SAA-C03 Practice Exam 60 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A latency-sensitive video platform uploads large files to S3 from users around the world. Which two features can improve upload performance? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

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

Accepted Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration. S3 Transfer Acceleration (B) uses AWS edge locations to accelerate uploads over long distances by routing traffic through the AWS global network, reducing latency and packet loss compared to the public internet. Multipart upload (C) improves performance by splitting large files into smaller parts that can be uploaded in parallel, increasing throughput and allowing retries of individual parts without restarting the entire upload.

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

S3 Inventory

Question 2

A startup runs a stateless web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. Traffic is steady during the day but drops to almost zero overnight, and the team wants to reduce compute cost without manual intervention or a service interruption. Which action should the team take?

Accepted Answer

Create a scheduled scaling action on an Auto Scaling group that reduces the desired capacity at night and restores it each morning.. The workload has a predictable daily pattern, which is exactly what scheduled scaling on an Auto Scaling group is designed for. Reducing desired capacity overnight and restoring it in the morning lowers compute spend while the group and load balancer keep the application available. Connection draining on the ALB ensures in-flight requests finish before instances terminate, so users see no interruption.

Answer

Replace the Auto Scaling group with a single large EC2 instance and use Elastic Load Balancing health checks.

Answer

Attach an Amazon EBS volume with higher IOPS to each instance to reduce the number of instances needed.

Answer

Switch to Spot Instances for the entire fleet and rely on capacity-optimized allocation.

Question 3

A logistics company runs a REST API on Amazon ECS using the Fargate launch type behind an Application Load Balancer. The API's response times are acceptable, but the operations team wants to reduce the number of database calls per request by caching frequently accessed reference data in memory inside the tasks. The data changes infrequently and slight staleness is acceptable. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Implement an in-process cache in the application code that loads reference data at task startup and refreshes it periodically.. Caching reference data in the application's own process memory means each request is served locally with no database or network call, which is the most direct way to reduce per-request database calls. Because the data is small, changes rarely, and tolerates slight staleness, periodic refresh is simple and effective. External caches like Redis or Memcached still require a network call, and EFS is storage rather than memory.

Answer

Store the reference data in an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster and have tasks query it on each request.

Answer

Enable Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached and configure automatic discovery of cache nodes.

Answer

Use the ECS task definition to mount an Amazon EFS file system containing the reference data.

Question 4

A company runs an internal analytics application on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The database is used heavily from 08:00 to 18:00 on weekdays, but outside those hours it receives almost no queries. The company must keep the database available at all times and cannot tolerate downtime during business hours. The team wants to reduce the cost of running this database. Which approach is the MOST cost-effective while meeting the availability requirement?

Accepted Answer

Migrate the workload to Aurora Serverless v2 with a minimum capacity that scales down during idle periods.. The workload has a sharp, predictable busy period and long idle windows, yet the database must remain available at all times. Aurora Serverless v2 capacity scales down during idle periods without stopping the database, so the company pays far less during the quiet hours while preserving continuous availability, which is the most cost-effective option that satisfies the constraint.

Answer

Convert the DB instance to a Multi-AZ deployment and purchase a Reserved Instance for the primary instance.

Answer

Enable Aurora Auto Scaling with a reader endpoint and route all read queries to the reader.

Answer

Stop the DB instance every evening and start it again each weekday morning.

Question 5

A data engineering team runs a nightly ETL job on EC2. The job can be checkpointed every 5 minutes and can be retried from the last checkpoint if the instance terminates. The job runtime varies from 2 to 4 hours, and the team has no need for a specific instance type, as long as it completes before 7:00 AM local time. They currently run the job on On-Demand EC2, leading to high monthly compute cost.

Which change best reduces cost while maintaining the business deadline?

Accepted Answer

Use Spot Instances for the ETL workload, and configure the job to checkpoint frequently and restart on interruption.. Spot Instances offer significant cost savings (up to 90%) compared to On-Demand, and the ETL job's ability to checkpoint every 5 minutes and restart from the last checkpoint makes it resilient to Spot interruptions. This allows the team to meet the 7:00 AM deadline while drastically reducing compute costs, as the job can be retried on new Spot capacity if interrupted.

Answer

Use Reserved Instances with a 1-year term to lower costs, since reservations provide discounts for any usage.

Answer

Switch to On-Demand but enable Auto Scaling so the job finishes faster during peak hours.

Answer

Use Spot Instances but disable checkpointing to simplify the application.

