SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Test 22 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A financial analytics platform stores results in an Amazon S3 bucket. Compliance requires that objects be recoverable for 30 days after deletion and that no user, including administrators, be able to permanently erase them during that window. Objects must also remain readable throughout the retention period. Which approach should the architect implement?

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

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Object Lock in compliance mode with a 30-day retention period on the bucket.. Meeting the requirement means using a control enforced by the storage service that no identity can override. S3 Object Lock in compliance mode provides exactly that: locked object versions cannot be deleted or overwritten by any principal until the retention period lapses, and they remain readable. Governance mode, versioning with policies, and lifecycle expiration all leave a deletion path open for privileged users.

Answer

Enable S3 Object Lock in governance mode with a 30-day retention period on the bucket.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and add a bucket policy that denies s3:DeleteObject to all principals.

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Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after one day and expire them after 30 days.

Question 2

A media company stores original video assets in an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. Editors in Europe report slow downloads, and the legal team requires that a copy of every asset exist in eu-west-1 within 15 minutes of upload, with the ability to fail over reads to the European copy during a Regional impairment. Which S3 feature should the architects enable?

Accepted Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication with a replication rule that targets the eu-west-1 bucket and uses S3 Replication Time Control.. The requirement is a durable, timely copy of each object in a second Region, which is exactly what Cross-Region Replication provides. Adding S3 Replication Time Control turns the timing expectation into a defined service level, aligning the solution with the 15-minute RPO the legal team specified. Other S3 features change routing or transform data but do not create the required replica.

Answer

S3 Multi-Region Access Points configured against the existing us-east-1 bucket, with no replication rule created.

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S3 Object Lambda access points in eu-west-1 that transform objects on retrieval from the us-east-1 bucket.

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S3 Same-Region Replication to a second bucket in us-east-1, with an S3 Transfer Acceleration endpoint used by the European editors.

Question 3

A financial analytics platform runs a stateless containerized service on Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate tasks spread across three Availability Zones. The service reads from an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster and must continue serving read traffic if one Availability Zone fails. The team wants the read capacity to remain available with the least operational overhead and no changes to application connection strings during a zone failure. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Add Aurora Replicas in multiple Availability Zones and connect the service to the cluster reader endpoint so reads are load-balanced and fail over automatically.. The Aurora cluster reader endpoint is purpose-built to distribute read connections across replicas and to remove unhealthy replicas, including those in a failed Availability Zone. Deploying replicas in multiple zones and using that endpoint delivers automatic read failover with no application changes and minimal operational effort.

Answer

Place a Network Load Balancer in front of each Aurora Replica and configure the service to connect through the load balancer DNS name.

Answer

Increase the size of the Aurora writer instance so it can absorb read traffic if a replica becomes unavailable.

Answer

Create a separate Aurora cluster in each Availability Zone and have the service choose a cluster endpoint based on a health check.

Question 4

A healthcare company stores patient records in an Amazon DynamoDB table. The table must be recoverable to any point within the last 35 days, and the data must remain available if an entire AWS Region becomes unavailable. Which two actions should a solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable point-in-time recovery on the DynamoDB table.. Point-in-time recovery provides continuous backups that allow restoration to any second within the last 35 days, meeting the recovery requirement. DynamoDB global tables replicate the table across multiple AWS Regions and support automatic failover, meeting the Region-level availability requirement. Together, these two features address both dimensions of the scenario.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB Streams and archive the stream to an Amazon S3 bucket.

Answer

Configure on-demand backup and restore with a daily backup schedule.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for the table.

Question 5

A healthcare company needs to store patient records in Amazon DynamoDB. The records must be highly available and durable across multiple Availability Zones. The company also requires the ability to recover the table to any point in time within the last 35 days in case of accidental writes or deletions. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a DynamoDB table and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).. DynamoDB tables are automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones within a Region, ensuring high availability and durability. Enabling point-in-time recovery (PITR) provides continuous backups and allows restoration to any point in time within the last 35 days. This combination meets the requirements without additional configuration such as global tables or secondary indexes.

Answer

Create a DynamoDB table with a read replica in another AWS Region and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Answer

Create a DynamoDB table with a global secondary index and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Answer

Create a DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity mode and enable point-in-time recovery (PITR).

Question 6

A media company stores original video masters in an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. Compliance requires that a readable copy of every object exist in the eu-west-1 Region within 15 minutes of upload, and that the objects in eu-west-1 be usable directly by an application there. No transformations are required. Which S3 feature should the solutions architect enable?

