SAA-C03 Practice Test 50 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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

Accepted Answer

Enable provisioned concurrency for the function.. Provisioned concurrency initializes a specified number of execution environments in advance, so when a user upload triggers the Lambda function, there is no cold-start delay. This directly addresses the predictable, user-upload workflow by ensuring warm containers are ready to handle requests immediately.

Answer

Set a reserved concurrency limit for the function to protect it from throttling.

Answer

Increase the function timeout to give more time for initialization.

Answer

Move the function to a larger memory setting only to eliminate all initialization time.

Question 2

A dev sandbox runs for several hours each night and can be interrupted and restarted. Which EC2 purchasing option should minimize cost?

Accepted Answer

Spot Instances. Spot Instances can be interrupted and restarted, making them ideal for fault-tolerant workloads like a nightly dev sandbox. They offer significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand) because they use spare AWS EC2 capacity, which aligns perfectly with the scenario's tolerance for interruption.

Answer

On-Demand Instances only

Answer

Dedicated Hosts

Answer

Provisioned IOPS volumes

Question 3

Based on the exhibit, the team must restore an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database to the exact state just before a bad delete happened. What is the best recovery approach?

Accepted Answer

Perform a point-in-time restore to 2026-04-27 15:10 UTC into a new DB instance, then cut over after validation.. Point-in-time recovery (PITR) allows you to restore an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database to any second within the backup retention period, using automated backups and transaction logs. By restoring to 2026-04-27 15:10 UTC, just before the bad delete occurred, you can recover the exact state without data loss, then cut over after validation.

Answer

Restore the latest automated snapshot and accept data loss from the last backup window.

Answer

Promote a read replica because it will contain the deleted rows and can replace the primary immediately.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ on the current database and wait for automatic failover to reverse the delete.

Question 4

A DynamoDB table for a retail API has a partition key based only on the current date. Write throttling occurs during business hours. What is the best design change? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions. A is correct because using a partition key based solely on the current date creates a hot partition — all writes for a given day go to a single partition, causing throttling during peak hours. Increasing the partition key's cardinality (e.g., by appending a random suffix or a user ID) distributes writes evenly across multiple partitions, allowing DynamoDB to use its full write capacity without throttling. This design change is enforceable during normal operations because it modifies the data model rather than relying on temporary capacity adjustments.

Answer

Create a global secondary index with the same date key

Answer

Reduce the table's write capacity

Answer

Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Question 5

You have an EC2 instance in private subnets with no NAT Gateway. The instance must access an Amazon S3 bucket (for example, to read configuration files) without sending traffic to the public internet. What VPC endpoint type should you use for S3?

Accepted Answer

Create a Gateway VPC endpoint for the S3 service. A Gateway VPC endpoint is the correct choice because it allows EC2 instances in a private subnet to access S3 without traversing the public internet. It uses prefix lists and route table entries to direct S3 traffic through AWS's internal network, and it does not require a NAT gateway, internet gateway, or public IP addresses. Gateway endpoints are free of charge and scale automatically, making them ideal for private subnet access to S3 and DynamoDB.

Answer

Create an Interface VPC endpoint (powered by PrivateLink) for S3

Answer

Use a Transit Gateway to route to S3 over the internet

Answer

Place a NAT Gateway and restrict security group egress to port 443 to reduce exposure

Question 6

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.

Accepted Answer

Launch all instances in a cluster placement group.. A cluster placement group provides low-latency, high-bandwidth network connectivity by placing instances in a single Availability Zone within the same logical rack or cluster. This minimizes cross-instance latency and maximizes throughput for frequent small-packet exchanges, which is ideal for tightly coupled distributed simulations.

Answer

Place the instances across several Availability Zones for higher aggregate resilience.

Answer

Use a spread placement group to pack the instances tightly together.

Answer

Put the workload behind CloudFront so internal node communication is faster.

Question 7

A containerized service runs in private subnets and retrieves secrets from AWS Secrets Manager and configuration parameters from AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store on startup. A NAT Gateway is currently used only for these AWS API calls, and the security team wants to eliminate that recurring charge. Which two endpoints should be added? Select two.

Accepted Answer

Create an interface VPC endpoint for AWS Secrets Manager.. Option A is correct because AWS Secrets Manager is accessed via API calls over HTTPS, and an interface VPC endpoint (powered by AWS PrivateLink) allows private connectivity to the service without traversing the internet or a NAT Gateway. This eliminates the need for the NAT Gateway for Secrets Manager traffic, reducing costs and improving security by keeping traffic within the AWS network.

Answer

Create a gateway VPC endpoint for Amazon S3 instead.

Answer

Add an Internet Gateway and send the traffic through public subnets.

Answer

Replace the NAT Gateway with a NAT instance.

Question 8

A developer accidentally deletes important rows in an RDS database. The mistake is discovered 45 minutes later. The database has automated backups enabled with a retention period of 7 days. What is the best way to restore the database to a point just before the deletion?

Accepted Answer

Use point-in-time restore (PITR) to restore the database to a specific timestamp before the deletion, based on automated backups.. Point-in-time restore (PITR) allows you to restore an RDS DB instance to any second within the automated backup retention period (here, 7 days). Since the deletion occurred 45 minutes ago, you can specify a timestamp just before the deletion, and RDS will replay the transaction logs to bring the database to that exact state. This is the most precise and efficient recovery method for accidental data modifications.

