AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate — Question 470

An environment consists of 100 Amazon EC2 Windows instances. The Amazon CloudWatch agent is deployed and running on all EC2 Instances with a baseline configuration file to capture log files. There is a new requirement to capture the DHCP log files that exist on 50 of the instances.
What is the MOST operationally efficient way to meet this new requirement?

Answer options

• A. Create an additional CloudWatch agent configuration file to capture the DHCP logs. Use the AWS Systems Manager Run Command to restart the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance with the append-config option to apply the additional configuration file.
• B. Log in to each EC2 Instance with administrator rights. Create a PowerShell script to push the needed baseline log files and DHCP log files to CloudWatch.
• C. Run the CloudWatch agent configuration file wizard on each EC2 instance. Verify that the baseline log files are included and add the DHCP log files during the wizard creation process.
• D. Run the CloudWatch agent configuration file wizard on each EC2 instance and select the advanced detail level. This will capture the operating system log files.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Using AWS Systems Manager Run Command with the append-config option allows administrators to dynamically merge a new CloudWatch agent configuration file for DHCP logs with the existing baseline configuration across multiple instances simultaneously, making it highly operationally efficient. Manually logging into individual instances to run configuration wizards or deploy custom PowerShell scripts introduces significant administrative overhead and increases the risk of configuration drift. Option A is the only solution that leverages automation to apply changes at scale without manual intervention on each server.