AWS DevOps Engineer Professional Practice Test

What is the consequence of the Shutdown event in OpsWorks?

1. Instances are scaled down

2. Instances are paused

3. Instances are terminated

4. Instances are backed up

The correct answer is: Instances are terminated

In the context of OpsWorks, the Shutdown event indicates that the instance will be terminated. This means that any processes running on the instance will be stopped, and the instance itself will be removed entirely from the AWS infrastructure. This process is important for managing resources efficiently. When an instance receives a Shutdown event, it allows for the proper clean-up of resources, ensures that data stored in the instance is handled correctly (such as configuration or application data), and allows for billing to cease since the instance will no longer incur costs after termination. On the other hand, scaling down would typically refer to adjusting the number of instances within a layer of an application stack without necessarily terminating them, pausing an instance would mean suspending it temporarily without deletion, and backing up would involve creating snapshots or copies of the data for recovery purposes. These actions do not represent what occurs during a Shutdown event in OpsWorks.