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Module Quiz

Complete this quiz after finishing all concept and practice pages. Save your answers before opening separate quiz calibration. Work closed-book; then review your answers against the explanations.

Current Module Questions​

Question 1: Shared Responsibility for RDS​

A developer says "we use RDS, so backups and patching are handled." Which parts of that are true, which need qualification, and which are still the customer's job?

Question 2: Regions and AZs​

An RDS instance is set to "Multi-AZ." Does that protect you from the loss of the us-east-1 region?

Question 3: Scenario - Compute Choice​

You need to transcode video clips. Each job takes 2-20 minutes and requires up to 8 GB of memory. Traffic is steady at 60 jobs/hour. Which service would you choose and why? Which would you reject and why?

Question 4: Subnet Classification​

What single configuration decides whether a subnet is public or private?

Question 5: NAT Gateway Placement​

Why is "one NAT Gateway in one AZ" an antipattern for a production VPC?

Question 6: L4 vs L7​

You need to route traffic based on URL path (/v1/* vs /v2/*) to different target groups. Can you do this with an NLB? With an ALB?

Question 7: Scenario - Storage​

Your application generates a 200 GB daily log file that your on-call team occasionally greps through. Which storage class in S3 makes sense, and why?

Question 8: Cold Starts​

Why does a Lambda function attached to a VPC have worse cold starts than one that is not, and what would you do about it?

Question 9: IAM Policy Shape​

What are the five elements of an IAM statement, and which one is only present in resource-based policies and cross-account trust policies?

Question 10: Roles vs Users​

Why is an EC2 instance with an IAM role preferred over one with an IAM user's access keys?

Question 11: Scenario - Data Egress​

A team adds a "sync to DR region" feature that replicates 5 TB/day from us-east-1 to eu-west-1. What cost line items appear, and roughly how big are they monthly?

Question 12: Scenario - Landing Zone​

A new team of 4 engineers joins your organization. Which accounts do they receive, and what IAM access?

Question 13: SCP vs IAM​

A developer asks: "If I delete all SCPs, but keep IAM policies the same, what changes?" Answer in plain language.

Question 14: Tagging​

Why is it dangerous to leave tagging as a "best effort" practice across your accounts?

Question 15: Scenario - "Our Bill Doubled"​

Your monthly bill jumped from $6k to $12k last month. Name three places you would look first and why.

Interleaved Review Questions​

Prior Module Question 1 (from S8)​

What is the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling, and which does an ASG across multiple AZs provide?

Prior Module Question 2 (from S6 - replication)​

How does RDS Multi-AZ relate to the concept of synchronous replication you studied in S6?

Prior Module Question 3 (from S7 - architecture)​

Which architectural principle from S7 is most directly violated by a workload that uses a shared "everything" cloud account?

Prior Module Question 4 (from S8 - scale and reliability)​

An S8 service-level objective of 99.9% availability. How does availability-zone design relate to meeting that SLO?

Prior Module Question 5 (from S7 - API design)​

You are designing a new internal API between two services in different accounts. Which cloud primitives from this module support the integration, and which architectural decision from S7 determines the contract?

Self-Assessment and Remediation​

Scoring and Advancement Criteria​

Mastery Level (90-100% correct):

  • Retrieval is strong; complete all module and semester evidence gates before advancing.
  • Action: proceed; revisit any single missed concept.

Proficient Level (75-89% correct):

  • Status: Good grasp with targeted gaps.
  • Action: re-read the concept pages tied to your incorrect answers and redo the matching kata.

Developing Level (60-74% correct):

  • Status: Foundation present but insufficient.
  • Action: rework Practice 1 (networking) and Practice 3 (IAM); redo the katas; re-take the quiz.

Insufficient Level (<60% correct):

  • Status: Do not advance.
  • Action: redo the module end-to-end. Focus on Clusters 1, 3, and 5; these are prerequisites for almost everything in S9.

Remediation Resources by Score Range​

75-89% range:

  • Review the concept pages corresponding to your missed questions.
  • Redo the matching kata once from scratch.

60-74% range:

  • Rework Practice 1 and Practice 3 from memory.
  • Re-read Clusters 1, 3, and 5.
  • Write a one-page summary of the shared-responsibility model and the IAM policy structure.

<60% range:

  • Restart the module from Cluster 1.
  • Pair with the official docs linked under See also for every concept.
  • Re-attempt the quiz only after completing all four katas.

Progression boundary​

Quiz performance calibrates retrieval and reasoning. It does not replace runnable work, changed-case transfer, the module assessment or required semester evidence. Consult practice calibration for the additional independent cases.