Question 6

A healthcare company needs to store patient records in Amazon DynamoDB. The records must be highly available and durable across multiple Availability Zones. The company also requires the ability to recover the table to any point in time within the last 35 days in case of accidental writes or deletions. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a DynamoDB table and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).. DynamoDB tables are automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones within a Region, ensuring high availability and durability. Enabling point-in-time recovery (PITR) provides continuous backups and allows restoration to any point in time within the last 35 days. This combination meets the requirements without additional configuration such as global tables or secondary indexes.

Answer

Create a DynamoDB table with a read replica in another AWS Region and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Answer

Create a DynamoDB table with a global secondary index and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Answer

Create a DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity mode and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Question 7

A media company serves video thumbnails from an Amazon S3 bucket in us-east-1 to viewers across Europe and Asia. The thumbnails are immutable after upload and are requested repeatedly by the same users. The company wants to reduce latency for the global audience and reduce data transfer costs, and it does not want to modify application code. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational effort?

Accepted Answer

Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as origin, enable caching, and configure an origin access control.. CloudFront is the AWS content delivery network that caches objects at edge locations worldwide, so repeated thumbnail requests from Europe and Asia are served close to viewers instead of from us-east-1. Because the objects are immutable, cache hit ratios stay high, cutting origin fetches and S3 egress charges. Origin access control keeps the bucket private, and the application continues to use the distribution domain without code changes.

Answer

Replicate the bucket to eu-west-1 and ap-southeast-1 using S3 Cross-Region Replication, and have the application select the nearest bucket.

Answer

Attach an S3 bucket policy that allows public read and place an Application Load Balancer in front of the bucket.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and update the application to use the accelerated endpoint.

Question 8

A solutions architect is optimizing the cost of a serverless data-processing pipeline. The pipeline uses AWS Lambda functions that process messages from an Amazon SQS queue and write results to Amazon DynamoDB. The team observes that Lambda invocations spike unpredictably, DynamoDB is provisioned with high capacity that is often idle, and the SQS queue occasionally accumulates a large backlog. Which two changes will most directly reduce cost while preserving the pipeline's ability to handle bursts? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Switch the DynamoDB table from provisioned capacity to on-demand capacity mode.. The two most direct cost levers are matching DynamoDB billing to actual traffic by using on-demand capacity, and reducing Lambda invocation count by batching SQS messages with long polling. Together they eliminate idle provisioned capacity and cut per-invocation charges, while both changes preserve the ability to absorb unpredictable bursts without throttling the pipeline.

Answer

Increase the Lambda function's memory allocation to shorten execution time.

Answer

Configure the Lambda function's reserved concurrency to a low fixed value to cap scaling.

Answer

Move the SQS queue to a FIFO queue to improve ordering and throughput.

Question 9

A logistics company runs a stateless order-tracking API on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The architect must ensure the API survives the loss of an entire Availability Zone and that unhealthy instances are replaced automatically. (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Attach an Application Load Balancer target group health check and enable ELB health checks on the Auto Scaling group so unhealthy instances are terminated and replaced. Zone-level resilience with EC2 Auto Scaling requires the group to span multiple Availability Zones with enough desired capacity to run in each, so a single zone failure leaves serving capacity. Automatic replacement of unhealthy instances requires ELB health checks on the group, which makes the group act on the load balancer's health determination rather than only EC2 status checks. Together these two settings deliver the required survival and self-healing behaviour.

Answer

Enable termination protection on all EC2 instances so the Auto Scaling group cannot remove them during a zone failure

Answer

Create a second Auto Scaling group in a different Region and use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to distribute traffic

Answer

Place the instances in a single Availability Zone and enable detailed CloudWatch monitoring with a 1-minute granularity

Question 10

A SaaS provider runs a multi-tenant application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. Tenants are identified by a subdomain, and each tenant's data is stored in a separate Amazon S3 bucket. The provider wants HTTPS with a single certificate, automatic renewal, and the ability to add new tenant subdomains without redeploying or replacing the certificate. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Request a public certificate in AWS Certificate Manager for the apex domain and a wildcard for its subdomains, validate it with DNS, and attach it to the Application Load Balancer HTTPS listener.. A public ACM certificate that includes the apex domain and a wildcard for its subdomains covers every current and future tenant hostname. DNS validation lets ACM renew the certificate automatically while the validation records persist, and attaching the certificate to the Application Load Balancer listener provides HTTPS termination without touching the application when new tenants are onboarded.

Answer

Import a self-signed certificate covering all current tenant subdomains into AWS Certificate Manager and attach it to the Application Load Balancer listener.

Answer

Terminate TLS on the EC2 instances using certificates issued by AWS Private Certificate Authority, and pass traffic from the Application Load Balancer to the instances over HTTP.

