AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 269

An organization is purchasing licensed software. The software license can be registered only to a specific MAC Address. The organization is going to host the software in the AWS environment.
How can the organization fulfil the license requirement as the MAC address changes every time an instance is started/stopped/terminated?

Answer options

• A. It is not possible to have a fixed MAC address with AWS.
• B. The organization should use VPC with the private subnet and configure the MAC address with that subnet.
• C. The organization should use VPC with an elastic network interface which will have a fixed MAC Address.
• D. The organization should use VPC since VPC allows to configure the MAC address for each EC2 instance.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

An Elastic Network Interface (ENI) in Amazon VPC retains its MAC address even when detached from one instance and attached to another, or when the associated EC2 instance is stopped or restarted. This allows organizations to satisfy legacy licensing requirements that depend on a fixed MAC address. Other options are incorrect because MAC addresses cannot be configured at the subnet or EC2 instance level, and persistent MAC addresses are indeed supported via ENIs.