EC2 · IMDSv2 · Intermediate
Metadata hardening breaks startup
New instances cannot retrieve startup credentials.
INITIAL ALERT
New instances cannot retrieve startup credentials.
You are primary on-call. Establish the failure domain, protect healthy capacity, and choose the safest next action.
The instance profile contains the required permissions.
The decisive evidence and solution remain locked inside the simulation.WHAT THIS TESTS
Production judgment across EC2 · IMDSv2.
Compute incidents are rarely solved by rebooting first. The useful skill is distinguishing launch, bootstrap, capacity, identity, and storage faults from one another.
- 01Read EC2 lifecycle and bootstrap evidence
- 02Diagnose scaling and instance replacement failures
- 03Choose a narrow, reversible recovery
SIMULATION STRUCTURE
Four evidence layers. No answer shown here.
The full exercise unlocks each layer as you commit to decisions.
Alert
Confirm the reported symptom and customer impact.
Baseline
Compare the failing path with a known-good condition.
Finding
Identify the evidence that separates plausible causes.
Change
Choose a controlled recovery and a durable prevention step.
Can you make the call without seeing the solution?
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