SAA-C03 Practice Test 31 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A warehouse integration service must process every event at least once, but duplicate processing is acceptable if the consumer handles idempotency. Which eventing approach is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon SQS standard queue and design consumers to be idempotent. Amazon SQS standard queues provide at-least-once delivery, meaning each message is delivered at least once but can occasionally be delivered more than once. This matches the requirement to process every event at least once, and since duplicate processing is acceptable when consumers are idempotent, the standard queue is the most suitable and cost-effective choice. SQS also decouples the warehouse integration service from its consumers, improving resilience and scalability.

Answer

Use CloudFront signed URLs

Answer

Use UDP messages sent directly to workers

Answer

Use an in-memory queue on one EC2 instance

Question 2

A analytics dashboard uses RDS MySQL and receives many read-only reporting queries that slow down the primary database. What should the architect add? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

RDS read replica and route reporting queries to it. B is correct because an RDS read replica is a fully managed, native AWS solution that offloads read-heavy reporting queries from the primary RDS MySQL instance. The read replica asynchronously replicates data using the MySQL binlog, allowing reporting traffic to be routed to it without impacting the primary database's write performance. This directly addresses the slowdown caused by many read-only queries while satisfying the architecture review board's preference for a managed AWS-native control.

Answer

S3 lifecycle policy

Answer

Multi-AZ standby and route reads to the standby

Answer

A larger NAT gateway

Question 3

A payments API requires point-in-time recovery and accidental-delete protection for a DynamoDB table. Which two settings should the architect enable? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

Deletion protection or tightly controlled delete permissions. Deletion protection (Option A) prevents accidental table deletion by blocking drop-table operations, which is enforceable during normal operations. Point-in-time recovery (Option B) enables continuous backups with 35-day granularity, allowing restoration to any second within that window. Together, they satisfy the requirements for accidental-delete protection and point-in-time recovery.

Answer

Global secondary indexes

Answer

DAX

Question 4

A log archive has old unattached EBS volumes and many stale snapshots. Which two actions reduce storage cost without affecting running instances?

Accepted Answer

Delete unattached EBS volumes after verifying they are no longer needed. Unattached EBS volumes incur storage costs even when not in use, as EBS pricing is based on provisioned capacity per GB-month. Deleting them after verifying they are no longer needed eliminates this cost without affecting running instances, since attached volumes are untouched. This directly addresses the question's requirement to reduce storage costs without impacting running workloads.

Answer

Stop all EC2 instances in the account

Answer

Disable CloudTrail logging

Question 5

A warehouse integration service receives bursts of orders that sometimes overwhelm a downstream fulfilment service. The architecture must absorb spikes and retry processing without losing requests. Which service should be placed between the web tier and fulfilment workers?

Accepted Answer

Amazon SQS queue. Amazon SQS is the correct choice because it acts as a durable, fully managed message queue that decouples the web tier from the fulfilment workers. It can absorb bursts of orders by storing messages durably, and workers can poll the queue at their own pace, with built-in retry logic via visibility timeouts and dead-letter queues to ensure no requests are lost.

Answer

AWS WAF

Answer

Amazon Route 53 weighted routing

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Question 6

A patient portal receives bursts of orders that sometimes overwhelm a downstream fulfilment service. The architecture must absorb spikes and retry processing without losing requests. Which service should be placed between the web tier and fulfilment workers? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Amazon SQS queue. Amazon SQS is the correct choice because it acts as a decoupling buffer between the web tier and the fulfilment workers. It can absorb sudden bursts of orders by storing messages durably, and workers can poll the queue at their own pace, retrying failed processing without losing any requests. This aligns with the requirement for a managed AWS-native service that handles spikes and retries.

Answer

AWS WAF

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Answer

Amazon Route 53 weighted routing

Question 7

A video platform uses Amazon Aurora. The workload has many short-lived database connections from Lambda functions, causing connection storms. What should be added?

Accepted Answer

RDS Proxy. RDS Proxy sits between Lambda functions and the Aurora database, pooling and reusing database connections. This prevents the Lambda functions from overwhelming the database with many short-lived connections, which can cause connection storms and degrade performance. RDS Proxy also reduces the overhead of establishing new connections and improves scalability.

Answer

S3 Select

Answer

An internet gateway

Answer

A larger Route 53 hosted zone

Question 8

A document portal needs low-latency full-text search across product descriptions and filtered attributes. Which managed service is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service. Amazon OpenSearch Service is purpose-built for full-text search, log analytics, and real-time application monitoring. It provides low-latency indexing and querying of unstructured and semi-structured data, making it ideal for searching product descriptions and filtering attributes. The service uses a RESTful API and supports advanced query DSL for complex search operations.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon SQS

Question 9

A ticket booking system uses Aurora MySQL. The company wants fast cross-Region disaster recovery with low RPO. Which architecture should be considered? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Aurora Global Database. Aurora Global Database is designed for cross-Region disaster recovery with a typical RPO of 1 second and RTO of 1 minute, using storage-based replication that does not require custom scripts. It replicates data from a primary Region to up to five secondary Regions with minimal impact on database performance, meeting the low RPO requirement without operational overhead.

