SAP-C02 Mock Exam 95 — 25 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a legacy on-premises application to AWS. The application requires a shared file system that supports the NFS protocol and must be accessible from multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones. The file system must provide high durability and low latency. The company also needs to control access to the file system using IAM policies. The solutions architect needs to choose the appropriate AWS storage service. Which service should the architect use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS with IAM authorization.. Amazon EFS is a fully managed NFS file system that is accessible across AZs, supports IAM policies for access control, and provides high durability and low latency. Option C is correct. Option A is wrong because EBS volumes can only be attached to a single instance in one AZ. Option B is wrong because S3 is object storage, not a file system. Option D is wrong because FSx for Lustre is designed for high-performance computing, not general NFS.

Answer

Amazon S3 with S3 File Gateway to present as a file system.

Answer

Amazon EBS with a Provisioned IOPS volume type, mounted on multiple instances using a cluster file system.

Answer

Amazon FSx for Lustre with a persistent deployment type.

Question 2

A financial services company is designing a new system on AWS to process real-time stock trades. The system must handle up to 10,000 trades per second with end-to-end latency under 500 milliseconds. Trades are ingested via REST API, validated, enriched with market data, and stored in a database for regulatory compliance. The architecture must be highly available across three Availability Zones. The company wants to use AWS managed services to minimize operational overhead. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon API Gateway to ingest trades, send to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for buffering, use AWS Lambda to process in parallel, and store results in DynamoDB with on-demand capacity.. Option C is correct because it uses API Gateway for ingestion, Kinesis Data Streams for buffering, Lambda for processing (scale to handle 10k tps), and DynamoDB for low-latency storage. Option A is wrong because SQS does not guarantee ordering for high throughput FIFO queues (limited to 300 tps). Option B is wrong because EC2 instances introduce management overhead and may not scale as quickly. Option D is wrong because SNS does not provide a persistent buffer; messages can be lost if subscriber is unavailable.

Answer

Use Network Load Balancer to distribute trade requests to a fleet of EC2 instances running a custom Java application. The application processes trades and writes to Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ.

Answer

Use Amazon API Gateway to ingest trades, publish to an SNS topic, subscribe an SQS queue and a Lambda function. Lambda validates and enriches, then stores in DynamoDB.

Answer

Use Amazon API Gateway to ingest trades, send to an SQS FIFO queue for ordered processing, trigger an AWS Lambda function for validation and enrichment, and store in DynamoDB.

Question 3

A company is running a web application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk with an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The application stores session state in an Amazon DynamoDB table. During a traffic spike, the application becomes slow and some users are logged out unexpectedly. The operations team notices that the DynamoDB table's read capacity utilization is consistently at 100%. The company needs to improve the performance of the session store without over-provisioning capacity. Which solution should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

Implement Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) as a caching layer for the session store.. Option D is correct because DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) provides an in-memory cache for DynamoDB, reducing read latency and offloading read capacity, without over-provisioning. Option A: Increasing read capacity manually is not scalable and still may not handle spikes. Option B: ElastiCache Memcached can be used as a session store, but it requires application changes; also it does not directly address the DynamoDB read issue. Option C: SQS is not a session store.

Answer

Migrate the session store from DynamoDB to Amazon ElastiCache Memcached.

Answer

Increase the read capacity units (RCU) of the DynamoDB table to handle peak traffic.

Answer

Move session state to Amazon SQS and have the application poll the queue.

Question 4

A startup is building a serverless photo-sharing application on AWS. Users upload photos via a web app, which stores them in Amazon S3. Each upload triggers an AWS Lambda function that creates a thumbnail and stores it in another S3 bucket. The application is expected to have unpredictable traffic patterns. The startup wants to minimize costs and operational overhead while ensuring the thumbnail generation completes reliably. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure S3 event notifications to invoke a Lambda function directly upon upload to generate thumbnails.. Option B is correct because S3 event notifications to Lambda are serverless, cost-effective, and scale automatically. Option A is wrong because EC2 instances incur cost even when idle and require management. Option C is wrong because SQS adds complexity and latency; Lambda can directly process S3 events. Option D is wrong because ECS with Fargate is more complex and expensive than Lambda for this simple task.

Answer

Use Amazon ECS with Fargate to run a container that processes S3 events and generates thumbnails.

Answer

Upload to S3, send a message to an SQS queue, and have a Lambda function poll the queue to generate thumbnails.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances to poll S3 for new uploads and generate thumbnails.

Question 5

A company is building a new data lake on AWS to store and analyze petabytes of data from various sources. The data includes structured (CSV, Parquet), semi-structured (JSON), and unstructured (images, videos) files. The company needs a cost-effective storage solution that allows running SQL queries directly on the data without loading it into a database. Data is accessed infrequently but must be available within minutes. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Store data in Amazon S3 using lifecycle policies to transition infrequent data to S3 Standard-IA. Use Amazon Athena for SQL queries.. Option B is correct because S3 is the best storage for a data lake, and Athena allows serverless SQL queries directly on S3 data. Option A is wrong because Redshift is for data warehousing, not a data lake; data must be loaded. Option C is wrong because Glacier is for archival, not frequent querying. Option D is wrong because EBS is block storage for EC2, not designed for data lakes.

