AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate — Question 324

A custom application must be installed on all Amazon EC2 instances. The application is small, updated frequently, and can be installed automatically.

How can the application be deployed on new EC2 instances?

Answer options

• A. Launch a script that downloads and installs the application using Amazon EC2 user data.
• B. Create a custom API using Amazon API Gateway to call an installation executable from an AWS CloudFormation template.
• C. Use AWS Systems Manager to inject the application into an AMI.
• D. Configure AWS CodePipeline to deploy code changes and updates.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Using Amazon EC2 user data to run an installation script is the ideal approach because the application is small, updated frequently, and can be automated, avoiding the overhead of constantly rebuilding AMIs. Baking a frequently updated application into an AMI using AWS Systems Manager would require constant image maintenance, which is inefficient. Using Amazon API Gateway with CloudFormation or AWS CodePipeline for basic bootstrapping adds unnecessary complexity and does not directly address the requirement for installing the software on new instance launches.