Answer

Store the private key and certificate in AWS Secrets Manager, and configure the Application Load Balancer to retrieve and rotate the certificate at each renewal.

Question 11

A partner company needs read-only access to reports in an S3 bucket for a customer analytics portal. The partner has its own AWS account. What is the most secure scalable access pattern?

Accepted Answer

Create a bucket policy that grants the partner role least-privilege access to the required prefix. A bucket policy that grants the partner's IAM role (from the partner's AWS account) least-privilege access to a specific prefix is the most secure and scalable pattern. This uses cross-account IAM roles, avoiding long-term credentials and allowing the partner to manage their own users and permissions. The bucket policy explicitly trusts the partner's AWS account, and the partner assumes the role to access only the required objects, following the principle of least privilege.

Answer

Make the objects public and rely on difficult-to-guess object names

Answer

Copy the objects to a public website bucket

Answer

Create an IAM user in the company account and share the access keys

Question 12

A company runs a containerized order-processing service on Amazon ECS with the Fargate launch type. The service scales out during business hours and scales down to a small baseline overnight. Usage is expected to remain stable for the next two years, and the team wants to reduce Fargate cost without managing any servers. Which action should the solutions architect take?

Accepted Answer

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan that covers the steady Fargate baseline usage. Compute Savings Plans explicitly cover Fargate vCPU and memory usage, so they reduce cost for a serverless container workload without requiring any infrastructure management. Sizing the commitment to the guaranteed overnight baseline discounts the portion of usage that will certainly occur, while the elastic daytime capacity continues to bill at On-Demand rates without over-committing the company.

Answer

Enable Fargate Spot for the entire service and remove the On-Demand baseline

Answer

Purchase a 1-year EC2 Instance Savings Plan sized to the nightly baseline

Answer

Migrate the service to the EC2 launch type and purchase Reserved Instances for the baseline

Question 13

A marketing site has EC2 instances that are oversized based on CPU, memory, and network utilisation. Which AWS service should identify rightsizing recommendations?

Accepted Answer

AWS Compute Optimizer. AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes historical utilization metrics (CPU, memory, network, and storage) from CloudWatch and uses machine learning to identify over-provisioned or under-provisioned EC2 instances. It generates actionable rightsizing recommendations, including instance type changes, to optimize cost and performance. This directly addresses the scenario of oversized EC2 instances.

Answer

AWS Shield

Answer

AWS DataSync

Answer

AWS Artifact

Question 14

A startup runs a small internal tool on a single Amazon EC2 instance that uses an instance store volume for its database files. After a routine host maintenance event, the instance rebooted and the database was empty. The team wants the data to persist independently of the instance lifecycle and to survive a stop-and-start of the instance. What should they change?

Accepted Answer

Move the database files to an Amazon EBS volume attached to the instance.. Instance store volumes are physically attached to the host and their contents are lost when the host stops, fails, or is replaced during maintenance. Amazon EBS volumes live separately from the instance and retain data across stop and start, making them the correct storage layer for a database that must persist. The other options address compute lifecycle or monitoring rather than data durability.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the instance and take an AMI of the instance before each maintenance window.

Answer

Increase the size of the instance store volume and enable detailed monitoring on the instance.

Answer

Place the instance in an Auto Scaling group with a minimum capacity of one so it is relaunched after maintenance.

Question 15

A financial services firm runs a latency-sensitive trading application on Amazon EC2 instances distributed across three Availability Zones behind a Network Load Balancer. The application must continue serving traffic with no manual intervention if an entire Availability Zone becomes impaired, and each instance must receive a fair share of connections. Which combination of features meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Network Load Balancer and register targets in all three Availability Zones. Cross-zone load balancing on a Network Load Balancer spreads incoming connections evenly across registered targets in all enabled Availability Zones, which is exactly what the fair-share requirement demands. Registering targets in three zones lets health checks detect an impaired zone and remove its targets so the remaining instances absorb traffic without operator action. The other options either bypass health checking, bind clients to single targets, or rely on slow DNS-based failover.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer with sticky sessions enabled and register targets in all three Availability Zones

Answer

Attach an Elastic IP address to each instance and have clients connect directly using a published list of addresses

Answer

Create a Network Load Balancer with one target group per Availability Zone and rely on DNS failover between the groups

Question 16

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?

Accepted Answer

Use CloudFront Origin Access Control (OAC) or Origin Access Identity (OAI) and update the bucket policy to allow only CloudFront.. CloudFront Origin Access Control (OAC) or Origin Access Identity (OAI) allows you to restrict direct access to an S3 bucket by configuring the bucket policy to grant read permissions only to the CloudFront distribution's service principal. This ensures that users can only retrieve thumbnails through CloudFront, leveraging its caching and security features, while blocking any direct S3 requests.

