Objective 3.024% of exam

Design High-Performing Architectures

SAA-C03 Practice Questions

Use this page to practise Design High-Performing Architectures questions for this certification. Focus on how the exam tests design high-performing architectures in scenario format — understanding the why behind each answer builds more durable knowledge than memorising options.

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What this objective tests

SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures — Key Topics

Design High-Performing Architectures questions on this certification test your ability to deploy and manage design high-performing architectures concepts in scenario-based situations.

Core Design High-Performing Architectures concepts and how they apply in real-world cloud scenarios.
How to deploy design high-performing architectures correctly and verify the outcome.
Troubleshooting design high-performing architectures issues by interpreting error output and system state.
Cloud best practices and Design High-Performing Architectures design trade-offs tested by this certification.

Common exam traps

Where candidates lose marks on Design High-Performing Architectures

⚠Selecting the most expensive service when a simpler managed option meets the requirement.
⚠Forgetting that cloud resources must be explicitly secured — defaults are rarely secure.
⚠Choosing a global service fix when the issue is region-specific.
⚠Overlooking cost implications of cross-region data transfer in architecture questions.

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.

An Aurora PostgreSQL application has an OLTP writer and a reporting dashboard that issues many read-only queries. The writer is healthy, but read latency rises noticeably during reporting windows. Which two changes should you make? 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.

An application uses DynamoDB to store order status. Reads happen extremely frequently for the same few keys (for example, the most recent orders), and the team wants lower read latency without changing the table’s partition key design. Which AWS service best fits this requirement?

An order lookup API repeatedly reads the same few items from DynamoDB. The application can tolerate slightly stale data for a few seconds, and the team wants the lowest-latency design with minimal application changes. Which two changes should they make? Select two.

A team needs to distribute TCP traffic (not HTTP) across multiple services. The services must see the original client source IP for auditing. Which AWS load balancer is the best fit?

Your team hosts versioned static assets (for example, /static/app-<buildHash>.js). Each build hash never changes, but you release new files on new URLs. To maximize cache hit rate and reduce origin load using CloudFront, what should you do when generating HTTP responses for these assets?

A backend API uses an AWS Lambda function behind API Gateway. The first requests after every weekly deployment experience cold starts, causing p95 latency spikes for a few minutes. Which configuration most directly prevents those cold starts for the published version?

Based on the exhibit, what change should the team make to achieve the lowest possible network latency for the distributed workload?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, which EBS volume type should the team use to meet the performance need at lower cost than overprovisioning capacity?

Exhibit

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?

An ECS service runs on EC2 capacity. During peak traffic, tasks frequently wait for available container instances. The team wants faster scale-out for the underlying EC2 capacity when tasks increase. What is the best first architectural step?

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

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?

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.

An Aurora PostgreSQL application has an OLTP writer and a reporting dashboard that issues many read-only queries. The writer is healthy, but read latency rises noticeably during reporting windows. Which two changes should you make? 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.

An application uses DynamoDB to store order status. Reads happen extremely frequently for the same few keys (for example, the most recent orders), and the team wants lower read latency without changing the table’s partition key design. Which AWS service best fits this requirement?

An order lookup API repeatedly reads the same few items from DynamoDB. The application can tolerate slightly stale data for a few seconds, and the team wants the lowest-latency design with minimal application changes. Which two changes should they make? Select two.

A team needs to distribute TCP traffic (not HTTP) across multiple services. The services must see the original client source IP for auditing. Which AWS load balancer is the best fit?

Your team hosts versioned static assets (for example, /static/app-<buildHash>.js). Each build hash never changes, but you release new files on new URLs. To maximize cache hit rate and reduce origin load using CloudFront, what should you do when generating HTTP responses for these assets?

A backend API uses an AWS Lambda function behind API Gateway. The first requests after every weekly deployment experience cold starts, causing p95 latency spikes for a few minutes. Which configuration most directly prevents those cold starts for the published version?

Based on the exhibit, what change should the team make to achieve the lowest possible network latency for the distributed workload?

Exhibit

Based on the exhibit, which EBS volume type should the team use to meet the performance need at lower cost than overprovisioning capacity?

Exhibit

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?

An ECS service runs on EC2 capacity. During peak traffic, tasks frequently wait for available container instances. The team wants faster scale-out for the underlying EC2 capacity when tasks increase. What is the best first architectural step?

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

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?

All SAA-C03 Objectives