Answer

Restore the latest manual snapshot and then run SQL scripts to revert the deletion.

Answer

Promote an existing read replica to be the primary and then copy the missing rows from logs.

Answer

Recreate the instance using the most recent CloudWatch metric alarm snapshot of storage metrics.

Question 9

A high-volume analytics dashboard writes streaming click events that must be processed by multiple independent consumers. Which service is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is the most appropriate service because it is designed for real-time streaming data ingestion and can be consumed by multiple independent consumers in parallel. Each shard within a Kinesis stream supports up to 5 read transactions per second and a total data read rate of 2 MB per second, allowing multiple consumer applications to process the same stream of click events concurrently without interfering with each other.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

Amazon EBS

Answer

AWS DataSync

Question 10

A global mobile game backend serves mostly static images and JavaScript files from an S3 origin. Users in distant countries report slow load times. What should improve performance most?

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 files) at edge locations worldwide. By distributing content closer to users, it significantly reduces latency and improves load times for a global audience, making it the most effective solution for this use case.

Answer

RDS read replicas

Answer

A larger S3 bucket

Answer

An EC2 Auto Scaling group in one Region

Question 11

A high-volume analytics dashboard writes streaming click events that must be processed by multiple independent consumers. Which service is most appropriate? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is the correct choice because it is designed for real-time streaming data ingestion and processing by multiple independent consumers. Each consumer can read from the stream at its own pace using its own shard iterator, enabling parallel processing of click events without custom scripts. This aligns with the requirement for a high-volume analytics dashboard where multiple downstream applications need to consume the same stream independently.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

Amazon EBS

Answer

AWS DataSync

Question 12

A payments API requires point-in-time recovery and accidental-delete protection for a DynamoDB table. Which two settings should the architect enable?

Accepted Answer

Deletion protection or tightly controlled delete permissions. Deletion protection (Option A) prevents accidental table deletion by blocking DropTable API calls unless explicitly disabled, which is essential for protecting the payments table from human error or automated scripts. Point-in-time recovery (Option B) enables continuous backups with 35-day granularity, allowing restoration to any second within that window to recover from accidental writes or data corruption. Together, these settings satisfy both the point-in-time recovery and accidental-delete protection requirements for the DynamoDB table.

Answer

Global secondary indexes

Answer

DAX

Question 13

A document portal requires consistent high IOPS for a transactional database on EC2. Which EBS volume type is most suitable? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Provisioned IOPS SSD such as io2. Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes (io2) are designed for latency-sensitive transactional workloads that require consistent, high IOPS. They deliver a predictable performance level with a 99.9% durability guarantee, making them ideal for a database on EC2 without needing custom scripts to manage performance.

Answer

sc1 Cold HDD

Answer

Instance store only

Answer

st1 Throughput Optimized HDD

Question 14

A global application experiences frequent writes and must survive a full Regional outage with near-zero data loss. The product team also requires that users can continue to write during the incident using the closest Region. Which approach is most aligned with these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use an active/active design with multi-Region data replication (for example, global tables for the write-heavy datastore) and route traffic to multiple Regions based on health and latency.. Option A is correct because an active/active design with multi-Region data replication, such as Amazon DynamoDB global tables, allows writes to occur in any Region and replicates them to all other Regions with near-real-time latency (typically sub-second). This meets the requirement for near-zero data loss during a full Regional outage, as data is asynchronously replicated to multiple Regions, and users can continue writing to the closest healthy Region via Route 53 latency-based or geolocation routing.

Answer

Use warm standby with periodic backups of the primary write datastore every 24 hours.

Answer

Use pilot light where the secondary Region runs only infrastructure templates and starts data replication only after detecting failure.

Answer

Use a single-writer model in one Region and deploy read-only replicas in the other Region for continuity.

Question 15

A fintech company has a two-Region DR requirement: RPO must be within 15 minutes and RTO must be under 2 hours. To control cost, they do not want to run full production infrastructure in the secondary Region continuously. They plan to continuously replicate the database and keep the application infrastructure in the secondary Region prepared, but at reduced capacity. Which DR strategy best matches this requirement and accurately describes their plan?

Accepted Answer

Warm standby: keep the essential parts of the application running in the secondary Region at reduced capacity, while using database replication to meet the RPO.. Warm standby is the correct strategy because it runs a scaled-down version of the production application in the secondary Region continuously, with database replication (e.g., Amazon RDS Multi-Region or Aurora Global Database) meeting the 15-minute RPO. The reduced-capacity infrastructure can be scaled up within the 2-hour RTO during a disaster, balancing cost and recovery requirements.

Answer

Pilot light: keep only minimal components (for example, replicated storage and a small amount of core services), so the app scales up during a disaster.

Answer

Active-active: run the application fully in both Regions with synchronized writes and share traffic continuously.

Answer

Cold standby: store backups in the secondary Region and provision all infrastructure only during a disaster.

SAA-C03 Practice Test 50 — 15 Questions

Exhibit

SAA-C03 Practice Test 50 — 15 Questions

Exhibit