AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Practice Exam

To improve deployment times for an application with complex dependencies on Elastic Beanstalk, what is a recommended action?

1. Create a new environment each time

2. Create a generic AMI for all applications

3. Create a Golden AMI with your application

4. Deploy applications directly from AWS Lambda

The correct answer is: Create a Golden AMI with your application

Creating a Golden Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with your application is a recommended action to improve deployment times for an application with complex dependencies on Elastic Beanstalk. A Golden AMI is a pre-configured, optimized, and tested AMI that includes the application and its dependencies. When you utilize a Golden AMI, you can rapidly deploy your application to new environments since the heavy lifting—like installing software, making configurations, and setting up the necessary environment—is completed ahead of time. This significantly reduces the time it takes to launch an instance because Elastic Beanstalk can initiate instances from the pre-built AMI rather than starting from scratch, which would involve setting up everything on each deployment. This method enhances consistency across deployments, as the same configured environment is replicated each time. It also simplifies rollbacks to previous states if needed, since you can always revert to an earlier Golden AMI if a new deployment does not function as expected. Overall, this approach streamlines application management and supports rapid deployment cycles, making it particularly beneficial for environments where speed and reliability are crucial.