AWS solution architect certification quiz: timeouts (tick tock)

1 John 2:17: mundus transit et concupiscentia eius ("the world passeth away, and the lust thereof").


The Corpus Clock (Cambridge uni, UK), one of the oddest clocks I've seen, nearly as odd as having to remember all the odd AWS timeout values :-) The clock is only accurate once every five minutes - the rest of the time the lights are simply for decoration!


Many of the certification questions expect you to know default and maximum values for timeouts and how long things are retained for (what do you call these?)

Typical with AWS docs there's no central list that I can find.  Here's an attempt at a quiz using google.

Synchronize your watches, GO!

Qn 1: For CloudFront Web distributions, what's the minimum value for minTTL time?

0 seconds
1 seconds
10 seconds
60 seconds

Qn 2: For SQS, what the minimum long polling value? 

10 seconds
30 seconds
5 minutes
1 second

Qn 3: How long can an AWS Lambda function execute? (default)

10 seconds
3 seconds
5 minutes
30 minutes

Qn 4: For SQS, what the maximum long polling value? 

60 seconds
5 minutes
20 seconds
30 seconds

Qn 5:  What's the default CloudFront request timeout per origin?

30 seconds
120 seconds
5 minutes
60 seconds

Qn 6: For SQS, what's the default visibility timeout?

60 seconds
120 seconds
5 minutes
30 seconds

Qn 7: For API Gateway Limits for Configuring and Running an API, what's the Integration timeout for all integration types, including Lambda, Lambda proxy, HTTP, HTTP proxy, and AWS integrations?

30 seconds
60 seconds
5 minutes
120 seconds

Qn 8: For classic Elastic Load Balancer, what's the default idle timeout for both connections?

60 seconds
120 seconds
5 minutes
10 minutes

Qn 9: How long can an AWS Lambda function execute? (maximum)

2400 seconds (40 minutes)
300 seconds (5 minutes)
600 seconds (10 minutes)
1200 seconds (20 minutes)

Qn 10: What's the default Athena (service for S3 queries) query timeout? 

120 minutes
30 minutes
60 minutes
240 minutes


Qn 11: For IoT Message Broker, what's the default Connection Inactivity (keep-alive interval) time?

60 minutes
30 minutes
120 minutes
240 minutes


Qn 12: For IoT Message Broker, what's the WebSocket connection duration?

24 hours
48 hours
1 week
1 month


Qn 13: For RTMP distributions, CloudFront keeps objects in edge caches for how long by default?

24 hours
48 hours
1 week
1 month

Qn 14: For Amazon ML, what's the Longest run time for any job?

28 days
365 days
7 days
14 days

Qn 15: For Amazon VPC, what's the Expiry time for an unaccepted VPC peering connection request?

1 week
365 days
2 weeks
4 weeks

Qn 16: For IoT, Device Shadow, what's the Shadow lifetime?

6 months
12 months
24 months
infinite

NB: see here for more about device or thing shadows
And a deep dive.


Qn 17: What's the maximum SWF timeout? 

1 year
2 years
3 years
4 years

Qn 18: For CloudFront, what's the maxTTL time?


100 years
200 years
300 years
Infinite

(Will AWS really be around for any of these :-?)

Qn 19: Generally, what's the default timeout for a SWF timeout?

30 minutes
60 minutes
24 hours
NONE (Infinite)


THE END
THE END
THE END
THE END
THE END

Note that the real questions for the timeout is Why are the defaults this value (need to understand the mechanisms involved and how long average things take etc). The problem is that your situation may be different so you need to measure and reset defaults as required.

And an even scarier clock (The Doomsday clock):




The answers are increasing in time, starting from 0 second, going up to NONE (infinite), ok that was a trick question.

Here are the answers in more detail (not in the same order sorry)

Starting with the limits docs.

Qn1 What's the default Athena (service for S3 queries) query timeout?

30 minutes

Qn 2:  What's the default CloudFront request timeout per origin?

30 seconds


THE END

That's it, these are the only timeouts in the limits docs.

Ok, there are a few more "time" related limits.

Qn3: For IoT Message Broker, what's the default Connection Inactivity (keep-alive interval) time?

30 minutes

Qn 4: For IoT Message Broker, what's the WebSocket connection duration?

24 hours

Qn 5: For IoT, Device Shadow, what's the Shadow lifetime?

6 months

Qn 6: For Amazon ML, what's the Longest run time for any job?

7 days

Qn 7: For Amazon VPC, what's the Expiry time for an unaccepted VPC peering connection request?

1 week

THE END (again)

Qn 8: For SQS, what's the default visibility timeout?

30 seconds

Qn 9: For classic Elastic Load Balancer, what's the default idle timeout for both connections?

60 seconds

There's a lot for SWF!

For Workflows and Workflow executions:




And for Activities:






Qn10: Generally, what's the default timeout for a SWF timeout?

NONE (Infinite)

Qn11: What's the maximum SWF timeout? 

1 year


Qn12: How long can an AWS Lambda function execute? (default)

3 seconds


Qn13: How long can an AWS Lambda function execute? (maximum)

300 seconds

Qn14: For API Gateway Limits for Configuring and Running an API, what's the Integration timeout for all integration types, including Lambda, Lambda proxy, HTTP, HTTP proxy, and AWS integrations?

30 seconds



Qn15: For SQS, what the minimum long polling value?

1 second


Qn16: For SQS, what the maximum long polling value?

20 seconds

Also found these for CloudFront (for Dynamic content)

Qn 17: For RTMP distributions, CloudFront keeps objects in edge caches for how long by default?

24 hours

Qn 18: For CloudFront Web distributions, what's the minTTL time?

0 seconds

Qn 19: For CloudFront, what's the maxTTL time?

100 years

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Expiration.html