SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A latency-sensitive mobile game backend 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 multipart upload. B is correct because S3 multipart upload allows a large file to be broken into smaller parts and uploaded in parallel, which significantly reduces the impact of network latency and improves throughput. This is especially beneficial for latency-sensitive applications where upload speed is critical.

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

S3 Inventory

Question 2

A video platform 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 the correct choice because it manages a pool of reusable database connections, allowing Lambda functions to share and reuse connections rather than opening and closing them with each invocation. This eliminates connection storms by buffering short-lived connections from Lambda and reducing the load on the Aurora database, all as a fully managed AWS-native service.

Answer

S3 Select

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An internet gateway

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A larger Route 53 hosted zone

Question 3

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 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 (e.g., CPUUtilization or ALB RequestCountPerTarget) dynamically adds or removes EC2 instances to match demand, preventing sustained high CPU and rising latency. This is a managed, AWS-native control that aligns with the architecture review board's preference.

Answer

S3 Object Lock

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A VPC endpoint for CloudWatch only

Answer

Disable health checks

Question 4

A high-volume analytics dashboard 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 most appropriate service because it is a managed, AWS-native solution designed for real-time streaming data ingestion and processing. It durably stores records for up to 365 days and allows multiple independent consumers (e.g., Lambda, Kinesis Data Analytics, EC2) to read from the same stream concurrently using enhanced fan-out or shared throughput, meeting the requirement for high-volume click event processing.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

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Amazon EBS

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AWS DataSync

Question 5

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

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Reserved concurrency only

Answer

CloudTrail data events

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

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AWS Backup cross-Region copy

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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 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

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Amazon EFS

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Amazon SQS

Question 9

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

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Reduce the table's write capacity

Answer

Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Question 10

A latency-sensitive mobile game backend 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 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

Question 11

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.

Answer

A larger deployment package

Answer

CloudTrail data events

Answer

Reserved concurrency only

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 DAX (DynamoDB Accelerator). 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.

Answer

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

Answer

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ deployment

Answer

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

Amazon Redshift for long-term data storage and analytics. 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.

Answer

Amazon RDS for MySQL for storing processed results

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Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) for buffering events

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Amazon CloudWatch Logs for event storage

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

Answer

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

Answer

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.

Answer

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

Answer

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