SAA-C03 Practice Test 4 — 10 Questions

Question 1

An events service publishes critical notifications using Amazon SNS. Three independent downstream systems (A, B, and C) subscribe to the topic. Downstream system B sometimes fails to process certain messages (for example, it times out or returns an error while handling the message), and you want: 1) failures in B to be isolated so A and C keep processing unaffected, and 2) messages that B cannot successfully process after retries to be sent to a DLQ for B. Which design best meets these requirements?

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

Accepted Answer

For each downstream system, create its own SQS queue, subscribe each SQS queue to the SNS topic, and configure a redrive policy with a DLQ for each SQS queue.. It creates a dedicated SQS queue for each downstream system, which isolates failures: if system B fails, its SQS queue will accumulate messages while systems A and C continue processing from their own queues. Each SQS queue can have a redrive policy that moves messages to a per-queue DLQ after the configured maximum retries are exhausted, satisfying the requirement for a B-specific DLQ without affecting the other subscribers.

Answer

Subscribe each downstream directly with HTTPS endpoints and configure a single SNS dead-letter queue (DLQ) for the topic.

Answer

Use one shared SQS queue for all three downstream systems and configure a single DLQ only when all three downstream systems fail.

Answer

Use EventBridge rules to invoke A, B, and C synchronously with retries enabled, and send failures to a common DLQ.

Question 2

A healthcare document service stores audit logs in S3. The compliance team requires that logs cannot be overwritten or deleted for seven years. What should be configured?

Accepted Answer

S3 Object Lock in compliance mode with an appropriate retention period. S3 Object Lock in compliance mode prevents any user, including the root user, from overwriting or deleting objects for the specified retention period. This meets the compliance requirement of immutable audit logs for seven years, as compliance mode enforces a strict write-once-read-many (WORM) model that cannot be bypassed.

Answer

S3 server access logging

Answer

S3 lifecycle expiration after seven years

Answer

S3 versioning only

Question 3

A media company serves versioned JavaScript and CSS files from Amazon S3 through CloudFront. After each release, the cache hit ratio drops sharply because the same distribution also fronts a personalized API path, and the current cache policy forwards cookies, all query strings, and several headers to every origin request. The static assets already use content-hashed filenames. Which two changes will most directly improve cache hit ratio for the static assets without changing the application behavior? Select two.

Accepted Answer

Create a dedicated cache behavior for the static asset path that excludes cookies, query strings, and unneeded headers from the cache key.. Creating a dedicated cache behavior for the static asset path (e.g., /static/*) allows you to configure a cache policy that excludes cookies, query strings, and unneeded headers from the cache key. Since the static assets use content-hashed filenames, they are immutable and do not vary by user-specific attributes. By removing these variables from the cache key, CloudFront can serve the same cached object to all users, drastically improving the cache hit ratio.

Answer

Increase the size of the S3 bucket’s underlying storage to absorb more origin traffic.

Answer

Add Lambda@Edge logic to append a timestamp to every asset request so updates are always fetched immediately.

Answer

Disable compression so CloudFront can treat each object as a separate cache entry.

Question 4

A startup runs a 24/7 web tier on Amazon EC2 with a stable baseline of 8 instances and a nightly analytics batch job that can resume from checkpoints if interrupted. The company wants to minimize monthly compute cost without hurting the always-on web tier. Which two actions should it take? Select two.

Accepted Answer

Buy a Compute Savings Plan for the steady web tier baseline.. A Compute Savings Plan offers the largest discount (up to 66%) in exchange for a 1- or 3-year hourly spend commitment, and it automatically applies to any EC2 instance family, size, or region. For the stable 8-instance web tier that runs 24/7, this plan provides significant cost savings while maintaining full flexibility to change instance types or even move to containers or Lambda, without affecting the always-on requirement.

Answer

Buy Standard Reserved Instances only for the nightly analytics batch job.

Answer

Move the entire workload to On-Demand Instances for maximum flexibility.

Answer

Use Dedicated Hosts for the batch job so the fleet is isolated.

Question 5

An S3 bucket stores user-uploaded images. Access patterns are unpredictable: some objects are never read again, while others are occasionally retrieved months later. The team wants to reduce storage cost without having to manually track access frequency or run periodic analyses. Which S3 storage and lifecycle approach is the best fit?

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering so objects can automatically move between access tiers based on observed access patterns.. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the best fit because it automatically moves objects between access tiers (frequent, infrequent, archive instant, archive) based on changing access patterns, eliminating the need for manual tracking or lifecycle rules. This optimizes storage costs for unpredictable access patterns without requiring you to define fixed time-based transitions or perform periodic analyses.

Answer

Use S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval for all objects immediately to minimize storage cost.

Answer

Create a lifecycle rule that transitions objects to Standard-IA after a fixed 30 days, regardless of access.

Answer

Keep all objects in S3 Standard and reduce costs by enabling server access logging compression.

Question 6

An order-processing worker consumes messages from Amazon SQS. Occasionally, the worker times out after successfully creating a payment record but before deleting the message, which causes duplicate charges during retries. Some messages also fail validation repeatedly because required fields are missing. Which two changes should the team make? Select two.

