SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Test 20 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application hosted on AWS. The application runs on EC2 instances with data stored in Amazon EBS volumes and Amazon S3. The recovery time objective (RTO) is 15 minutes, and the recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour. Which three strategies would help meet these objectives? (Choose three.)

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

Accepted Answer

Replicate critical data to S3 in the disaster recovery region using S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR).. AWS Backup can create hourly snapshots of EBS volumes and copy them to a different AWS Region, meeting the 1-hour RPO by ensuring backups are taken every hour. S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) asynchronously replicates objects to a bucket in another region, keeping data synchronized within minutes and supporting the RPO. Amazon Route 53 with a failover routing policy and health checks can automatically redirect traffic to the DR region within seconds to minutes, enabling the 15-minute RTO by quickly failing over to pre-prepared infrastructure.

Answer

Store Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) in the source region and use AWS Lambda to copy them after a disaster.

Answer

Set up an AWS Direct Connect link between the primary and DR regions for faster data transfer.

Answer

Pre-provision EC2 instances in the disaster recovery region and keep them running 24/7.

Question 2

A company is designing a multi-Region disaster recovery (DR) strategy for a stateless web application running on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses an Amazon RDS for MySQL database as its data store. The architecture must provide rapid failover with the lowest possible Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Which of the following design choices will help achieve these objectives? (Choose four.)

Accepted Answer

Store static assets and application state in Amazon S3 with cross-Region replication enabled, and serve them via Amazon CloudFront.. An active-passive failover strategy with Route 53 failover routing policy is correct because it provides rapid failover by directing traffic to the secondary Region only when health checks fail in the primary, minimizing RTO. Cross-Region read replicas with automatic failover are correct because they allow promoting a read replica to a primary in the secondary Region with low RPO (typically seconds) and automated failover, reducing RTO. Active-active configuration with latency-based routing is correct because it distributes traffic across both Regions, enabling immediate failover without DNS propagation delays, achieving very low RTO. Storing static assets and application state in S3 with cross-Region replication and CloudFront is correct because it ensures data durability and low-latency access, supporting rapid recovery with minimal RPO.

Answer

Set up Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment to enable automatic failover to a standby replica in a different Availability Zone within the primary Region.

Answer

Use an Amazon RDS for MySQL single-AZ deployment in the primary Region and take daily snapshots copied to the secondary Region.

Question 3

A solutions architect is designing a highly available and resilient architecture for a critical internal application that processes financial transactions. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances inside an Auto Scaling group. The database layer uses an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster. The company requires that if an entire AWS Availability Zone (AZ) fails, the application must remain operational with minimal impact and automatically recover without manual intervention. Which combination of architectural decisions will meet these requirements? (Choose four.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to span at least three Availability Zones in the same AWS Region.. Configuring the Auto Scaling group to span at least three Availability Zones ensures that if one AZ fails, the remaining AZs have sufficient capacity to handle the load, and the Auto Scaling group can automatically launch new instances in the healthy AZs. Deploying the Aurora cluster with at least one Aurora Replica in a different AZ than the primary instance provides automatic failover to a replica in under 30 seconds, ensuring database resilience without manual intervention. Using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic across EC2 instances in multiple AZs allows the ALB to automatically route traffic away from failed AZs and only to healthy targets, maintaining application availability. Setting up an Amazon RDS Proxy manages database connections by pooling and reusing them, which reduces the load on the database during failover and improves resilience by providing seamless connection handling across AZ failures.

Answer

Deploy the Aurora cluster with a single DB instance to reduce complexity and cost.

Answer

Place the EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone to ensure data locality with the primary database.

Question 4

Order the steps to create a static website using Amazon S3 and CloudFront.

Accepted Answer

Create S3 bucket and enable static website hosting, then upload website files, then create CloudFront distribution, then configure CloudFront distribution (e.g., custom domain, SSL), then update DNS to point to CloudFront.. S3 bucket with hosting, upload files, CloudFront distribution, configure CloudFront, then DNS.

