SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Test 10 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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

RDS Proxy. RDS Proxy is a fully managed, AWS-native service that sits between Lambda functions and Aurora, pooling and reusing database connections. This prevents connection storms by reducing the overhead of establishing new connections for each short-lived Lambda invocation, and it also improves scalability and resilience by handling failover transparently.

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An internet gateway

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S3 Select

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A larger Route 53 hosted zone

Question 2

A travel booking site uses EC2 instances behind an ALB. CPU is consistently high during peak traffic, and request latency rises. What should be configured? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Auto Scaling policy based on an appropriate CloudWatch metric. An Auto Scaling policy based on an appropriate CloudWatch metric (such as CPUUtilization or request latency) dynamically adds or removes EC2 instances to match demand. This managed AWS-native control directly addresses high CPU and rising latency during peak traffic by scaling out capacity, which is the preferred approach per the architecture review board's requirement for a managed solution.

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A VPC endpoint for CloudWatch only

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S3 Object Lock

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Disable health checks

Question 3

A media archive needs low-latency full-text search across product descriptions and filtered attributes. Which managed service is most suitable? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service. Amazon OpenSearch Service is the correct choice because it is a managed, AWS-native service that provides low-latency full-text search and supports filtering on structured attributes. It is purpose-built for indexing and searching large volumes of text data, such as product descriptions, with sub-second response times. The architecture review board's preference for a managed AWS-native control is satisfied, as OpenSearch Service handles cluster management, scaling, and backups automatically.

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AWS Config

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Amazon EFS

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Amazon SQS

Question 4

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.

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A larger S3 bucket

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RDS read replicas

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An EC2 Auto Scaling group in one Region

Question 5

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.

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Create a global secondary index with the same date key

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Reduce the table's write capacity

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Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Question 6

A latency-sensitive mobile game backend uploads large files to S3 from users around the world. Which two features can improve upload performance? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

S3 multipart upload. S3 multipart upload is correct because it allows large files to be uploaded in parallel parts, significantly reducing the impact of network latency and improving throughput. This is ideal for a latency-sensitive mobile game backend where users worldwide upload large files, as it enables faster uploads by splitting the file into smaller chunks that can be uploaded concurrently.

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S3 Object Lock

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S3 Inventory

Question 7

A Lambda-based travel booking site has unpredictable traffic spikes and users see latency caused by cold starts. The function must respond consistently during expected campaign windows. What should be configured? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

Provisioned concurrency during campaign windows. Provisioned concurrency initializes a specified number of execution environments in advance, eliminating cold starts for those instances. During campaign windows, this ensures consistent latency by keeping functions warm and ready to handle spikes immediately. The team can enforce this configuration only during expected high-traffic periods, leaving normal operations unaffected.

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A larger deployment package

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CloudTrail data events

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Reserved concurrency only

Question 8

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.

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st1 Throughput Optimized HDD

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Instance store only

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sc1 Cold HDD

Question 9

A company needs to implement session management for a web application. Sessions must persist across multiple EC2 instances, survive EC2 failures, and be accessible with sub-millisecond latency. Sessions must also be sortable by last-access time to expire the oldest sessions first. Which caching solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis with sessions stored as sorted sets. Amazon ElastiCache for Redis satisfies all requirements: multi-instance session sharing (sessions stored externally), sub-millisecond latency, survival of EC2 failures (stored outside instances), and sorted sets (ZSET data structure) for ordering sessions by last-access score.

Memcached supports only simple key-value pairs — it cannot perform sorted set operations to order sessions by last-access time. Memcached also lacks replication, meaning a node failure loses all cached sessions.

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Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached with session data stored as key-value pairs

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Amazon DynamoDB with TTL enabled for session expiration

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ElastiCache for Redis with sticky sessions enabled on the Application Load Balancer

Question 10

A company needs to replicate a DynamoDB table to three AWS regions so that users in each region can read and write to a local copy with the lowest possible latency. Changes must propagate to all regions within seconds. Which solution should a solutions architect implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure DynamoDB Global Tables with replica tables in each of the three regions. DynamoDB Global Tables provide multi-region, multi-active (multi-master) replication. Each region maintains a full replica of the table, and applications can read and write to any region with local latency. Changes propagate to all other regions typically within one second.

