Objective 3.024% of exam

Design High-Performing Architectures

SAA-C03 Practice Questions

Design High-Performing Architectures is 24% of SAA-C03 and tests whether you can pick AWS services and configurations that meet latency, throughput, and scaling goals without over-provisioning. Expect scenario questions comparing instance families, storage types, caching layers, database engines, and network paths, then asking which choice best satisfies a stated performance requirement at the lowest cost.

Full Practice Test →All Objectives

What this objective tests

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Key Topics

Pick EC2 instance families, EBS volume types (gp3, io2), S3 storage classes, ElastiCache, and RDS/Aurora read replicas to hit latency and throughput targets, then right-size with Auto Scaling and CloudWatch metrics so you never over-provision.

Selecting EC2 instance families, burstable vs fixed performance, and placement groups for compute workloads
Choosing EBS volume types (gp3, io2, st1) and S3 storage classes or transfer acceleration for throughput
Deciding between ElastiCache Redis/Memcached, CloudFront, and Global Accelerator for latency reduction
Matching RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, and Redshift engines with read replicas, DAX, or partitioning for scale

Common exam traps

Where candidates lose marks on Design High-Performing Architectures

⚠Assuming a bigger instance always fixes performance when the bottleneck is actually IOPS, network, or a single-threaded application design.
⚠Confusing CloudFront (HTTP caching at edge) with Global Accelerator (TCP/UDP anycast routing) and picking the wrong one for the workload.
⚠Treating DynamoDB provisioned throughput like RDS and missing that hot partitions or poor key design cause throttling regardless of capacity.

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Practice Questions

30 questions from this objective · 24% of your SAA-C03 exam

Question 2mediummulti select

Design High-Performing Architectures

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Key Topics

Where candidates lose marks on Design High-Performing Architectures

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Practice Questions

A Lambda function behind API Gateway has predictable traffic spikes every hour. The function does not need access to resources in a VPC, and p95 latency spikes are caused by cold starts during scale-out. Which two actions are most effective? Select two.

A distributed simulation launches 40 EC2 instances that exchange small packets frequently and are sensitive to cross-instance latency. The workload stays in one Availability Zone and can use the same instance family across nodes. Which two choices improve network performance the most? Select two.

A customer-facing application has a relational data model and needs frequent complex queries (joins and aggregations), but it also experiences a significant read-heavy workload. Which design choice best improves read performance while keeping relational features?

Your application uses ElastiCache Redis as a cache for user profiles stored in DynamoDB. You must ensure that when a profile is updated, subsequent reads see the latest value quickly. Which cache strategy is generally the best fit for this requirement?

Based on the exhibit, the team wants to improve application performance without changing the code. Which EC2 instance family should they choose next?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, what change best reduces Lambda cold-start impact for a predictable user-upload workflow?

Exhibit

A team runs a latency-sensitive service on EC2 and needs consistent, low-latency block storage for a database. The application requires predictable performance and should be fast for random reads/writes. Which EBS volume type is the best choice?

Based on the exhibit, which change best reduces latency during peak traffic without overprovisioning the fleet?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, which change will most improve the CloudFront cache hit ratio for the static assets while still serving the same files to all users?

Exhibit

A media platform serves global users through Amazon CloudFront and an S3 origin. Match each requirement on the left to the CloudFront configuration or behavior on the right.

A company runs a stateless application tier behind an Application Load Balancer. Match each observed scaling pattern on the left to the best Auto Scaling strategy or metric on the right.

Based on the exhibit, which storage choice best matches the workload requirements?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, which design change is the best way to reduce the observed read latency for this DynamoDB-backed service?

Exhibit

A media platform serves global users through Amazon CloudFront and an S3 origin. Match each requirement on the left to the CloudFront configuration or behavior on the right.

Based on the exhibit, what is the best change to improve read performance without increasing write latency on the primary database?

Exhibit

A company serves mostly static images and JavaScript files from an origin in one AWS Region. They want to reduce origin load and improve global performance. Which change most directly increases cache-hit ratio for static assets while avoiding stale content?

Based on the exhibit, which storage design best supports the application servers' shared working directory requirement?

Exhibit

A compute workload uses temporary scratch space for intermediate results (reproducible), and it can tolerate data loss if the instance is terminated. The workload benefits from very high local I/O throughput. Which storage option is the best fit for the scratch data?

A media company uses CloudFront in front of an S3 bucket origin for video thumbnails. They want to prevent users from bypassing CloudFront and accessing the S3 bucket directly, while still allowing CloudFront to fetch objects. What is the best option?