Answer

Keep the bucket public and rely on signed cookies for all thumbnail requests.

Answer

Enable S3 static website hosting so users access thumbnails directly from the S3 website endpoint.

Answer

Set S3 bucket permissions to allow all IAM users and block access only by using a WAF rule at CloudFront.

Question 17

A payments platform requires disaster recovery across Regions. Requirements: RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of about 1 hour. The business cannot afford full duplicate capacity in both Regions all the time, but the team wants automated readiness so failover is mostly operationally guided rather than a slow rebuild. Which DR strategy is the best fit?

Accepted Answer

Warm standby, keeping core infrastructure and a partially provisioned environment ready in the secondary Region with frequent data replication.. Warm standby is the best fit because it maintains a partially provisioned environment in the secondary Region with core infrastructure (e.g., a smaller EC2 instance fleet, a replicated database) and uses frequent data replication (e.g., Amazon RDS cross-Region replication or DynamoDB global tables) to achieve an RPO of 15 minutes. The RTO of about 1 hour is achievable by scaling up the standby environment and redirecting traffic, which is faster than a full rebuild but avoids the cost of full duplicate capacity. This balances the business constraint of not affording active/active with the need for automated readiness and guided failover.

Answer

Backup and restore only, relying on scheduled snapshots and manual restores during incidents.

Answer

Pilot light, keeping only minimal infrastructure in the secondary Region and starting full services after failover.

Answer

Active/active, routing production traffic to both Regions continuously and accepting dual-region complexity.

Question 18

A company runs a media-processing pipeline that ingests thousands of small files per minute into Amazon S3 and triggers AWS Lambda functions for each object. Processing each file takes 2-3 seconds, and the team is seeing throttling errors and duplicated processing under load. They want to decouple ingestion from processing, buffer bursty traffic, and avoid duplicate deliveries to Lambda. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Amazon S3 event notification to send events to an Amazon SQS standard queue, then have Lambda poll the queue with a batch size of 10 and a visibility timeout longer than the processing time.. Decoupling ingestion from processing with an SQS queue lets the pipeline absorb bursts while Lambda scales consumers based on backlog depth. A visibility timeout longer than the function execution time ensures that a message is not redelivered before processing completes, which prevents duplicates. Direct invocation from S3 does not provide buffering, and concurrency or acceleration features do not solve throttling or duplicate delivery.

Answer

Increase the Lambda reserved concurrency to the maximum account limit and keep the direct S3 event notification to Lambda, so functions run in parallel and finish faster.

Answer

Use an S3 event notification to invoke an AWS Step Functions state machine that processes each file and retries on failure, with a Map state for parallelism.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and configure Lambda provisioned concurrency to handle the burst of events without cold starts.

Question 19

A company runs a steady-state web application on a fixed number of Amazon EC2 instances that have been running continuously for over a year. The workload is predictable and will remain in production for at least three more years. Management wants to reduce compute cost without changing the architecture. Which purchasing option should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Purchase a 3-year Compute Savings Plan with a partial upfront payment for the steady EC2 usage.. For predictable, long-running EC2 usage, a Compute Savings Plan provides a lower effective hourly rate in exchange for a term commitment. It is flexible across instance families and Regions, so it reduces cost without requiring the application to change. Spot risks interruption, On-Demand forgoes discounts, and Dedicated Instances raise cost rather than lower it.

Answer

Use On-Demand Instances and enable detailed monitoring to improve utilization visibility.

Answer

Move the application to Dedicated Instances to obtain volume discounts on the hourly rate.

Answer

Convert the instances to Spot Instances to take advantage of unused EC2 capacity.

Question 20

A media company runs a video transcoding pipeline on Amazon EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone. The pipeline writes intermediate files to an Amazon EBS volume attached to each instance. The company needs the pipeline to survive the failure of any single Availability Zone and to recover automatically with minimal data loss. Which change should a solutions architect make?

Accepted Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones and store intermediate files in an Amazon S3 bucket.. Storing intermediate files in Amazon S3 decouples the pipeline from any single Availability Zone because S3 is a regional, highly durable service. An Auto Scaling group spanning multiple Availability Zones automatically replaces instances when a zone fails, and replacement instances retrieve the intermediate files from S3, minimizing data loss and manual recovery effort.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones and configure each instance to store intermediate files on an instance store volume.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones and use Amazon EBS Multi-Attach volumes shared across all instances.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group in one Availability Zone and take scheduled EBS snapshots every hour to another Availability Zone.