Answer

A single-AZ Aurora cluster

Answer

An ElastiCache Redis replica

Answer

Manual snapshots copied monthly

Question 10

A DynamoDB table for a travel booking site has a partition key based only on the current date. Write throttling occurs during business hours. What is the best design change?

Accepted Answer

Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions. Using a low-cardinality partition key like the current date concentrates all writes into a single partition, causing throttling when write demand exceeds that partition's 1,000 WCU limit. A higher-cardinality key (e.g., combining date with user ID or session ID) distributes writes evenly across multiple partitions, allowing the table to use its full provisioned write capacity without throttling.

Answer

Create a global secondary index with the same date key

Answer

Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Answer

Reduce the table's write capacity

Question 11

A company’s private workload in a VPC uploads objects to an S3 bucket. Security requires that S3 requests are allowed only when they traverse a specific S3 Gateway VPC Endpoint (vpce-0abc123example). Which change best enforces this restriction at the S3 bucket level?

Accepted Answer

Add an S3 bucket policy Deny statement for s3:PutObject when aws:sourceVpce is not equal to vpce-0abc123example.. It uses an S3 bucket policy with a Deny statement that explicitly denies any s3:PutObject request unless the request originates from the specified VPC Endpoint (vpce-0abc123example). The aws:sourceVpce condition key evaluates the VPC endpoint ID from which the request is made, ensuring that only traffic through that specific Gateway VPC Endpoint is allowed. This enforces the security requirement at the bucket level, overriding any other policies that might allow access from other sources.

Answer

Add an S3 bucket policy Deny statement that blocks requests unless the principal uses MFA.

Answer

Enable Block Public Access and remove the public bucket policy statement.

Answer

Attach an IAM policy to the workload role that allows s3:PutObject only to the bucket ARN.

Question 12

A patient portal must use shared file storage across Linux EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones. The storage must remain available during an AZ failure. Which service should be used?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS with mount targets in multiple Availability Zones. Amazon EFS provides a scalable, fully managed NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently on multiple Linux EC2 instances. By creating mount targets in multiple Availability Zones, the file system remains accessible even if one AZ fails, ensuring high availability and shared file storage across instances.

Answer

Instance store volumes

Answer

An EBS volume attached to all instances

Answer

S3 mounted as a POSIX file system without a file gateway

Question 13

A global video platform serves mostly static images and JavaScript files from an S3 origin. Users in distant countries report slow load times. What should improve performance most? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as origin. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches static content (images, JavaScript) at edge locations worldwide, reducing latency for users in distant countries. By using the S3 bucket as an origin, CloudFront serves cached copies from the nearest edge, drastically improving load times. This solution is enforceable during normal operations because CloudFront provides cache control headers and invalidation APIs to manage content freshness.

Answer

A larger S3 bucket

Answer

RDS read replicas

Answer

An EC2 Auto Scaling group in one Region

Question 14

A media archive requires consistent high IOPS for a transactional database on EC2. Which EBS volume type is most suitable? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

Provisioned IOPS SSD such as io2. The io2 Provisioned IOPS SSD volume type is designed for latency-sensitive transactional database workloads that require consistent high IOPS. It allows you to specify a guaranteed IOPS rate (up to 256,000 IOPS for io2 Block Express) and provides 99.999% durability, making it ideal for enforcing performance control during normal operations.

Answer

st1 Throughput Optimized HDD

Answer

Instance store only

Answer

sc1 Cold HDD

Question 15

A financial analytics team runs a read-heavy workload on Amazon Aurora MySQL. The primary instance is experiencing high CPU during end-of-day reporting, and read replicas are lagging by several seconds. The application requires strong read consistency for account balances but can tolerate eventual consistency for historical reports. Which change should a solutions architect make to improve performance while meeting consistency requirements?

Accepted Answer

Route balance queries to the primary instance endpoint and historical report queries to the reader endpoint, and enable Aurora Auto Scaling to add read replicas based on replica utilization.. Strongly consistent reads must target the primary instance, while eventually consistent reporting can be served by Aurora read replicas. Aurora Auto Scaling dynamically adds replicas based on load, increasing read capacity and reducing lag. This split preserves correctness for account balances and offloads reporting from the primary, improving overall performance without compromising consistency.

Answer

Enable Aurora Auto Scaling for read replicas and direct all queries, including balance lookups, to the reader endpoint to distribute load evenly.

Answer

Create a second Aurora cluster that replicates from the primary using binary log replication, and direct all reporting queries to the second cluster's writer endpoint.

Answer

Increase the primary instance size and enable the query cache, then send all read traffic to the primary to ensure strong consistency for every query.