Based on the exhibit, the team wants to improve application performance without changing the code. Which EC2 instance family should they choose next?

Exhibit

A system uses multiple AWS Lambda functions behind different event sources. One Lambda occasionally spikes and causes other Lambdas to be throttled due to shared concurrency limits. Which setting best helps ensure the important Lambda keeps capacity during spikes?

Based on the exhibit, which Amazon EFS performance mode is the best fit for this workload?

Exhibit

A web service runs on an Auto Scaling group (ASG). The team updates configuration (AMIs, environment variables) in a Launch Template and wants new instances created during scale-out to use the latest Launch Template version. What should the architect do?

Based on the exhibit, which AWS feature should the team use to minimize network latency between EC2 instances that exchange messages very frequently?

Exhibit

All SAA-C03 Objectives

Design High-Performing Architectures

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Key Topics

Where candidates lose marks on Design High-Performing Architectures

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Practice Questions

A Lambda function behind API Gateway has predictable traffic spikes every hour. The function does not need access to resources in a VPC, and p95 latency spikes are caused by cold starts during scale-out. Which two actions are most effective? Select two.

A distributed simulation launches 40 EC2 instances that exchange small packets frequently and are sensitive to cross-instance latency. The workload stays in one Availability Zone and can use the same instance family across nodes. Which two choices improve network performance the most? Select two.

A customer-facing application has a relational data model and needs frequent complex queries (joins and aggregations), but it also experiences a significant read-heavy workload. Which design choice best improves read performance while keeping relational features?

Your application uses ElastiCache Redis as a cache for user profiles stored in DynamoDB. You must ensure that when a profile is updated, subsequent reads see the latest value quickly. Which cache strategy is generally the best fit for this requirement?

Based on the exhibit, the team wants to improve application performance without changing the code. Which EC2 instance family should they choose next?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, what change best reduces Lambda cold-start impact for a predictable user-upload workflow?

Exhibit

A team runs a latency-sensitive service on EC2 and needs consistent, low-latency block storage for a database. The application requires predictable performance and should be fast for random reads/writes. Which EBS volume type is the best choice?

Based on the exhibit, which change best reduces latency during peak traffic without overprovisioning the fleet?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, which change will most improve the CloudFront cache hit ratio for the static assets while still serving the same files to all users?

Exhibit

A media platform serves global users through Amazon CloudFront and an S3 origin. Match each requirement on the left to the CloudFront configuration or behavior on the right.

A company runs a stateless application tier behind an Application Load Balancer. Match each observed scaling pattern on the left to the best Auto Scaling strategy or metric on the right.

Based on the exhibit, which storage choice best matches the workload requirements?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, which design change is the best way to reduce the observed read latency for this DynamoDB-backed service?

Exhibit

A media platform serves global users through Amazon CloudFront and an S3 origin. Match each requirement on the left to the CloudFront configuration or behavior on the right.

Based on the exhibit, what is the best change to improve read performance without increasing write latency on the primary database?

Exhibit

A company serves mostly static images and JavaScript files from an origin in one AWS Region. They want to reduce origin load and improve global performance. Which change most directly increases cache-hit ratio for static assets while avoiding stale content?

Based on the exhibit, which storage design best supports the application servers' shared working directory requirement?

Exhibit

A compute workload uses temporary scratch space for intermediate results (reproducible), and it can tolerate data loss if the instance is terminated. The workload benefits from very high local I/O throughput. Which storage option is the best fit for the scratch data?

A media company uses CloudFront in front of an S3 bucket origin for video thumbnails. They want to prevent users from bypassing CloudFront and accessing the S3 bucket directly, while still allowing CloudFront to fetch objects. What is the best option?

Based on the exhibit, the team wants to improve application performance without changing the code. Which EC2 instance family should they choose next?

Exhibit

A system uses multiple AWS Lambda functions behind different event sources. One Lambda occasionally spikes and causes other Lambdas to be throttled due to shared concurrency limits. Which setting best helps ensure the important Lambda keeps capacity during spikes?

Based on the exhibit, which Amazon EFS performance mode is the best fit for this workload?

Exhibit

A web service runs on an Auto Scaling group (ASG). The team updates configuration (AMIs, environment variables) in a Launch Template and wants new instances created during scale-out to use the latest Launch Template version. What should the architect do?

Based on the exhibit, which AWS feature should the team use to minimize network latency between EC2 instances that exchange messages very frequently?

Exhibit

All SAA-C03 Objectives