Configuration management services and strategies

Question 1: Describe what AWS services you would utilize for Configuration Management and how they work together.

AWS provides services like AWS Systems Manager, AWS Config, and AWS OpsWorks for configuration management. AWS Systems Manager allows you to view and control your infrastructure on AWS. It lets you automate the process of patching, configuring, and running commands at scale across your instances. AWS Config provides a detailed view of the configuration of AWS resources in your account and continuously monitors and records configuration changes. Finally, AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that uses Chef or Puppet to automate how servers are configured, deployed, and managed across your EC2 instances or on-premises servers.

Question 2: How does AWS Config help in maintaining compliance with company policies?

AWS Config helps maintain compliance by continuously monitoring and recording your AWS resource configurations and allowing you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With AWS Config Rules, you can assess whether your resource configurations comply with internal practices, industry guidelines, and regulatory requirements. This automated compliance checking simplifies compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting.

Question 3: Can you explain the concept of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and which AWS service can be used for it?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. AWS provides AWS CloudFormation as its primary IaC service, allowing you to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources by writing templates as code.

Question 4: What strategy would you apply to manage and cycle secrets and sensitive configuration throughout the lifecycle of applications?

To manage and cycle secrets and sensitive configuration, you can use AWS Secrets Manager, which helps to securely encrypt, store, and retrieve credentials for your databases and other services. Also, AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store provides secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets management. You can store data such as passwords, database strings, and license codes as parameter values. For cycling secrets, AWS Secrets Manager has built-in support for rotating credentials safely and securely without user intervention.

Question 5: Describe how you would handle configuration drift in your managed instances?

Configuration drift occurs when the actual configuration of an environment deviates from the expected or baseline configuration. To handle configuration drift, you can use AWS Config to continuously monitor for it and respond when it’s detected. Additionally, by implementing AWS Systems Manager State Manager, you can ensure that your instances maintain a defined configuration state, which can prevent or remediate configuration drift.

Question 6: What are AWS OpsWorks Stacks, and how would they be utilized in configuration management?

AWS OpsWorks Stacks is a service that provides a simple and flexible way to create and manage stacks and applications with Chef. You can define the application’s architecture and the specifications of each component including package installation, software configuration, and resources such as storage. In configuration management, OpsWorks Stacks can be utilized for managing both the ongoing operations of coordinated stacks and ensuring the deployed environments adhere to defined configurations.

Question 7: Explain how AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate integrates with AWS services to automate configuration management.

AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate integrates with various AWS services to automate configuration management by providing a Chef server that works with Chef cookbooks and recipes. It integrates with services like Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS to easily provision and configure instances and databases. It can also use Amazon S3 for storing cookbooks and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for managing permissions. The seamless integration of OpsWorks with AWS services simplifies infrastructure management, deployment, and scaling.

Question 8: How would you implement a change management process using AWS tools to ensure minimal disruption and maximum transparency throughout changes?

To implement a change management process using AWS tools, AWS Systems Manager can be employed to automate operational tasks, thus ensuring a consistent process for change management. Its capabilities such as Change Calendar and Maintenance Windows help minimize disruption during changes by scheduling tasks for specific time frames. AWS Config and AWS CloudTrail provide transparency into changes by tracking and logging configuration changes and API calls respectively. Additionally, integration with AWS CloudFormation allows for controlled and automated change deployments.

Question 9: How does AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store provide a centralized solution to manage your configuration data?

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store provides a centralized store to manage configuration data, which may include plain-text data, such as database strings, or secrets, such as passwords. This service provides secure, hierarchical storage with the capabilities to store values as plaintext or encrypted data under different IAM roles and policies, supporting fine-grained access control. Furthermore, it integrates with other AWS services for secure and automatic access to parameters without hardcoding sensitive information.

Question 10: How can using AWS CloudFormation help in the repeatable deployment of networks and systems within the AWS cloud?

AWS CloudFormation helps in the repeatable deployment of networks and systems within the AWS cloud by using templates to define the resources and configurations in a declarative manner. Users can version these templates, and the infrastructure defined within can be repeatedly deployed across different environments, ensuring consistency and saving time. CloudFormation manages dependency order, resource provisioning, and can rollback changes if errors occur, making it a reliable tool for deploying and updating resources within AWS.

Remember, these questions and answers provide just a broad overview; detailed knowledge is essential for passing the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02) exam.