Accepted Answer

S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with S3 Versioning enabled on both the source and destination buckets. Cross-Region Replication is the purpose-built S3 capability for maintaining an automatically updated, readable object copy in a different Region, and its asynchronous replication latency generally falls well inside a 15-minute window. Versioning on both buckets is a prerequisite, so the architect must enable it as part of the design. The other choices either keep data in one Region, move data only between storage classes, or route requests without creating a second copy.

Answer

S3 Multi-Region Access Points with an active-passive routing configuration

Answer

S3 Same-Region Replication (SRR) between the us-east-1 bucket and a second bucket in us-east-1

Answer

S3 Lifecycle policies that transition objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval in eu-west-1 after 15 minutes

Question 7

A startup runs a single Amazon EC2 instance hosting both a web application and its MySQL database. The founders want the application to survive the failure of the underlying hardware without changing the database engine, and they want the smallest possible operational change. What should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Move the database to an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance and place the web application on an EC2 instance in an Auto Scaling group spanning two Availability Zones.. The goal is automatic recovery for both tiers without changing the database engine. RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ provides a managed standby that fails over automatically, and an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones can replace a failed web server. Together they remove the single point of failure with far less operational burden than self-managing replication or restoring snapshots.

Answer

Keep both tiers on one EC2 instance but enable detailed monitoring and create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that emails the founders when CPU is high.

Answer

Create an Amazon EBS snapshot schedule for the instance's volume and restore the snapshot to a new instance if the hardware fails.

Answer

Migrate the database to Amazon DynamoDB and rewrite the application to use the DynamoDB API.

Question 8

A startup runs a small internal tool on a single Amazon EC2 instance that uses an instance store volume for its database files. After a routine host maintenance event, the instance rebooted and the database was empty. The team wants the data to persist independently of the instance lifecycle and to survive a stop-and-start of the instance. What should they change?

Accepted Answer

Move the database files to an Amazon EBS volume attached to the instance.. Instance store volumes are physically attached to the host and their contents are lost when the host stops, fails, or is replaced during maintenance. Amazon EBS volumes live separately from the instance and retain data across stop and start, making them the correct storage layer for a database that must persist. The other options address compute lifecycle or monitoring rather than data durability.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the instance and take an AMI of the instance before each maintenance window.

Answer

Increase the size of the instance store volume and enable detailed monitoring on the instance.

Answer

Place the instance in an Auto Scaling group with a minimum capacity of one so it is relaunched after maintenance.

Question 9

A logistics company runs an order-tracking API on a fleet of EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone behind a Network Load Balancer. The architecture team must make the API resilient to the loss of that Availability Zone without changing the API endpoint that clients already use. The instances are stateless and store session data in a shared Amazon ElastiCache cluster. Which change should the solutions architect make to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group that spans at least two Availability Zones, register the instances with a target group attached to the existing Network Load Balancer, and enable cross-zone load balancing.. The resilient pattern is to spread stateless compute across multiple Availability Zones and let the existing Regional Network Load Balancer route to whichever targets are healthy. Because the load balancer already has nodes in every enabled zone, adding an Auto Scaling group that spans zones gives the surviving zone capacity to absorb traffic, and cross-zone load balancing keeps distribution even. Session state already lives in ElastiCache, so no failover logic is needed in the application.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the EC2 instances and configure an Elastic IP address per instance so that clients can reconnect to the same address after a zone failure.

Answer

Replace the Network Load Balancer with an Application Load Balancer deployed in one Availability Zone and attach an Auto Scaling group with a desired capacity of two instances.

Answer

Create a second Network Load Balancer in a different Availability Zone and use Amazon Route 53 weighted routing to send half the client traffic to each load balancer.

Question 10

A healthcare company runs a batch ingestion pipeline on Amazon EC2 instances that read messages from an Amazon SQS queue and write results to Amazon DynamoDB. The pipeline must be resilient so that a single instance failure does not stop processing and no messages are lost. Which two architectural changes should a solutions architect make to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Move the ingestion workers into an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones with a launch template, so failed instances are replaced automatically.. Resilience here has two parts: redundant compute that self-heals, and queue semantics that return unprocessed messages to the queue. A multi-AZ Auto Scaling group replaces failed workers, while a visibility timeout longer than processing time plus delete-after-success ensures a message is reprocessed rather than lost if an instance dies mid-flight.

Answer

Increase the number of EC2 instances manually to five and place them all in the same Availability Zone for low latency.

Answer

Convert the SQS queue to a FIFO queue with content-based deduplication enabled to guarantee no message loss.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) on the target table to cache writes so failed instances do not lose data.

