SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Test 16 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A retail API uses EC2 instances behind an ALB. CPU is consistently high during peak traffic, and request latency rises. What should be configured? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

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

Accepted Answer

Auto Scaling policy based on an appropriate CloudWatch metric. An Auto Scaling policy based on a CloudWatch metric like CPUUtilization or ALB TargetResponseTime can dynamically add or remove EC2 instances to match demand. This directly addresses the high CPU and rising latency during peak traffic without requiring custom scripts, as the scaling actions are fully managed by AWS. The ALB distributes traffic across the scaled instances, reducing per-instance load and improving response times.

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S3 Object Lock

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A VPC endpoint for CloudWatch only

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Disable health checks

Question 2

A document portal needs low-latency full-text search across product descriptions and filtered attributes. Which managed service is most suitable? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service. Amazon OpenSearch Service is the correct choice because it is a fully managed service that provides low-latency full-text search and filtering capabilities, ideal for indexing and searching product descriptions and attributes. It eliminates the need for custom operational scripts by handling cluster management, scaling, and backups automatically, aligning with the requirement to avoid custom operational overhead.

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AWS Config

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Amazon EFS

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Amazon SQS

Question 3

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.

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Amazon Route 53

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Amazon EBS

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AWS DataSync

Question 4

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? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as origin. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches static content at edge locations worldwide, reducing latency for users in distant countries by serving files from the nearest edge. Using the S3 bucket as the origin, CloudFront distributes the content globally without requiring any custom operational scripts, directly addressing the slow load times for static assets.

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RDS read replicas

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A larger S3 bucket

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An EC2 Auto Scaling group in one Region

Question 5

A DynamoDB table for a travel booking site has a partition key based only on the current date. Write throttling occurs during business hours. What is the best design change? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions. Using a low-cardinality partition key like the current date causes all writes to land on a single partition, leading to throttling. By designing a higher-cardinality key (e.g., combining date with a random suffix or user ID), writes are distributed evenly across partitions, fully utilizing the provisioned write capacity without custom scripts.

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Create a global secondary index with the same date key

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Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

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Reduce the table's write capacity

Question 6

A latency-sensitive video platform uploads large files to S3 from users around the world. Which two features can improve upload performance? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration. S3 Transfer Acceleration (B) uses AWS edge locations to route uploads over optimized network paths, reducing latency for users far from the destination bucket. S3 Multipart Upload (C) allows parallel uploads of file parts, improving throughput and resilience for large files. Both features enhance upload performance without requiring custom scripts.

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S3 Object Lock

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S3 Inventory

Question 7

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Provisioned concurrency during campaign windows. Provisioned concurrency initializes a specified number of execution environments in advance, eliminating cold starts during campaign windows. This ensures consistent response times for the Lambda-based retail API under unpredictable traffic spikes without requiring custom scripts.

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A larger deployment package

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Reserved concurrency only

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CloudTrail data events

Question 8

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route traffic from edge locations to the optimal regional endpoint, reducing latency and jitter for global users. It does not cache content, making it ideal for dynamic responses that cannot be cached. The service requires no custom scripts, as it integrates directly with the Application Load Balancer via a static IP address or DNS name.

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S3 Cross-Region Replication

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AWS Backup cross-Region copy

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CloudFront only with long TTLs

Question 9

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

RDS Proxy. RDS Proxy is the correct choice because it pools and shares database connections, reducing the overhead of establishing new connections for each Lambda invocation. This prevents connection storms by maintaining a persistent pool of connections to Aurora, which is ideal for short-lived, high-frequency connections from serverless functions like Lambda.

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An internet gateway

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S3 Select

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A larger Route 53 hosted zone

Question 10

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Auto Scaling policy based on an appropriate CloudWatch metric. An Auto Scaling policy based on a CloudWatch metric like CPUUtilization or request latency directly addresses the high CPU and rising latency by automatically adding EC2 instances during peak traffic. This eliminates the need for custom scripts and ensures the application scales horizontally to maintain performance.

Answer

A VPC endpoint for CloudWatch only

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

Disable health checks

Question 11

A media archive needs low-latency full-text search across product descriptions and filtered attributes. Which managed service is most suitable? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service. Amazon OpenSearch Service is the correct choice because it provides managed, low-latency full-text search capabilities with support for filtering on structured attributes (e.g., product categories, price ranges). It indexes JSON documents and exposes a RESTful API for search queries, eliminating the need for custom operational scripts while meeting the media archive's requirements.

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AWS Config

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Amazon EFS

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Amazon SQS

Question 12

A high-volume telemetry pipeline 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 designed for real-time streaming of high-volume data, such as click events, and allows multiple independent consumers to process the same stream concurrently via enhanced fan-out or shared throughput. It provides durable, ordered data retention and integrates with AWS Lambda, Kinesis Data Analytics, and Kinesis Data Firehose without requiring custom operational scripts.

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AWS DataSync

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Amazon EBS

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Amazon Route 53

Question 13

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 architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as origin. Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that caches static content (images, JavaScript) at edge locations closer to users, drastically reducing latency for distant countries. By using the S3 bucket as the origin, CloudFront offloads requests from S3 and accelerates delivery via HTTP/2, TCP optimizations, and persistent connections. This is the most effective managed AWS-native solution for improving global load times for static assets.

Answer

A larger S3 bucket

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RDS read replicas

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An EC2 Auto Scaling group in one Region

Question 14

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 architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.

Accepted Answer

Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions. Using only the current date as a partition key creates a hot partition because all writes for the day target a single partition, leading to throttling. A higher-cardinality partition key, such as a composite key combining date with a unique attribute like user ID or order ID, distributes writes evenly across multiple partitions, fully utilizing DynamoDB's provisioned throughput. This is the best managed-native solution to resolve write throttling without changing the table's capacity or moving data.

Answer

Create a global secondary index with the same date key

Answer

Reduce the table's write capacity

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Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Question 15

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 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 up to 10x read performance improvement, reducing read latency to microseconds for repeated queries. It offloads read traffic from the DynamoDB table, lowering consumed read capacity units and table load, making it ideal for read-heavy workloads with millisecond latency requirements. As a fully managed, AWS-native service, DAX aligns with the architecture review board's preference for managed controls.

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Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

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S3 Transfer Acceleration

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AWS Glue Data Catalog