SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Test 6 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a production database on Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ enabled. The database experiences a sudden increase in read replicas due to a marketing campaign. Which three strategies would help ensure the database remains resilient under heavy read traffic? (Choose three.)

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

Accepted Answer

Configure the application to use the read replica endpoint for read queries and the primary endpoint for writes.. Creating additional read replicas in different Availability Zones distributes read traffic across multiple isolated locations, reducing load on the primary instance and improving read scalability. Using RDS Proxy between the application and the database manages connection pooling, which reduces the number of database connections and prevents resource exhaustion under heavy traffic. Configuring the application to use the read replica endpoint for read queries and the primary endpoint for writes offloads read traffic from the primary instance, preserving its capacity for write operations and maintaining write availability.

Answer

Increase the storage size of the primary DB instance to improve I/O throughput.

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Promote a read replica to a standalone DB instance to offload write traffic.

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Enable Multi-AZ on the read replicas to provide automatic failover for read operations.

Question 2

A company is designing a multi-tier web application on AWS that must be resilient to the failure of an entire AWS Region. The application uses Amazon Route 53, an Application Load Balancer, EC2 instances, and Amazon RDS. Which three design choices support a multi-Region resilient architecture? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Configure Route 53 with a failover routing policy and health checks on the application endpoints.. Options C, E, and F are correct. Option C (Configure Route 53 with a failover routing policy and health checks) allows DNS to automatically route traffic away from a failed primary region to a standby region, essential for multi-Region resilience. Option E (Deploy the application stack in two separate AWS Regions with an active-passive setup) ensures regional fault isolation. Option F (Use Amazon RDS Cross-Region read replicas) keeps the standby region's database synchronized, enabling promotion in a disaster recovery scenario. The other options do not provide regional failover capability.

Answer

Store all application state in a single Amazon ElastiCache cluster in the primary region.

Answer

Place the Application Load Balancer in a single region but use it across multiple Availability Zones.

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Use Route 53 latency-based routing to direct users to the closest healthy region.

Question 3

Order the steps for setting up a VPC with public and private subnets using a NAT gateway.

Accepted Answer

Create VPC, Create public and private subnets, Create and attach Internet Gateway, Create NAT Gateway, Update route tables for public and private subnets. VPC creation comes first, then subnets, IGW, NAT Gateway, and finally route table updates.

Answer

Create VPC, Create public and private subnets, Create NAT Gateway, Create and attach Internet Gateway, Update route tables for public and private subnets

Answer

Create VPC, Create and attach Internet Gateway, Create NAT Gateway, Create public and private subnets, Update route tables for public and private subnets

Answer

Create VPC, Create public and private subnets, Update route tables for public and private subnets, Create and attach Internet Gateway, Create NAT Gateway

Question 4

Order the steps to restore an Amazon RDS DB instance from a snapshot.

Accepted Answer

Choose the snapshot, then restore to a new DB instance, then configure the new instance (security groups, parameter groups, etc.), then redirect application traffic to the new instance, then delete the old DB instance.. The correct order for restoring an Amazon RDS DB instance from a snapshot is: first, choose the snapshot to restore from; second, restore the snapshot to a new DB instance; third, configure the new instance (e.g., security groups, parameter groups, and any other settings); fourth, redirect application traffic to the new instance; and finally, delete the old DB instance. This sequence ensures minimal downtime and data integrity.

Answer

Restore to a new DB instance, then configure the new instance, then choose the snapshot, then redirect application traffic, then delete the old DB instance.

Answer

Choose the snapshot, then restore to a new DB instance, then delete the old DB instance, then configure the new instance, then redirect application traffic.

Answer

Choose the snapshot, then restore to a new DB instance, then redirect application traffic, then configure the new instance, then delete the old DB instance.

Question 5

A logistics company runs a fleet-tracking API on Amazon ECS using the Fargate launch type. The tasks store session state in memory and the service must survive the loss of an entire Availability Zone without manual intervention. The application also needs to scale out quickly during morning peak hours. Which combination of steps 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 spread across multiple subnets in different Availability Zones, and place an Application Load Balancer in front of the service.. The most resilient and least operationally heavy solution is to run multiple Fargate tasks across multiple Availability Zones and place an Application Load Balancer in front. The ALB performs health checks and distributes traffic only to healthy tasks, while the ECS service scheduler maintains the desired count. This design automatically recovers from an AZ failure without manual intervention.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer and store session state in Amazon ElastiCache for Redis.

Answer

Deploy a single Fargate task with an Elastic IP address and configure a Network Load Balancer with cross-zone load balancing enabled.

Answer

Configure the ECS service to use a spread placement strategy across multiple Fargate tasks in a single Availability Zone and enable service auto scaling.