Question 11

A company runs a stateful web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance in a public subnet. The application stores session data on the instance's root volume. The company wants to make the application highly available across two Availability Zones and ensure that session data is preserved if an instance fails. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Move the session data to an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster with Multi-AZ enabled, and configure an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones behind an Application Load Balancer.. The recommended solution is to externalize session data to an ElastiCache for Redis cluster with Multi-AZ enabled and run the application in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones behind an Application Load Balancer. This design ensures that session data survives instance failures and the application remains available if one AZ fails. The load balancer distributes traffic to healthy instances.

Answer

Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of the instance, launch two new instances in two Availability Zones, and configure an Application Load Balancer with sticky sessions.

Answer

Attach an Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume to the instance and create a snapshot schedule. Launch a second instance in another Availability Zone and attach the same EBS volume.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the instance and create a scheduled AWS Lambda function to reboot the instance if it becomes unhealthy.

Question 12

A financial services firm runs a latency-sensitive trading application on Amazon EC2 instances distributed across three Availability Zones behind a Network Load Balancer. The application must continue serving traffic with no manual intervention if an entire Availability Zone becomes impaired, and each instance must receive a fair share of connections. Which combination of features meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Network Load Balancer and register targets in all three Availability Zones. Cross-zone load balancing on a Network Load Balancer spreads incoming connections evenly across registered targets in all enabled Availability Zones, which is exactly what the fair-share requirement demands. Registering targets in three zones lets health checks detect an impaired zone and remove its targets so the remaining instances absorb traffic without operator action. The other options either bypass health checking, bind clients to single targets, or rely on slow DNS-based failover.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer with sticky sessions enabled and register targets in all three Availability Zones

Answer

Attach an Elastic IP address to each instance and have clients connect directly using a published list of addresses

Answer

Create a Network Load Balancer with one target group per Availability Zone and rely on DNS failover between the groups

Question 13

A startup runs a stateless web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance in one Availability Zone. The application must remain available if the instance fails or if its Availability Zone becomes unavailable. The startup wants a managed solution that requires minimal operational overhead. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group spanning at least two Availability Zones and attach it to an Application Load Balancer.. An Auto Scaling group that spans at least two Availability Zones can replace a failed instance and can also launch instances in a healthy zone when one zone becomes unavailable. Attaching an Application Load Balancer provides a stable endpoint and health-based routing, delivering a managed, resilient architecture with minimal operational effort.

Answer

Launch a second EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone and configure an Elastic IP address for failover.

Answer

Migrate the application to AWS Lambda and expose it through an API Gateway REST API.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group with a desired capacity of one instance and place it in a single Availability Zone.

Question 14

A logistics company runs an order-processing workflow using AWS Step Functions. A task state invokes a Lambda function that charges customer credit cards through a third-party gateway. Occasionally the gateway times out, and the workflow fails even though the charge may have succeeded. The architect must make the workflow resilient to these transient failures and avoid duplicate charges. (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure a Retry policy on the task state with an exponential backoff and a bounded MaxAttempts value for the relevant error names.. Resilience to transient gateway timeouts requires the workflow to retry the task, and safety requires that retries not charge the customer twice. A bounded Retry policy with exponential backoff handles the transient failure, while an idempotency key carried into each attempt lets the payment gateway recognize and deduplicate repeated requests. Together they deliver both reliability and correctness.

Answer

Increase the Lambda function's reserved concurrency to the account limit so more charge requests can run in parallel.

Answer

Add a Catch field to the task state that transitions to a Fail state so the workflow stops cleanly on any error.

Answer

Enable AWS X-Ray tracing on the state machine and Lambda function to record where the timeouts occur.

Question 15

A financial services company is designing a new payment processing platform. The platform must continue to accept and process transactions even if an entire AWS Region becomes unavailable, and it must not lose any accepted transaction. The architects have decided to run active-active deployments in two Regions and use Amazon Route 53 for traffic management. Which two additional design elements are required to meet the durability and availability goals? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use an Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing policy with health checks on both Regional endpoints so traffic shifts away from an unhealthy Region.. An active-active, multi-Region platform needs two things beyond compute in each Region: a routing layer that detects a failed Region and steers traffic to the healthy one, and a data layer that keeps a writable, replicated copy of transactions in both Regions. Health-checked latency routing handles the first, while a multi-Region database with idempotent writes handles the second and protects accepted transactions from loss.

Answer

Store all transaction records in a single Amazon S3 bucket in the primary Region and enable S3 Versioning for durability.

Answer

Configure an Amazon Route 53 failover routing policy with a primary record in one Region and a secondary record in the other, and take hourly Amazon EBS snapshots of the application servers.

Answer

Deploy the application tier into a single Region and use AWS Global Accelerator to route European users through the nearest edge location for lower latency.