Match the workload's bottleneck to the right AWS lever: instance family for compute, read replicas or caching for reads, EFA and placement groups for network latency, and the correct EBS or S3 tier for IOPS and throughput. Getting the bottleneck right is the single most important thing.
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Domain overview
This domain covers selecting AWS services and configurations that meet performance requirements for compute, storage, database, and networking. Questions present a workload with latency, throughput, or scaling symptoms and ask you to choose the EC2 family, storage type, caching layer, or network feature that resolves it while remaining cost-aware.
Exam objectives
Choosing EC2 instance families (compute, memory, storage optimized) and Auto Scaling policies for demand
Selecting Amazon RDS read replicas, Aurora replicas, ElastiCache, or CloudFront to offload read traffic
Using placement groups and EFA for low-latency, high-throughput HPC and tightly coupled workloads
Picking EBS volume types, S3 storage classes, and FSx options for required IOPS and throughput
Assuming a read replica reduces write latency or fixes a write-bound primary; replicas only serve reads and add replication lag.
Choosing a general-purpose instance family for memory- or compute-bound workloads instead of the matching optimized family.
Using a cluster placement group when the workload spans Availability Zones, which requires a spread or partition group instead.
Click any question to see the full explanation and answer options, or start a focused practice session above.
A research firm is running a tightly coupled High Performance Computing (HPC) workload on AWS using EC2 instances. The firm needs to minimize network latency and maximize inter-node communication speed. Which network enhancement should the architect recommend?
2A media company experiences unpredictable traffic spikes on its web application. The architect needs to ensure the application remains responsive while optimizing for performance. Which TWO strategies should be implemented? (Select TWO.)
3A global e-commerce site uses an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. Users in different regions are complaining about slow page load times when browsing product catalogs. How can the architect improve read performance for global users with minimal changes to the application?
4Refer to the exhibit. An architect is reviewing a CloudFront Cache Policy for a dynamic site. The application is experiencing a low cache hit ratio, leading to high load on the origin servers. Based on the configuration, which change would most likely improve the cache hit ratio?
5A company has a high-performance database running on Amazon RDS for MySQL. The workload is read-heavy and experiences latency during peak hours. Which solution will improve read performance with minimal architectural changes?
6Refer to the exhibit. An application running on EC2 instances needs to pull large binary files from an S3 bucket with maximum throughput. Which configuration should the architect implement to ensure the highest network performance?
7A legacy application uses a monolithic architecture with a high-performance compute requirement. The application is CPU-bound and requires consistent sub-millisecond latency between compute nodes. Which EC2 feature should the architect use?
8An application is experiencing intermittent performance issues due to high IOPS demand. The application currently uses a standard General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume. Which action will provide the best performance improvement?
9A company hosts a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application has spikes in traffic. What should be configured to ensure performance and cost efficiency?
10Refer to the exhibit. The web application is showing high latency and 503 errors. The database CPU usage is low. What is the most likely cause and solution?
11A company wants to improve the performance of its static website hosted on S3. Which strategy provides the most significant performance gain for global users?
12A company is migrating a web application to AWS. The application relies on session state. Which approach is the most scalable and performant for managing sessions?
13A media company stores millions of small image files in an Amazon S3 bucket. The application frequently requests these images, and the company is experiencing high latency during peak hours. The current architecture uses a single prefix for all objects. How should the architect modify the S3 structure to improve performance?
14A solutions architect is designing a caching layer for a high-traffic web application that uses a multi-node cluster. The architect needs to ensure high availability and the ability to scale horizontally while supporting complex data types such as sorted sets and lists. Which TWO features of Amazon ElastiCache for Redis support these requirements?
15A global gaming company needs to provide low-latency access to user profile data for players in North America, Europe, and Asia. The data is stored in an Amazon Aurora MySQL database. The application requires that reads be as local as possible, while writes are infrequent and can tolerate some propagation delay. Which solution offers the best performance?