Answer

Upload website files to S3, then create S3 bucket and enable static website hosting, then create CloudFront distribution, then configure CloudFront, then update DNS.

Answer

Create S3 bucket and enable static website hosting, then create CloudFront distribution, then upload website files, then configure CloudFront, then update DNS.

Answer

Create S3 bucket and enable static website hosting, then upload website files, then create CloudFront distribution, then update DNS, then configure CloudFront.

Question 5

A media company runs a video-transcoding fleet on Amazon EC2 instances that read source files from an Amazon S3 bucket and write output to a second bucket. The fleet is spread across three Availability Zones in one Region, and instances are launched by an Auto Scaling group. The company needs the architecture to survive the loss of an entire Availability Zone without losing in-flight transcoding work or requiring manual intervention. Which combination of design elements should a solutions architect implement to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the Auto Scaling group across three Availability Zones, make transcoding jobs idempotent and store progress in Amazon DynamoDB, and have instances poll an Amazon SQS queue for work so that unfinished jobs are retried by healthy instances.. Resilience across an Availability Zone failure requires both compute capacity in the surviving zones and durable, externalized job state. Distributing the Auto Scaling group across three zones keeps instances running, while an SQS queue with visibility timeouts and DynamoDB progress tracking lets interrupted jobs be reclaimed and retried automatically. This removes any dependency on the failed zone's instances or storage.

Answer

Deploy the Auto Scaling group in a single Availability Zone with a spot fleet, use an Amazon EBS volume attached to each instance to persist transcoding progress, and enable EBS snapshots every five minutes to another zone.

Answer

Deploy the Auto Scaling group across three Availability Zones, place a Network Load Balancer in front of the instances, and configure the load balancer to retry failed transcoding requests against the same instance until the zone recovers.

Answer

Deploy the Auto Scaling group across three Availability Zones, store transcoding state in an Amazon S3 bucket configured with S3 Cross-Region Replication, and rely on the S3 Standard storage class for automatic recovery.

Question 6

A healthcare analytics platform ingests records into an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster. Compliance rules require that the cluster remain writable even if an entire Availability Zone is lost, and that recovery happen without operator action. The team also wants read traffic to scale independently of the writer. Which configuration should a solutions architect choose?

Accepted Answer

Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with one writer instance and two Aurora Replicas distributed across three Availability Zones, and connect the application to the cluster reader endpoint for read queries and the cluster endpoint for writes.. Aurora's storage layer replicates each data volume six ways across three Availability Zones, and placing the writer plus two Aurora Replicas in separate zones means a zone failure does not remove all compute endpoints. Aurora automatically promotes a surviving replica and repoints the cluster endpoint, so writes resume with no operator involvement, while the reader endpoint spreads read queries across the replicas for independent read scaling.

Answer

Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with one writer instance and enable Aurora Global Database with a secondary cluster in a different Region, directing all reads to the secondary Region's reader endpoint.

Answer

Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with one writer instance, and configure an Amazon Route 53 failover record that points to a standby cluster in the same Region when health checks fail.

Answer

Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with a single writer instance and one reader instance in the same Availability Zone, and enable automated backups with a 35-day retention period.

Question 7

A healthcare company runs a containerized claims-processing service on Amazon ECS with the Fargate launch type in a single AWS Region. The service must survive the loss of an entire Availability Zone with no manual intervention, and the architecture must keep the same service endpoint for callers. The service is fronted by an Application Load Balancer. Which combination of actions should a solutions architect take to meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Configure the ECS service with a desired count of at least two tasks and use the spread placement strategy across the subnets of multiple Availability Zones, then register those subnets with the Application Load Balancer.. Resilience to an Availability Zone failure requires capacity to exist in more than one zone simultaneously. An ECS service with a desired count of two or more and the spread placement strategy across multiple Availability Zone subnets keeps tasks running elsewhere when one zone fails, and the Application Load Balancer automatically stops routing to unhealthy targets while preserving a stable DNS endpoint.

