SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Timed 10 Questions

Question 1

A developer team uses Amazon EFS for a content management system across multiple EC2 instances. They notice performance degradation during heavy file operations. Which TWO configurations would improve performance for this shared file system? (Select TWO.)

10 minute time limit — choose an answer to begin.

Accepted Answer

Switch the throughput mode to Provisioned Throughput.. Option A is correct because switching to Provisioned Throughput mode lets you specify a fixed throughput (MiB/s) independent of the file system's size, which directly addresses performance degradation during heavy file operations by guaranteeing higher aggregate throughput than Bursting mode may provide. Option B is correct because Max I/O performance mode is designed for highly parallel workloads with many EC2 instances and high aggregate throughput, scaling to thousands of concurrent file operations, which suits a multi-instance CMS under heavy load. Option C is incorrect because General Purpose is the default mode optimized for latency-sensitive workloads with limited concurrency, not for the heavy parallel operations described. Option D is incorrect because the Infrequent Access storage class is a cost-optimization tier for rarely accessed files and does not improve throughput or performance. Option E is incorrect because EBS Multi-Attach supports only io1/io2 volumes attached to instances in a single AZ and is not a shared, scalable file system replacement for EFS.

Answer

Set the performance mode to General Purpose.

Answer

Move files to the Infrequent Access (IA) storage class.

Answer

Transition the workload to EBS Multi-Attach volumes.

Question 2

A developer needs to accelerate the delivery of dynamic content to global users. Which service should be used to provide the best performance?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront.. Amazon CloudFront is a valid and commonly used solution for accelerating dynamic content via its dynamic site acceleration features (using persistent connections and optimized routing). While Global Accelerator is excellent for non-HTTP/TCP/UDP traffic, CloudFront is specifically designed to accelerate dynamic HTTP/HTTPS content. The question is ambiguous, but CloudFront is frequently the intended answer for 'dynamic content' in AWS SAA exams.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator.

Answer

Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect.

Question 3

A large-scale application uses a monolithic SQL database that is reaching its throughput limit. The workload is a mix of complex analytical queries and simple transactions. What is the most performant way to scale?

Accepted Answer

Offload analytical queries to a separate database or data warehouse.. Separating transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) workloads is a critical performance pattern. Offloading analytical queries to a dedicated data warehouse (such as Amazon Redshift) or a separate database ensures that heavy analytical queries do not consume the resources of the primary transactional database or block critical business transactions. Simply adding read replicas (Option A) can still impact replication lag and transactional performance if the analytical queries are complex and resource-intensive, making a dedicated data warehouse the most performant solution for mixed heavy workloads.

Answer

Add more read replicas to the primary database.

Answer

Migrate both workloads to a larger single instance.

Answer

Implement database sharding on the primary instance.

Question 4

A company is experiencing performance latency in their application because of frequent DNS lookups. What is the best way to reduce the impact of these lookups?

Accepted Answer

Implement DNS caching in the application environment.. DNS lookup latency is typically caused by the application performing a DNS query for every request. Implementing DNS caching (at the application or OS level) ensures that the IP address is resolved once and reused, eliminating the round-trip time to the DNS resolver for subsequent requests. Route 53 Resolver Endpoints are for hybrid cloud connectivity and do not address application-level DNS lookup latency.

Answer

Change the DNS provider to a faster third-party service.

Answer

Use Route 53 health checks on all endpoints.

Answer

Migrate to a different VPC configuration.

Question 5

A global application uses an ALB. Users report that the application is slow in some regions. Which configuration change will improve performance for global users?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the application to more regions with Global Accelerator.. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route user traffic to the optimal endpoint, improving performance for global users by reducing latency and jitter. Deploying the application to more regions and using Global Accelerator ensures that users are directed to the nearest healthy endpoint, thus improving performance.

Answer

Increase the number of instances behind the ALB.

Answer

Enable ALB cross-zone load balancing.

Answer

Enable HTTP/2 on the Application Load Balancer.

Question 6

A financial services company is migrating a high-frequency trading application to AWS. The application requires a block storage solution that provides consistent sub-millisecond latency and supports up to 256,000 IOPS per instance. Which Amazon EBS volume type should the solutions architect recommend to meet these performance requirements?

Accepted Answer

Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express). io2 Block Express is the only EBS volume type that delivers sub-millisecond latency and scales to 256,000 IOPS per volume (and per instance) with 99.999% durability. It is designed for the most demanding, latency-sensitive workloads like high-frequency trading. io1 and gp3 cap far below that IOPS ceiling, and st1 is a throughput HDD unsuitable for sub-millisecond transactional latency.

Answer

Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)

Answer

General Purpose SSD (gp3)

Answer

Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)

Question 7

Refer to the exhibit. A solutions architect has configured this Auto Scaling policy for a web application fleet. The application currently experiences latency spikes when traffic increases suddenly. Why might this specific configuration be contributing to the performance issues?

Accepted Answer

The target value of 70% is too high for a high-performance application.. A target tracking policy with a target value of 70% CPU means the Auto Scaling group only scales out when average CPU exceeds 70%. For a latency-sensitive application experiencing sudden traffic spikes, 70% is too high — by the time CPU reaches that threshold, latency has already degraded. A lower target value (e.g., 40-50%) triggers scaling earlier, maintaining headroom and preventing latency spikes.

Answer

Target tracking policies do not support CPU-based metrics.

Answer

The policy lacks a cooldown period to prevent rapid scaling.

Answer

The policy should use 'ASGAverageNetworkIn' instead of CPU.

Question 8

An engineering firm uses Amazon EFS to store large datasets for parallel processing across hundreds of EC2 instances. The firm reports that the file system is hitting throughput limits, causing delays in job completion. Which EFS configuration should be changed to maximize performance for this high-throughput workload?

Answer

Change the performance mode from General Purpose to Max I/O.

Answer

Switch the throughput mode from Elastic to Bursting.

Answer

Move the data to an EFS One Zone storage class.

Answer

Increase the size of the EFS file system by adding dummy data.

Question 9

A real-time data ingestion service using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is struggling to keep up with incoming records. The 'ProvisionedThroughputExceededException' is frequently observed. The stream currently has 10 shards. What is the most effective way to increase the performance and throughput of the stream?

Accepted Answer

Switch the Kinesis Data Stream to On-Demand mode.. While resharding (Option C) increases throughput, it is a manual, operational task. Switching to On-Demand mode (Option D) is the most effective and recommended approach for handling unpredictable or fluctuating workloads as it automatically scales capacity.

Answer

Enable Enhanced Fan-out for the consumers.

Answer

Increase the retention period of the stream.

Answer

Perform a resharding operation to increase the number of shards.

Question 10

An application processes large volumes of telemetry data that arrive in unpredictable spikes. The data is written to an Amazon EBS volume, but during spikes, the application experiences I/O wait times. What is the most cost-effective way to handle this?

Accepted Answer

Migrate the volumes to General Purpose SSD (gp3).. gp3 volumes decouple IOPS and throughput from volume size, allowing the application to be provisioned with up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MiB/s independently of capacity. This handles unpredictable I/O spikes at a lower cost than io2 because you only pay for the IOPS/throughput you provision rather than the full io2 premium, and gp3 is cheaper per GB than gp2.

Answer

Convert the EBS volumes to Provisioned IOPS io2.

Answer

Increase the size of the existing gp2 volumes.

Answer

Use Amazon EFS with Provisioned Throughput mode.