AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 555

A recent AWS CloudFormation stack update has failed and returned the error UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED. A SysOps Administrator is tasked with returning the
CloudFormation stack to its previous working state.
What must be done to accomplish this?

Answer options

• A. Fix the error that caused the rollback to fail, then select the Continue Update Rollback action in the console.
• B. Select the Update Stack action with a working template in the console.
• C. Update the password of the IAM user, then select the Continue Update Rollback action in the console.
• D. Use the AWS CLI to manually change the stack status to UPDATE_COMPLETE, then continue updating the stack with a working template.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

When an AWS CloudFormation stack is stuck in the UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED state, you must first resolve the root cause of the failure (such as out-of-band resource changes or missing permissions) and then use the Continue Update Rollback action to resume the rollback. You cannot perform a regular stack update directly from this state, nor can you manually force-change the stack status via the AWS CLI. Updating an IAM user password is not a standard solution to rollback failures unless a specific access key issue was identified, making option A the correct procedure.