Answer

Deploy the ECS tasks on Amazon EC2 launch type instances in an Auto Scaling group that spans one Availability Zone, and attach an Elastic Load Balancer health check to the group.

Answer

Create a second ECS service in a different AWS Region and use an Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing policy with health checks to send traffic to the Regional Application Load Balancers.

Answer

Increase the ECS task CPU and memory reservation so each task can absorb the load of a failed Availability Zone, and enable container health checks in the task definition.

Question 8

A logistics company runs a shipment-tracking service on a single Amazon EC2 instance in one Availability Zone. The instance stores tracking state in an attached Amazon EBS volume and writes nightly backups to Amazon S3. The company needs the service to survive the loss of an entire Availability Zone with minimal data loss and automatic recovery, while keeping changes minimal. Which design change should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Create an Amazon Machine Image of the instance and place an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer across at least two Availability Zones, storing state in Amazon RDS Multi-AZ.. Surviving an Availability Zone failure requires eliminating single-AZ dependencies. Running stateless application instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer spreads compute across multiple zones and replaces failed capacity automatically, while Amazon RDS Multi-AZ keeps a synchronously updated standby in a different zone that takes over with the same endpoint, satisfying both automatic recovery and minimal data loss.

Answer

Enable termination protection and detailed monitoring on the existing instance, and increase the EBS volume size to improve durability.

Answer

Take more frequent EBS snapshots and copy them to another AWS Region so the volume can be restored after an outage.

Answer

Attach an additional Elastic Network Interface to the instance and assign an Elastic IP address so clients reconnect quickly after a failure.

Question 9

A media processing company runs a stateless thumbnail-generation fleet on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The instances store no local state, and the team wants the fleet to survive the loss of an entire Availability Zone without manual intervention. The fleet must also scale out automatically based on CPU. Which combination of AWS services should the solutions architect use to meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

An Auto Scaling group configured across multiple Availability Zones with a health check against the load balancer, plus an Application Load Balancer with cross-zone load balancing enabled.. Resilience against an Availability Zone failure for a stateless fleet is achieved by distributing capacity across multiple Availability Zones and letting the Auto Scaling group replace unhealthy instances using load balancer health checks. A single multi-AZ Auto Scaling group behind one Application Load Balancer with cross-zone load balancing delivers this with minimal operational effort, while still supporting CPU-based scaling.

Answer

Two independent Auto Scaling groups in separate Availability Zones, each attached to its own Application Load Balancer, with Route 53 failover routing between them.

Answer

A single Auto Scaling group pinned to one Availability Zone, with a Network Load Balancer in front and an Amazon Route 53 latency record.

Answer

An Amazon ECS cluster on AWS Fargate with tasks placed in one Availability Zone and an Application Load Balancer using sticky sessions.

Question 10

A media company stores finalized video masters in an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. Compliance requires that the objects be recoverable if they are accidentally deleted or overwritten for at least 90 days, and that no user, including administrators, be able to permanently erase them during that period. Which S3 feature should the solutions architect enable?

Accepted Answer

S3 Object Lock in compliance mode with a retention period of 90 days on the bucket.. The requirement is legal-hold-style immutability that even administrators cannot override. S3 Object Lock in compliance mode enforces exactly that: protected object versions cannot be deleted or overwritten by any identity until the retention period lapses, and the retention cannot be shortened. Governance mode and replication both leave a path for privileged users to destroy the data.

Answer

S3 Versioning with a lifecycle rule that transitions noncurrent versions to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days.

Answer

S3 Object Lock in governance mode with a retention period of 90 days on the bucket.

Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication to a bucket in another Region with versioning enabled on both buckets.

Question 11

A media company stores generated video thumbnails in an Amazon S3 bucket. The bucket currently uses the S3 Standard storage class, and the objects are accessed frequently for the first 30 days and then almost never. The company wants to reduce storage costs automatically without changing the application and must retain the objects for at least one year. Which action should a solutions architect take?

Accepted Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days and retain them for the required period.. The access pattern is known and stable: frequent for about 30 days, then rarely. A lifecycle rule that transitions objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days lowers storage cost automatically, requires no application change, and keeps the objects available for the required retention period.