Question 6

A media company stores video files in an Amazon S3 bucket. The files are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then rarely accessed after 90 days. Compliance requires that all files be retained for at least one year. The solutions architect must minimize storage costs while ensuring immediate access to files that are accessed infrequently. Which S3 lifecycle configuration should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

Transition objects to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 90 days, and expire after 365 days.. The correct lifecycle transitions objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days for infrequent access with immediate availability, then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 90 days for long-term retention with millisecond retrieval. Expiring after 365 days meets the compliance retention period. This combination minimizes storage costs while ensuring immediate access to infrequently accessed files.

Answer

Transition objects to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 90 days, and expire after 365 days.

Answer

Transition objects to S3 Intelligent-Tiering after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 90 days, and expire after 365 days.

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Transition objects to S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA) after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 90 days, and expire after 365 days.

Question 7

A logistics company runs a fleet-tracking application on a single Amazon EC2 instance in one Availability Zone. The instance writes telemetry to an attached Amazon EBS volume. The company needs the application to survive the loss of an entire Availability Zone without manual intervention, and it must recover with minimal data loss. The application is stateless and stores all state in the EBS volume. Which change should a solutions architect make to meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group spanning at least two Availability Zones with a launch template, and migrate the telemetry data to Amazon S3 so any replacement instance can read and write shared state.. Surviving the loss of an Availability Zone requires redundant compute spread across zones plus state that is not bound to any one instance or zone. Moving telemetry into Amazon S3 and running the stateless application in a multi-AZ Auto Scaling group allows automatic replacement in a healthy zone with minimal data loss and no idle standby cost.

Answer

Replace the instance with an EC2 instance in a second Availability Zone and attach the same EBS volume to both instances so they share the telemetry data.

Answer

Convert the EBS volume to an Amazon EFS file system and mount it from the existing single instance, keeping the instance in its current Availability Zone.

Answer

Take a nightly snapshot of the EBS volume and configure a cron job on the instance to restore the snapshot if the Availability Zone fails.

Question 8

A financial analytics platform ingests thousands of small event files per minute into an Amazon S3 bucket. A downstream Lambda function processes each object. During peak periods, the function is throttled and events are delayed. The architects want to decouple ingestion from processing and ensure that no event is lost if the function fails, with the ability to replay events later. Which combination of services should they use?

Accepted Answer

Configure S3 Event Notifications to send to an Amazon SQS Standard queue, and have a Lambda function consume the queue with a dead-letter queue configured.. Decoupling ingestion from processing and guaranteeing replay requires a durable buffer between S3 and the compute layer. An Amazon SQS Standard queue stores events until a consumer successfully processes them, Lambda scales its polling with the queue depth, and a dead-letter queue preserves failed messages for later inspection and reprocessing.

Answer

Configure S3 Event Notifications to deliver directly to an Amazon SQS FIFO queue and have Lambda poll the queue.

Answer

Configure S3 Event Notifications to send to an Amazon SNS topic that fans out to multiple Lambda functions in parallel.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to deliver the S3 objects to an Amazon S3 bucket used as a buffer and invoke Lambda from that bucket.

Question 9

A financial services company runs a critical API on Amazon EC2 instances behind a Network Load Balancer in a single AWS Region. The API must remain available even if an entire Availability Zone becomes unavailable, and client connections must be preserved for long-lived TCP sessions. The company also wants to minimize failover time. Which configuration should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the Network Load Balancer and register targets in multiple Availability Zones.. Cross-zone load balancing on a Network Load Balancer allows traffic to flow to healthy targets in any enabled Availability Zone. When a zone fails, the load balancer continues routing connections to remaining targets, and because the Network Load Balancer preserves the client TCP connection, long-lived sessions are maintained with minimal disruption and fast failover.

Answer

Attach an Elastic IP address to each EC2 instance and use a third-party DNS failover service.

Answer

Replace the Network Load Balancer with an Application Load Balancer and enable sticky sessions.

Answer

Create an Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing record with health checks that point to each Availability Zone.

Question 10

A financial services company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application must be highly available across two Availability Zones and survive the failure of one AZ. The company also needs to ensure that if an EC2 instance fails, it is automatically replaced. Which two actions should a solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Application Load Balancer with health checks that target the application port and enable cross-zone load balancing.. The correct actions are to create an Auto Scaling group spanning two Availability Zones with a desired capacity of at least two instances, and to configure the Application Load Balancer with health checks and cross-zone load balancing. These together ensure automatic replacement of failed instances and continuous traffic distribution across healthy instances in both AZs, surviving the loss of one AZ.

