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

Question 1

A read-heavy media archive repeatedly queries the same product catalogue data from DynamoDB with millisecond latency requirements. Which service can reduce read latency and table load? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX). DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache for DynamoDB that delivers microsecond read latency, directly addressing the millisecond requirement. By caching frequently accessed product catalogue data, DAX offloads read requests from the DynamoDB table, reducing table load and read capacity unit consumption. As a fully managed, AWS-native service, it aligns with the architecture review board's preference for managed controls.

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Answer

AWS Glue Data Catalog

Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 2

A telemetry pipeline 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. The correct answer is B because RDS read replicas are designed specifically to offload read-heavy workloads like reporting queries from the primary database. They provide an asynchronous read-only copy of the database that can handle SELECT statements without impacting the primary's write performance. This is a fully managed AWS-native solution that aligns with the architecture review board's preference.

Answer

Multi-AZ standby and route reads to the standby

Answer

S3 lifecycle policy

Answer

A larger NAT gateway

Question 3

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.

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 4

A Lambda-based retail API 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 architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Provisioned concurrency during campaign windows. Provisioned concurrency pre-warms a specified number of Lambda execution environments, eliminating cold starts during the campaign windows. This is a managed AWS-native feature that ensures consistent sub-100ms response times even under unpredictable traffic spikes, directly addressing the latency issue.

Answer

A larger deployment package

Answer

Reserved concurrency only

Answer

CloudTrail data events

Question 5

A document portal requires consistent high IOPS for a transactional database on EC2. Which EBS volume type is most suitable? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Provisioned IOPS SSD such as io2. The scenario requires consistent high IOPS for a transactional database, which demands low-latency, predictable performance. Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) is the only EBS volume type that allows you to specify a guaranteed IOPS rate independent of volume size, making it ideal for latency-sensitive transactional workloads. It is also a managed AWS-native service, satisfying the architecture review board's preference.

Answer

sc1 Cold HDD

Answer

Instance store only

Answer

st1 Throughput Optimized HDD

Question 6

A analytics dashboard uses an Application Load Balancer in one Region. Global users need lower network latency to the application without caching dynamic responses. What should be considered? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route traffic from edge locations to the Application Load Balancer, reducing internet latency and jitter. It does not cache responses, making it ideal for dynamic content where caching is not desired. This managed service provides static IP addresses and improves performance without modifying the application.

Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication

Answer

AWS Backup cross-Region copy

Answer

CloudFront only with long TTLs

Question 7

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.

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.

Answer

An internet gateway

Answer

S3 Select

Answer

A larger Route 53 hosted zone

Question 8

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. The correct answer is B because 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.

Answer

A VPC endpoint for CloudWatch only

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

Disable health checks

Question 9

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.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon SQS

Question 10

A high-volume telemetry pipeline writes streaming click events that must be processed by multiple independent consumers. Which service is most appropriate? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, AWS-native service designed for real-time streaming data ingestion and processing. It supports multiple independent consumers via enhanced fan-out, which provides each consumer with a dedicated throughput of up to 2 MB/sec per shard, ensuring that high-volume click events can be processed concurrently without contention.

Answer

AWS DataSync

Answer

Amazon EBS

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Question 11

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 12

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 13

A read-heavy document portal repeatedly queries the same product catalogue data from DynamoDB with millisecond latency requirements. Which service can reduce read latency and table load? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX). DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache specifically designed for DynamoDB that can reduce read latency from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds, while offloading read traffic from the underlying table. This directly addresses the read-heavy workload and millisecond latency requirements, and the team can enforce its use during normal operations by configuring the application to route reads through the DAX cluster endpoint.

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration

Answer

AWS Glue Data Catalog

Question 14

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 team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.

Accepted Answer

RDS read replica and route reporting queries to it. B is correct because an RDS read replica is designed to offload read-heavy workloads from the primary database instance. By routing reporting queries to the read replica, the primary database is freed from processing these read-only requests, improving overall performance. This solution is enforceable during normal operations as the read replica is always available for reads, unlike a Multi-AZ standby which is not accessible for reads.

Answer

S3 lifecycle policy

Answer

Multi-AZ standby and route reads to the standby

Answer

A larger NAT gateway

Question 15

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.

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

S3 Inventory