Answer

Store data in Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive for cost savings, and use Athena for queries.

Answer

Store data in Amazon Redshift, use Redshift Spectrum to query data in S3.

Answer

Store data in Amazon EBS volumes attached to an EC2 instance running a SQL engine.

Question 6

A financial services company is designing a new application that processes sensitive transactions. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The application writes transaction logs to an Amazon EFS file system. The company needs to ensure that the logs are encrypted at rest using a customer-managed AWS KMS key. Additionally, the logs must be retained for 7 years and should not be accessible after that period. Which solution meets the encryption and retention requirements?

Accepted Answer

Enable encryption at rest on the EFS file system using a customer-managed KMS key. Use a Lambda function to copy logs to Amazon S3 and apply an S3 Lifecycle policy to expire objects after 7 years.. Option B is correct because EFS supports encryption at rest with a customer-managed KMS key, and S3 Lifecycle policies with expiration can enforce deletion after a specific period. Option A: EBS encryption is for block storage, not for EFS. Option C: CloudWatch Logs is for real-time logs, not for long-term archival. Option D: S3 with default encryption uses S3-managed keys, not customer-managed KMS keys.

Answer

Store logs directly in Amazon S3 with default encryption. Use an S3 Lifecycle policy to delete objects older than 7 years.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to stream logs from the application and set a retention policy of 7 years. Enable encryption using a customer-managed KMS key.

Answer

Enable encryption at rest on the EFS file system using an AWS managed key. Use a cron job on the EC2 instances to delete logs older than 7 years.

Question 7

A healthcare company is designing a new system on AWS to store and analyze patient health records. The system must comply with HIPAA regulations. Data includes structured lab results and unstructured clinical notes. The company needs to run complex SQL queries on the structured data and perform natural language processing (NLP) on the unstructured data. The solution should be cost-effective and minimize administrative overhead. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Store structured data in Amazon Redshift, store unstructured data in S3, and use Amazon Comprehend Medical for NLP.. Option B is correct because Redshift is for SQL analytics on structured data, Comprehend Medical is a HIPAA-eligible NLP service for medical text. Option A is wrong because RDS is not designed for complex analytics at scale. Option C is wrong because Athena is serverless but slower for frequent queries; Textract is for document extraction, not NLP. Option D is wrong because DynamoDB is for NoSQL, not complex SQL queries; SageMaker is overkill for NLP if Comprehend Medical suffices.

Answer

Store structured data in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, store unstructured data in S3, and use AWS Glue to run NLP jobs.

Answer

Store all data in S3, use Amazon Athena for SQL queries and Amazon Textract for NLP.

Answer

Store structured data in DynamoDB, store unstructured data in S3, use Amazon SageMaker to build custom NLP models.

Question 8

A company wants to deploy a new web application on AWS that uses a microservices architecture. The company expects rapid growth and wants to decouple services to allow independent scaling and development. The team wants to use Docker containers for consistency across environments. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon ECS with Fargate to run each microservice as a separate task definition, with service auto scaling.. Option D is correct because ECS with Fargate is a managed container service that scales automatically and decouples services. Option A is wrong because EC2 instances are not containerized. Option B is wrong because Elastic Beanstalk is a PaaS that abstracts containers but may not provide as much control. Option C is wrong because Lightsail is for simpler workloads, not microservices at scale.

Answer

Use Amazon Lightsail containers to deploy each microservice as a container service.

Answer

Deploy each microservice on separate EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk with Docker platform to deploy each microservice as a separate environment.

Question 9

A gaming company is designing a new real-time multiplayer game backend on AWS. The game requires low-latency communication between players (< 50 ms) and the ability to handle up to 100,000 concurrent players. The backend must manage game state, player matchmaking, and chat. The company wants to use managed AWS services to reduce operational overhead. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon GameLift for session-based game server hosting, with its built-in matchmaking and fleet management.. Option B is correct because GameLift is designed for multiplayer game hosting, including session management, matchmaking, and scaling. Option A is wrong because EC2 instances require manual management of game servers. Option C is wrong because ECS with Fargate may not meet low-latency requirements for gaming. Option D is wrong because DynamoDB is for storage, not for real-time game server logic.

Answer

Use Amazon DynamoDB for game state, AWS Lambda for game logic, and API Gateway for client communication.

Answer

Deploy game servers on EC2 instances behind a Network Load Balancer. Use ElastiCache for Redis for game state and SQS for chat messages.

Answer

Use Amazon ECS with Fargate to run game server containers, and use Application Auto Scaling to handle load.

Question 10

A company runs a containerized application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic. The company has configured a target tracking scaling policy based on average memory utilization. During a traffic spike, the ECS service scales out, but the new tasks are immediately deregistered and replaced. The CloudWatch logs show that the new tasks are failing the ALB health check. The health check is configured to ping the '/health' endpoint on the container. The solutions architect verifies that the application container correctly responds to the '/health' endpoint with a 200 status code. What is the MOST likely cause of the health check failures?