DynamoDB Streams + Lambda is the underlying mechanism that Global Tables uses internally, but building a custom replication pipeline adds significant operational complexity. Global Tables is the managed, purpose-built solution requiring no custom code.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB Streams and use Lambda functions to replicate changes to tables in the other two regions

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Create DynamoDB read replicas in each region and use the primary table for all writes

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Use Amazon S3 cross-region replication to back up DynamoDB exports to each region

Question 11

A company is deploying a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster with 16 EC2 instances. The workload requires the lowest possible network latency and highest throughput between all nodes for tightly coupled parallel MPI computations. Which EC2 placement group type should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Cluster placement group. Cluster placement groups pack instances physically close together within a single Availability Zone, providing the lowest possible network latency and highest network throughput between instances. They support enhanced networking (SR-IOV) and Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for inter-node MPI communication.

Tightly coupled parallel HPC workloads require all nodes to communicate frequently with minimal latency. Cluster placement groups are specifically designed for this use case. The trade-off is all instances are in one AZ — if the AZ fails, the entire cluster is affected.

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Partition placement group

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Spread placement group

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No placement group — use Auto Scaling across multiple AZs

Question 12

A financial services application requires high-performance read access to a time-series dataset that is frequently updated with new records. The workload is write-heavy during market hours and read-heavy for reporting. The solution must support strong consistency and low-latency queries on a single key. Which three AWS services or features should be used together to meet these requirements? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon DynamoDB with Auto Scaling enabled for reads and writes. Amazon DynamoDB with DAX (DynamoDB Accelerator) is correct because DAX provides an in-memory cache that reduces read latency from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds for strongly consistent reads, directly addressing the high-performance read requirement for a time-series dataset. DynamoDB with Auto Scaling enabled for reads and writes is correct because it automatically adjusts throughput capacity based on traffic patterns, handling the write-heavy workload during market hours and read-heavy reporting without manual intervention. DynamoDB strongly consistent reads configured on the table is correct because it ensures that all read operations return the most up-to-date data, meeting the strong consistency requirement for financial applications where stale reads are unacceptable.

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Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ deployment

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Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage class

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Amazon DynamoDB global tables for multi-Region replication

Question 13

A company is designing a high-performance architecture for a real-time analytics platform that ingests millions of events per second. The events must be processed with minimal latency and then stored for long-term analysis. Which three services should be combined to build this architecture? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda for real-time event processing. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is correct because it is designed for real-time data ingestion of millions of events per second with low latency, providing durable storage and ordered processing. AWS Lambda is correct because it can process events from Kinesis in near real-time with automatic scaling, making it ideal for minimal-latency processing. Amazon Redshift is correct because it is a petabyte-scale data warehouse optimized for long-term storage and complex analytics on large datasets, supporting high-performance queries.

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Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) for buffering events

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Amazon CloudWatch Logs for event storage

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Amazon RDS for MySQL for storing processed results

Question 14

Arrange the steps to migrate an on-premises database to Amazon RDS using AWS DMS.

Accepted Answer

Prepare source database → Set up DMS replication instance → Create source and target endpoints → Create and run migration task → Monitor and cutover. Source preparation first, then DMS infrastructure, endpoints, task, and monitoring/cutover.

Answer

Set up DMS replication instance → Create source and target endpoints → Prepare source database → Create and run migration task → Monitor and cutover

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Create source and target endpoints → Set up DMS replication instance → Prepare source database → Create and run migration task → Monitor and cutover

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Prepare source database → Create source and target endpoints → Set up DMS replication instance → Create and run migration task → Monitor and cutover

Question 15

Arrange the steps to troubleshoot an EC2 instance that is unreachable via SSH.

Accepted Answer

Check Security Group rules first, then Network ACLs, then route tables, then public IP assignment, and finally OS-level logs.. Start with security group, then NACL, routing, public IP, and finally OS-level logs.

Answer

Check public IP assignment first, then Security Group rules, then route tables, then Network ACLs, then OS-level logs.

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Check OS-level logs first, then Security Group rules, then Network ACLs, then route tables, then public IP assignment.

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Check route tables first, then Network ACLs, then Security Group rules, then public IP assignment, then OS-level logs.