SAA-C03 Practice Test 5 — 10 Questions

Question 1

An 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?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Enable Provisioned Concurrency for the function.. Provisioned Concurrency is the recommended solution for reducing cold start latency in AWS Lambda. It keeps a specified number of execution environments initialized and ready to respond immediately to incoming requests. This is critical for high-performance applications where unpredictable spikes in traffic could otherwise lead to unacceptable delays.

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Increase the Lambda function's memory allocation.

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Use an Amazon SQS queue to buffer requests to Lambda.

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Deploy the Lambda function in multiple Availability Zones.

Question 2

An 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?

Accepted Answer

Instance store provides higher I/O performance compared to EBS.. EC2 Instance Store provides high-performance, local block-level storage that is physically attached to the host computer. This makes it ideal for temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, and scratch space. Architects must account for its ephemeral nature while leveraging its superior I/O capabilities for high-performance workloads.

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Data is preserved when the instance is stopped and started.

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Volumes can be detached and reattached to different instances.

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Storage capacity can be increased without stopping the instance.

Question 3

A 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?

Accepted Answer

Create one or more RDS Read Replicas.. Amazon RDS Read Replicas are designed specifically for read-heavy workloads. By offloading SELECT queries to one or more replicas, the primary instance can focus solely on write operations. This architecture improves throughput and reduces latency without requiring application-level logic changes beyond updating the database connection string. This approach is standard for scaling RDS instances horizontally to meet fluctuating demand while maintaining data consistency.

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Enable Multi-AZ deployment for the RDS instance.

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Upgrade the RDS instance to a larger instance class.

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Move the database to Amazon DynamoDB.

Question 4

A 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?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Redshift Spectrum.. Amazon Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in S3 using standard SQL. For large analytical workloads, Amazon Redshift Spectrum allows you to query data directly from S3, providing even higher performance for petabyte-scale data by leveraging the Redshift massively parallel processing engine, which is optimized for complex join and aggregation operations across massive datasets.

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Amazon RDS.

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Amazon DynamoDB.

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AWS Glue.

Question 5

A company is running an Amazon RDS for MySQL database that experiences predictable, steady traffic during business hours and very low traffic at night. They want to reduce costs without compromising performance. Which TWO steps should the architect take? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Purchase Reserved Instances for the RDS DB instances.. Reserved Instances provide significant discounts for steady-state workloads with a long-term commitment. For the variable nature of the workload, migrating to Aurora Serverless v2 allows the database to scale capacity up and down automatically based on demand, ensuring they only pay for the resources consumed during high and low traffic periods.

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Use Multi-AZ deployments for all read-only workloads.

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Switch to an Amazon RDS Custom for MySQL instance.

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Enable Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) for all storage volumes.

Question 6

A solutions architect is designing a system for batch processing of large image files. The process can be interrupted and resumed later without loss of data. The workload is expected to run for several hours each night. Which EC2 instance purchasing option will provide the lowest cost?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances offer the deepest discounts (up to 90%) on EC2 capacity. They are ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible, and interruptible workloads like batch processing. Since the application can handle interruptions and resume progress, the risk of AWS reclaiming the capacity is offset by the massive cost savings compared to On-Demand or Reserved Instances.

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On-Demand Instances

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Dedicated Hosts

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Reserved Instances

Question 7

Refer 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?

Accepted Answer

It ensures traffic remains on the private AWS network, reducing latency.. The policy shown is a VPC endpoint policy (or an S3 bucket policy restricting access to a VPC endpoint), which forces traffic between EC2 and S3 to traverse the AWS private backbone via a Gateway or Interface VPC Endpoint instead of the public internet. This keeps traffic on the private AWS network, reducing latency, avoiding NAT gateway data-processing charges, and improving security posture.

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It enables S3 Transfer Acceleration for faster global uploads.

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It provides cross-region replication for high availability of data.

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It allows public access to the bucket for faster content delivery.

Question 8

A company is running a large-scale batch processing job that can be interrupted and resumed without loss of data. The job runs for several hours every weekend. Which instance purchasing option will provide the highest cost savings?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances offer up to 90% discounts compared to On-Demand pricing by using AWS's spare EC2 capacity. Because the batch job is interruptible and can resume without data loss, it perfectly matches the Spot use case — workloads that tolerate the two-minute interruption notice when AWS reclaims capacity. This makes Spot the most cost-effective choice for fault-tolerant, flexible workloads.

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On-Demand Instances

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Reserved Instances

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Dedicated Hosts

Question 9

An organization is using AWS Control Tower to manage multiple AWS accounts. They need to implement a set of guardrails to ensure that all accounts remain compliant with security best practices. Which THREE components or features are part of a standard AWS Control Tower landing zone implementation?

Accepted Answer

Preventive guardrails implemented using Service Control Policies (SCPs).. Option A is correct because AWS Control Tower preventive guardrails are enforced through Service Control Policies (SCPs) attached to OUs, which restrict what actions member accounts can perform. Option B is correct because detective guardrails in Control Tower are implemented as AWS Config rules (often deployed via conformance packs) that detect and flag noncompliant resources. Option C is correct because a standard Control Tower landing zone provisions a dedicated log archive account for centralized logging and an audit (security tooling) account for security and compliance tooling. Option D is incorrect because Amazon Macie is not enabled by default on all S3 buckets as part of the landing zone; it is an optional data-security service. Option E is incorrect because GuardDuty is not automatically enabled across all accounts by Control Tower itself; it can be integrated via services like AWS Security Hub or delegated administration, but it is not a built-in landing zone component.

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Amazon Macie enabled by default on all S3 buckets in member accounts.

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Amazon GuardDuty for automated threat detection across all accounts.

Question 10

A company is developing a mobile application that allows users to sign in using their social media accounts (e.g., Google or Facebook). After signing in, the application needs to obtain temporary AWS credentials to upload photos directly to an Amazon S3 bucket. Which service should the architect use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Cognito. Amazon Cognito provides identity pools that directly support social identity providers (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple) and exchange the resulting tokens for temporary, scoped AWS credentials via STS. This is the managed, recommended way to implement web identity federation for mobile apps without building the token-exchange flow yourself. Cognito user pools handle authentication, and identity pools handle AWS credential vending.

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AWS IAM User with static access keys

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AWS Directory Service

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AWS Security Token Service (STS) with a manual web identity federation implementation