Answer

Enable termination protection on all EC2 instances to prevent accidental termination.

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer with a static IP address and configure a target group with a single EC2 instance.

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Place the EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone and use an Elastic IP address for failover.

Question 11

A retail company is designing a new order-processing system on AWS. The system must tolerate the failure of a single Availability Zone without manual intervention, and must not lose accepted orders even if a component fails. The architects plan to use Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda. Which two design choices should they make to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use an Amazon SQS Standard queue as the entry point for accepted orders and configure a dead-letter queue.. Durable buffering with Amazon SQS and controlled, partial-failure-aware consumption together provide resilience. The queue replicates messages across Availability Zones and retains them until processed, while partial batch responses and a dead-letter queue ensure failed messages are retried or preserved without discarding successful work.

Answer

Configure the Lambda function to write order records to an Amazon EC2 instance store volume in a single Availability Zone.

Answer

Deploy the Lambda function in a VPC with subnets in at least two Availability Zones.

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Store processed order records in an Amazon DynamoDB table configured as a global table.

Question 12

A healthcare company stores scanned patient documents in an Amazon S3 bucket. Regulations require that no object in the bucket can ever be permanently deleted by any user, including the root user, for a period of seven years, and that the protection cannot be shortened once applied. (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket so that deleted objects remain as noncurrent versions.. S3 Object Lock in compliance mode provides write-once-read-many protection that even the root user cannot bypass, and the retention period cannot be reduced. Because Object Lock depends on versioning, enabling versioning is the necessary companion setting that keeps object versions intact for the required seven years.

Answer

Enable S3 Object Lock in governance mode with a retention period of seven years.

Answer

Configure a lifecycle rule to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days.

Answer

Attach a bucket policy that denies the s3:DeleteObject action to all principals.

Question 13

A healthcare provider must run a containerized patient-records service that requires a stable DNS name, persistent storage that survives task restarts, and the ability to run tasks on specific instance types for compliance. The team wants minimal infrastructure management. Which combination should the architect choose?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ECS on EC2 instances with an Auto Scaling group, an Amazon EFS file system, and AWS Cloud Map service discovery. ECS on EC2 satisfies the compliance requirement because you control the instance types that host the tasks. Amazon EFS provides durable, shared file storage that persists independently of task lifecycle, so restarts do not lose data. AWS Cloud Map registers the service with a stable DNS name that clients can resolve. Together these meet the stable name, persistence, and instance-type constraints while keeping orchestration managed.

Answer

Amazon EKS on Fargate with an Amazon EBS volume per pod and an internal Network Load Balancer

Answer

Amazon ECS on EC2 instances with instance store volumes and an Application Load Balancer with a fixed DNS name

Answer

Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate with an Amazon EFS file system and AWS Cloud Map service discovery

Question 14

A media company stores original video masters in an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region and must keep them durable and recoverable even if the entire Region becomes unavailable. Compliance requires that the data be readable with low latency from both us-east-1 and eu-west-1, and that objects be protected against accidental overwrite or deletion for a defined retention period. Which two actions should a solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Object Lock in compliance mode on the destination bucket with a retention period that matches the compliance requirement.. Durability across a Regional outage requires an actual copy of the objects in another Region, which S3 Cross-Region Replication provides asynchronously, and Versioning is mandatory for both replication and recovery from overwrites. Immutability against accidental or malicious deletion requires S3 Object Lock, and applying it to the destination bucket protects the replicated copy for the retention window independently of the source bucket's permissions.

Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle policy that transitions objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days and expires them after 365 days.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the source bucket to reduce upload latency from global offices.

Answer

Create an S3 access point in eu-west-1 and attach a bucket policy that denies the s3:DeleteObject action for all principals.

Question 15

A media company stores original video files in an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. A compliance policy requires that all objects be available in eu-west-1 within 15 minutes of upload, and that the eu-west-1 copy remain protected if someone deletes the source object in us-east-1. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with S3 Versioning enabled on both the source and destination buckets, and enable delete marker replication.. Cross-Region Replication is the native S3 feature that copies newly uploaded objects to a destination bucket in another Region, and it can complete well inside a 15-minute objective. Because versioning must be enabled on both buckets, a delete in the source Region only adds a delete marker instead of removing the replicated version, so the eu-west-1 copy stays recoverable.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the source bucket and give the eu-west-1 team presigned URLs so they can download the objects directly from us-east-1.

Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition objects to GLACIER_IR in us-east-1 after one day and rely on S3 Standard read-after-write consistency to serve the eu-west-1 consumers.

Answer

Create an S3 Batch Operations job that copies new objects to eu-west-1 every six hours, and enable S3 Object Lock in governance mode on the source bucket.