AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 953

A company has an application written using an in-house software framework. The framework installation takes 30 minutes and is performed with a user data script. Company Developers deploy changes to the application frequently. The framework installation is becoming a bottleneck in this process.
Which of the following would speed up this process?

Answer options

• A. Create a pipeline to build a custom AMI with the framework installed and use this AMI as a baseline for application deployments.
• B. Employ a user data script to install the framework but compress the installation files to make them smaller.
• C. Create a pipeline to parallelize the installation tasks and call this pipeline from a user data script.
• D. Configure an AWS OpsWorks cookbook that installs the framework instead of employing user data. Use this cookbook as a base for all deployments.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Pre-baking the framework into a custom AMI (golden image) eliminates the 30-minute installation phase during instance launch, drastically reducing deployment times. While user data scripts (Options B and C) and AWS OpsWorks cookbooks (Option D) can automate installations, they still execute at launch time and do not resolve the time-consuming bottleneck of installing the framework on every new instance.