AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 833

A company is planning to run a group of Amazon EC2 instances that connect to an Amazon Aurora database. The company has built an AWS CloudFormation template to deploy the EC2 instances and the Aurora DB cluster. The company wants to allow the instances to authenticate to the database in a secure way. The company does not want to maintain static database credentials.

Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational effort?

Answer options

• A. Create a database user with a user name and password. Add parameters for the database user name and password to the CloudFormation template. Pass the parameters to the EC2 instances when the instances are launched.
• B. Create a database user with a user name and password. Store the user name and password in AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store. Configure the EC2 instances to retrieve the database credentials from Parameter Store.
• C. Configure the DB cluster to use IAM database authentication. Create a database user to use with IAM authentication. Associate a role with the EC2 instances to allow applications on the instances to access the database.
• D. Configure the DB cluster to use IAM database authentication with an IAM user. Create a database user that has a name that matches the IAM user. Associate the IAM user with the EC2 instances to allow applications on the instances to access the database.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Enabling IAM database authentication allows EC2 instances to authenticate to the Aurora DB cluster using temporary security tokens generated via an IAM role, completely eliminating the need for static credentials. Options A and B are incorrect because they still require the configuration and maintenance of static database credentials. Option D is incorrect because IAM users cannot be directly associated with EC2 instances; instead, an IAM role must be used via an instance profile.