16Refer to the exhibit. A company is using this S3 bucket policy to secure high-performance data accessed by an analytics fleet on EC2. Users report that despite having the correct IAM permissions, they are receiving 403 Forbidden errors when trying to download data. What is the most likely cause of this performance and access issue?
17An application requires extremely high I/O performance for temporary data processing that can be lost if the instance fails. The architect is considering using EC2 Instance Store. Which TWO statements correctly describe the performance and characteristics of Instance Store volumes?
18An AWS Lambda function processing data from an S3 bucket is experiencing performance issues due to 'cold starts' during sudden bursts of traffic. The company needs to ensure that the function responds with consistent low latency at all times. Which feature should be configured?
19A company is planning to connect its on-premises data center to AWS to support a high-performance hybrid cloud architecture. The connection must support a consistent 10 Gbps bandwidth and provide a private, dedicated network path to reduce jitter and latency. Which TWO steps should the architect take?
20A company is using Amazon DynamoDB to store real-time session data. The application requires response times in the sub-millisecond range for frequently accessed keys. The current DynamoDB latency is around 10-15 milliseconds. What should the architect implement to meet the performance goal?
21A research institution is running a High Performance Computing (HPC) workload on AWS that requires a POSIX-compliant file system capable of millions of IOPS and sub-millisecond latencies. Which TWO storage options are most appropriate for this use case?
22A company has a multi-region application and wants to provide users with a single entry point that automatically routes traffic to the closest healthy endpoint. The solution must support non-HTTP protocols and provide static IP addresses. Which service should be used?
23A company is migrating a high-performance database to Amazon RDS for MySQL. The workload involves intensive read operations, causing significant latency during peak traffic. Which solution provides the most effective performance improvement with minimal architectural changes?
24Refer to the exhibit. An application running on an EC2 instance requires access to S3 objects but is encountering slow performance when fetching large files. An architect observes high network latency between the instance and S3. Which strategy will improve retrieval performance?
25A video transcoding application runs on EC2 instances. The processing is highly CPU-intensive and can be interrupted if the job is resumed later. Which compute strategy offers the best cost-performance balance?
26A globally distributed application needs to provide low-latency access to static content for users around the world. Which AWS service is best suited for this requirement?
27An application requires a high-throughput, low-latency shared file system for a Linux-based HPC cluster. Which AWS service should be used?
28A data analysis team needs to perform complex SQL queries on petabytes of data stored in S3. Which service provides the best performance for this analytical workload?
29A developer is using an EC2 instance to process images. The images are stored in an S3 bucket. The developer notices that the network transfer between S3 and the EC2 instance is the bottleneck. How can the developer resolve this?
30An application has been migrated to AWS, but the performance is inconsistent. The architect finds that the application uses a legacy database driver that requires persistent connections, which is exhausting database connections. What is the best way to handle this?
31An application running on Amazon Aurora MySQL experiences significant performance degradation during peak hours due to a surge in read-only traffic. The database currently uses a single primary instance and one replica. What is the most effective way to scale the database for these spikes while maintaining high performance?
32Refer to the exhibit. A company wants to optimize the performance and security of data transfers between their EC2 instances and an S3 bucket named 'my-app-data'. Which architectural benefit is primarily achieved by implementing the policy shown in the exhibit?
33A company is migrating a compute-intensive web application to AWS. The application requires high CPU performance and needs to scale automatically based on demand. Which EC2 instance family and scaling feature should the architect choose to ensure optimal performance?
Match the workload's bottleneck to the right AWS lever: instance family for compute, read replicas or caching for reads, EFA and placement groups for network latency, and the correct EBS or S3 tier for IOPS and throughput. Getting the bottleneck right is the single most important thing.
The Courseiva SAA-C03 question bank contains 33 questions in the Design High-Performing Architectures domain. Click any question to see the full explanation and answer breakdown.
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