SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A telemetry pipeline 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?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator uses the Anycast IP address concept to route traffic through the AWS global network to the optimal endpoint, reducing latency and jitter for global users. It does not cache content, making it ideal for dynamic responses that cannot be cached, and it integrates directly with an Application Load Balancer in a single Region.

Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication

Answer

CloudFront only with long TTLs

Answer

AWS Backup cross-Region copy

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?

Accepted Answer

RDS Proxy. RDS Proxy sits between Lambda functions and the Aurora database, pooling and reusing database connections. This prevents the Lambda functions from overwhelming the database with many short-lived connections, which can cause connection storms and degrade performance. RDS Proxy also reduces the overhead of establishing new connections and improves scalability.

Answer

S3 Select

Answer

An internet gateway

Answer

A larger Route 53 hosted zone

Question 3

A document portal needs low-latency full-text search across product descriptions and filtered attributes. Which managed service is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service. Amazon OpenSearch Service is purpose-built for full-text search, log analytics, and real-time application monitoring. It provides low-latency indexing and querying of unstructured and semi-structured data, making it ideal for searching product descriptions and filtering attributes. The service uses a RESTful API and supports advanced query DSL for complex search operations.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon SQS

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?

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 files) at edge locations worldwide. By distributing content closer to users, it significantly reduces latency and improves load times for a global audience, making it the most effective solution for this use case.

Answer

RDS read replicas

Answer

A larger S3 bucket

Answer

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?

Accepted Answer

Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions. Using a low-cardinality partition key like the current date concentrates all writes into a single partition, causing throttling when write demand exceeds that partition's 1,000 WCU limit. A higher-cardinality key (e.g., combining date with user ID or session ID) distributes writes evenly across multiple partitions, allowing the table to use its full provisioned write capacity without throttling.

Answer

Create a global secondary index with the same date key

Answer

Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Answer

Reduce the table's write capacity

Question 6

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?

Accepted Answer

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX). DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is a fully managed, in-memory cache for DynamoDB that delivers up to 10x read performance improvement by reducing response times from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds. For a read-heavy workload repeatedly querying the same product catalogue data, DAX caches the hot items, offloading read requests from the DynamoDB table and significantly reducing table read capacity consumption.

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Answer

AWS Glue Data Catalog

Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 7

A latency-sensitive video platform uploads large files to S3 from users around the world. Which two features can improve upload performance?

Accepted Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration. S3 Transfer Acceleration (B) uses AWS edge locations to route uploads over optimized network paths, reducing latency and packet loss for global users. S3 multipart upload (C) allows large files to be uploaded in parallel parts, improving throughput and enabling retries of individual parts without restarting the entire upload.

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

S3 Inventory

Question 8

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?

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 latency even under unpredictable traffic spikes, as the function is always warm and ready to handle requests immediately.

Answer

A larger deployment package

Answer

Reserved concurrency only

Answer

CloudTrail data events

Question 9

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?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network and Anycast IPs to route traffic to the optimal Regional endpoint, reducing latency for global users without caching dynamic responses. It does not cache content, so dynamic data is always fetched from the origin, meeting the requirement of no caching while improving network performance via the AWS backbone.

Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication

Answer

AWS Backup cross-Region copy

Answer

CloudFront only with long TTLs

Question 10

A media archive needs low-latency full-text search across product descriptions and filtered attributes. Which managed service is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Amazon OpenSearch Service. Amazon OpenSearch Service is the correct choice because it provides a managed, scalable solution for full-text search and real-time analytics on large volumes of data. It supports low-latency queries across product descriptions and filtered attributes through its inverted index and query DSL, making it ideal for media archive search use cases.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon SQS

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 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 (images, JavaScript files) at edge locations worldwide. By distributing content closer to users, it reduces latency and improves load times for distant countries without requiring any custom operational scripts or changes to the S3 bucket.

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

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, exceeding its 1,000 WCU limit. A higher-cardinality partition key (e.g., combining date with user ID or order ID) distributes writes evenly across partitions, eliminating throttling without custom scripts.

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX). DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache for DynamoDB that delivers microsecond read latency, reducing the number of read requests hitting the underlying table. It requires no custom scripts—just a DAX cluster endpoint—and automatically caches frequently accessed items, making it ideal for a read-heavy document portal with millisecond latency requirements.

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Accepted Answer

RDS read replica and route reporting queries to it. RDS read replicas are designed specifically to offload read-heavy workloads from the primary DB instance. By routing reporting queries to a read replica, the primary database is freed from processing those queries, reducing contention and improving overall performance. This approach requires no custom scripts—AWS handles replication automatically.

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 design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

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 latency and packet loss over long distances. This feature is built into S3 and requires no custom scripts, making it ideal for a latency-sensitive mobile game backend.

Answer

S3 Object Lock

Answer

S3 Inventory