Accepted Answer

Make the payment step idempotent using a unique transaction identifier.. Making the payment step idempotent using a unique transaction identifier ensures that if the same message is processed multiple times due to a timeout, the payment is only charged once. This is a common pattern for handling at-least-once delivery semantics in Amazon SQS, where the worker must be designed to handle duplicate messages safely.

Answer

Reduce the visibility timeout so failed messages return to the queue faster.

Answer

Run only one long-lived worker instance so the queue can never be processed twice.

Answer

Switch from a standard queue to a FIFO queue and remove all other changes.

Question 7

An event ingestion service writes to a DynamoDB table where the partition key is tenantId and the sort key is eventTime. During a campaign, one tenant generates a disproportionate share of traffic, causing write throttling and increased latency for that tenant’s writes. You can change the data model and application queries, but you must still efficiently retrieve events for a tenant for the last 10 minutes. Which change best improves write throughput by reducing hot partitions?

Accepted Answer

Add a shard attribute to the partition key (partition key = tenantId#shard, where shard is randomly selected from a fixed range). Query all shards for the tenant for eventTime values in the last 10 minutes, then merge results in the application.. It distributes writes for a hot tenant across multiple partitions by appending a random shard suffix to the tenantId partition key. This eliminates a single hot partition, allowing DynamoDB to scale write capacity horizontally. The application can then query all shards for the last 10 minutes and merge results, satisfying the retrieval requirement.

Answer

Keep tenantId as the partition key and rely on DynamoDB adaptive capacity to automatically remove all throttling.

Answer

Change the sort key to eventTimeBucket (for example, eventTime rounded to 1-minute buckets) while keeping the partition key as tenantId.

Answer

Enable DAX and use it for write operations so throttled writes are served from cache instead of reaching DynamoDB.

Question 8

Based on the exhibit, an automation pipeline in several member accounts creates IAM roles for application deployments. Security says no future role may exceed the approved boundary arn:aws:iam::123456789012:policy/DeployBoundary, even if someone later attaches AdministratorAccess. What should you implement to enforce this across the organization?

Accepted Answer

Create an SCP that denies iam:CreateRole unless iam:PermissionsBoundary equals arn:aws:iam::123456789012:policy/DeployBoundary, and also deny removing that boundary from created roles.. It uses an SCP to enforce that any IAM role creation must include the specific permissions boundary `arn:aws:iam::123456789012:policy/DeployBoundary`, and also prevents removal or modification of that boundary from existing roles. This ensures that even if an attacker or administrator later attaches a policy like AdministratorAccess, the effective permissions are still limited by the boundary, meeting the security requirement across all member accounts in the organization.

Answer

Attach DeployBoundary to the automation role only, because that automatically forces every created role to inherit the same boundary.

Answer

Create an SCP that denies iam:CreateRole and iam:PutRolePermissionsBoundary unless aws:RequestTag equals DeployBoundary.

Answer

Use AWS Access Analyzer to automatically attach the approved boundary whenever a role is created without one.

Question 9

A team wants detective controls to investigate suspected exfiltration from an S3 bucket. They need to know when objects are accessed (GetObject) and also when new encrypted objects are written.

They already enabled AWS CloudTrail for management events, but their investigation shows no visibility into object-level reads/writes in the logs they review.

Which CloudTrail configuration change most directly provides the missing object-level visibility?

Accepted Answer

Enable CloudTrail data events for the specific S3 bucket so that GetObject and PutObject operations are logged at the object level.. CloudTrail management events do not include object-level operations like GetObject or PutObject. By enabling CloudTrail data events for the specific S3 bucket, you capture object-level read (GetObject) and write (PutObject) API calls, including those for encrypted objects, providing the missing visibility for detective controls.

Answer

Enable AWS Config delivery to a separate bucket and create a rule to detect noncompliant S3 policies; this will automatically generate GetObject logs.

Answer

Turn on VPC Flow Logs for the VPC hosting the S3 gateway endpoint, because network logs show S3 object read and write details.

Answer

Add an S3 bucket policy that denies all GetObject requests unless the caller uses TLS; the denial events will create investigation logs automatically.

Question 10

A company stores user uploads in an S3 bucket. Objects are accessed rarely after upload, but when an object is accessed, it must be retrievable quickly (minutes to a few hours). Objects must be retained for at least 18 months. The team wants to reduce storage cost while meeting these requirements. Which lifecycle configuration best fits these requirements?

Accepted Answer

After 30 days, transition objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, and after 18 months, expire (delete) the objects.. It transitions objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 30 days, which provides millisecond retrieval for rarely accessed data, meeting the quick retrieval requirement. The 18-month expiration ensures compliance with the retention policy while minimizing storage costs compared to keeping data in S3 Standard.

Answer

Keep all objects in S3 Standard permanently to avoid lifecycle transition fees.

Answer

After 30 days, transition objects to S3 Intelligent-Tiering, and set expiration to 12 months.

Answer

After 30 days, transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive, and set expiration to 18 months.