Answer

Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering on the bucket and let AWS move the objects between access tiers automatically.

Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition objects to S3 One Zone-IA after 30 days and expire them after 365 days.

Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days and to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 90 days.

Question 12

A healthcare analytics platform stores derived datasets in an Amazon S3 bucket. Regulatory rules require that every object remain recoverable for 90 days after creation even if an application bug issues a delete, and that no object version be permanently destroyed during that window. The team wants the strongest protection with the least custom code. Which S3 feature should the solutions architect enable?

Accepted Answer

S3 Object Lock in compliance mode with a 90-day retention period.. S3 Object Lock in compliance mode enforces write-once-read-many protection for a defined retention period and cannot be bypassed by any user, including the root user. A 90-day retention period meets the recoverability requirement without custom code, making it the strongest and least-effort control for preventing permanent destruction of object versions.

Answer

S3 Lifecycle rules that transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 1 day and expire them after 90 days.

Answer

S3 Object Lock in governance mode with a 90-day retention period.

Answer

S3 Versioning combined with a bucket policy that denies s3:DeleteObject.

Question 13

A financial analytics platform runs a stateless API on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind a Network Load Balancer. The API reads from an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster that has a single writer instance and one reader instance in a different Availability Zone. During a recent Availability Zone event, the writer instance failed and the API saw several minutes of failed writes. The team wants writes to resume automatically with minimal downtime and no application code changes. What should the solutions architect do?

Accepted Answer

Ensure the Aurora cluster has at least one Aurora Replica in a different Availability Zone and rely on the cluster's automatic failover, which updates the writer endpoint to point at the promoted replica.. Aurora provides automatic failover by promoting an existing Aurora Replica to the writer role and updating the cluster writer endpoint, so applications that connect through that endpoint reconnect without modification. The prerequisite is that a replica exists in a different Availability Zone from the writer, which makes it a viable failover target when the writer's zone is lost.

Answer

Add a second Aurora reader instance in a third Availability Zone and update the application connection string to use the reader endpoint for all queries.

Answer

Create an Aurora Replica in a second Availability Zone and promote it manually to writer using the AWS Management Console when a failure occurs.

Answer

Convert the cluster to an Aurora multi-master cluster so every instance can accept writes, and keep the existing writer endpoint in the connection string.

Question 14

A logistics company runs an order-tracking service that exposes a REST API. The service must remain available during a single Availability Zone failure and must keep read latency low for a globally distributed user base. The data store must support automatic multi-AZ replication without the team managing database servers. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon DynamoDB with global tables and on-demand capacity mode.. DynamoDB is a fully managed, multi-AZ key-value store, so a single Availability Zone failure does not interrupt service and no database servers are managed. Global tables replicate data across Regions so users read from a nearby replica with low latency, and on-demand capacity removes the need to provision throughput, meeting both resilience and performance goals.

Answer

Amazon RDS for MySQL with a read replica in a second Availability Zone.

Answer

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis with a cluster mode disabled replication group in one Availability Zone.

Answer

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ DB instance deployment and a cross-Region read replica.

Question 15

A media company runs a video transcoding pipeline on Amazon EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone. The pipeline writes intermediate files to an Amazon EBS volume attached to each instance. The company needs the pipeline to survive the failure of any single Availability Zone and to recover automatically with minimal data loss. Which change should a solutions architect make?

Accepted Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones and store intermediate files in an Amazon S3 bucket.. Storing intermediate files in Amazon S3 decouples the pipeline from any single Availability Zone because S3 is a regional, highly durable service. An Auto Scaling group spanning multiple Availability Zones automatically replaces instances when a zone fails, and replacement instances retrieve the intermediate files from S3, minimizing data loss and manual recovery effort.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones and configure each instance to store intermediate files on an instance store volume.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones and use Amazon EBS Multi-Attach volumes shared across all instances.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group in one Availability Zone and take scheduled EBS snapshots every hour to another Availability Zone.