parallelism that does not address the core issue. Option D adds excessive complexity with Lambda orchestration. Option E incorrectly replaces CodeArtifact with S3 without addressing deployment reliability.

Therefore, combining CodePipeline (B) with CodeDeploy and ALB integration (C) provides consistent, repeatable, and reliable deployments aligned with AWS best practices.

Amazon EC2 Image Builder is a service that automates the creation, management, and deployment of customized, secure, and up-to-date server images that are pre-installed with software and configuration settings tailored to meet specific IT standards. EC2 Image Builder simplifies the creation and maintenance of golden images, and makes it easy to generate images for multiple platforms, such as Amazon EC2 and on-premises. EC2 Image Builder also integrates with AWS Resource Access Manager, which allows you to share your images across accounts within your organization or with external AWS accounts. This solution meets the requirements of automating the tasks of updating the Linux AMIs, installing the Chef agent, and providing the images to the department’s accounts with the least management overhead. References:

Amazon EC2 Image Builder

Sharing EC2 Image Builder images

ECS container instances must have an IAM role that trusts ECS (the ecs-tasks.amazonaws.com principal) to assume permissions for CloudWatch logging. Without this trust relationship, ECS cannot push logs even if the permissions are present.

The correct answer is B. Creating a new AWS CodeBuild project and configuring a test stage in the AWS CodePipeline pipeline that uses the new CodeBuild project is the best way to integrate the unit tests into the existing pipeline. Creating a CodeBuild report group and uploading the test reports to the new CodeBuild report group will produce reports about the unit tests for the company to view. Using JUNITXML as the output format for the unit tests is supported by CodeBuild and will generate a valid report.

Option A is incorrect because Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer is a service that provides automated code reviews and recommendations for improving code quality and performance. It is not a tool for running unit tests or producing test reports. Therefore, option A will not meet the requirements.

Option C is incorrect because AWS CodeArtifact is a service that provides secure, scalable, and cost-effective artifact management for software development. It is not a tool for running unit tests or producing test reports. Moreover, option C uses CUCUMBERJSON as the output format for the unit tests, which is not supported by CodeBuild and will not generate a valid report.

Option D is incorrect because uploading the test reports to an Amazon S3 bucket is not the best way to produce reports about the unit tests for the company to view. CodeBuild has a built-in feature to create and manage test reports, which is more convenient and efficient than using S3. Furthermore, option D uses HTML as the output format for the unit tests, which is not supported by CodeBuild and will not generate a valid report.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/streams/latest/dev/monitoring-with-cloudwatch.html

GetRecords.IteratorAgeMilliseconds - The age of the last record in all GetRecords calls made against a Kinesis stream, measured over the specified time period. Age is the difference between the current time and when the last record of the GetRecords call was written to the stream. The Minimum and Maximum statistics can be used to track the progress of Kinesis consumer applications. A value of zero indicates that the records being read are completely caught up.

 To optimize the Macie costs for the account without compromising the account’s functionality, the DevOps engineer needs to exclude S3 buckets that do not contain sensitive data from automated discovery. S3 buckets that contain CloudTrail logs are unlikely to have sensitive data, and Macie charges for scanning and monitoring data in S3 buckets. Therefore, excluding S3 buckets that contain CloudTrail logs from automated discovery can reduce Macie costs. Similarly, configuring discovery jobs to include S3 objects based on the last modified criterion can also reduce Macie costs, as it will only scan and monitor new or updated objects, rather than all objects in the bucket.

Amazon GuardDuty provides built-in, fully managed threat detection for AWS accounts and workloads, including automatic detection of cryptocurrency mining activity, compromised EC2 instances, command-and-control traffic patterns, and anomalous behaviors. GuardDuty includes multiple threat identifiers such as EC2:CryptoCurrencyActivity.BitcoinToolDetected and EC2:UnauthorizedAccess.CryptoMining. Because this capability is native and requires no custom detection logic, it provides the lowest development and operational overhead compared to alternatives.

When GuardDuty generates a finding, it publishes the event automatically to Amazon EventBridge. The DevOps engineer can create an EventBridge rule that matches the specific mining-related finding types. The target of the rule is an AWS Lambda function that parses instance details from the finding and calls TerminateInstances on the affected EC2 instance.

This enables real-time automated remediation without needing recurring scans, log parsing, or complex data queries.

Options A and B require building custom detection pipelines and maintaining periodic Lambda polling, increasing long-term complexity. Option D (Security Hub) aggregates findings but still relies on GuardDuty for detection, adding unnecessary overhead.

Therefore, GuardDuty + EventBridge + Lambda termination is the easiest, quickest, and most AWS-recommended solution following incident-response best practices.

Step 1: Using AWS CloudFormation with ECS Blue/Green Deployments

The requirement is to implement an ECS blue/green deployment where traffic is shifted gradually. AWS CodeDeploy supports such blue/green deployments with predefined configurations, like ECSLinear10PercentEvery1Minute, which shifts 10% of traffic every minute.

Action: Use the AWS::CodeDeployBlueGreen transform and the appropriate hooks in the CloudFormation template. The ECSLinear10PercentEvery1Minute deployment configuration meets the requirement of shifting 10% of traffic every minute.

Why: The transform and hook parameters in CloudFormation are essential for configuring the blue/green deployment with the desired traffic-shifting behavior.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/reference-appspec-file-structure-hooks.html#appspec-hooks-lambda