Accepted Answer

The security group attached to the ECS tasks does not allow inbound traffic from the ALB on the health check port.. Option C is correct. When using Fargate, each task gets an ENI. If the security group for the tasks does not allow inbound traffic from the ALB on the health check port, the health check will fail. The architect confirmed the application responds correctly, so the issue is likely network connectivity. Option A is wrong because the health check path is correct. Option B is wrong because target group deregistration delay does not cause health check failures. Option D is wrong because the ALB is already configured correctly; the issue is at the task level.

Answer

The ALB is not configured with a proper listener rule to forward traffic to the target group.

Answer

The deregistration delay (connection draining) is set too high, causing the ALB to think the tasks are unhealthy.

Answer

The health check path is incorrect; it should be '/index.html' instead of '/health'.

Question 11

A company runs a web application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The application experiences periodic traffic spikes that cause the environment to scale out. However, the scaling is slow, leading to increased latency during spikes. The operations team wants to improve the responsiveness of the Auto Scaling group. The application is stateless and runs on a single instance type. What should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Decrease the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period.. Option A is correct because increasing the cooldown period makes the Auto Scaling group more conservative, but that would slow scaling. Actually, decreasing the cooldown allows faster scaling. The question asks for improved responsiveness; Option A (decreasing cooldown) is the correct answer. Option B is wrong because a larger instance type may not help if the issue is scaling speed. Option C is wrong because multiple instance types add complexity and might not speed up scaling. Option D is wrong because scheduled scaling is proactive but does not respond to unexpected spikes.

Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to use multiple instance types.

Answer

Use scheduled scaling to add capacity before expected spikes.

Answer

Change the instance type to a larger size.

Question 12

A company uses AWS CodePipeline to deploy a static website to an S3 bucket. The pipeline includes a source stage from GitHub and a deploy stage that syncs the S3 bucket. Recently, the deployment has been failing intermittently with the error 'Access Denied' when the pipeline tries to write to the S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows the pipeline's service role to perform s3:PutObject. The service role has the following IAM policy attached: { 'Effect': 'Allow', 'Action': 's3:PutObject', 'Resource': 'arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*' }. What is the MOST likely cause of the failure?

Accepted Answer

The bucket has a bucket policy that denies the pipeline's service role.. Option A is correct. The bucket policy might deny access even if the IAM role allows it, because bucket policies are evaluated in addition to IAM policies. Option B is wrong because the pipeline uses the service role, not Git credentials. Option C is wrong because there is no mention of encryption. Option D is wrong because the error is Access Denied, not a network issue.

Answer

The S3 bucket has default encryption enabled.

Answer

The pipeline is in a VPC without an S3 VPC endpoint.

Answer

The pipeline's source stage is not configured with Git credentials.

Question 13

A social media startup uses AWS Lambda functions to process user-uploaded images. The Lambda function resizes images and stores them in Amazon S3. The function uses the S3 SDK to put objects. Recently, the team noticed that the function sometimes fails with 'Timeout' errors for large images. The Lambda function has a timeout of 5 seconds and 256 MB of memory. The team wants to improve the solution to handle larger images reliably and cost-effectively. Which solution should the team implement?

Accepted Answer

Increase the Lambda function's timeout to 15 minutes and allocate more memory (e.g., 1024 MB).. Option C (increase memory and timeout) directly addresses the issue of processing large images. Option A (Elastic Transcoder) is for video. Option B (EC2 with EBS) is overkill and not serverless. Option D (API Gateway with larger payload) does not solve the Lambda processing limit.

Answer

Migrate the image processing to a dedicated Amazon EC2 instance with an EBS volume.

Answer

Use Amazon API Gateway with a larger payload limit to offload the image processing.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Transcoder to resize images instead of Lambda.

Question 14

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a stack that includes an Amazon RDS MySQL instance. The stack template defines the DBInstanceClass as db.t3.medium. After deployment, the database performance is insufficient for the workload. The company wants to change the instance class to db.r5.large without recreating the database. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Update the CloudFormation stack with the new instance class and apply the change.. Option B is correct because RDS supports modifying the DB instance class without recreating the database; the update will cause a brief downtime but preserves data. Option A is wrong because deleting the stack would destroy the database. Option C is wrong because creating a new stack would create a new database, not modify the existing one. Option D is wrong because RDS does not support blue/green deployments for instance class changes as a standard feature.

Answer

Create a new stack with the new instance class and migrate the data.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service to perform a blue/green deployment.

Answer

Delete the stack and create a new one with the new instance class.

Question 15

A company runs a static website on Amazon S3 with a custom domain using Amazon Route 53. The website content is updated frequently by multiple developers. The company wants to implement a workflow where updates are automatically tested and deployed. They have existing CI/CD tools that integrate with AWS CodeCommit. The Solutions Architect needs to design a deployment pipeline that rebuilds the website only when changes are pushed to the main branch, and then invalidates the Amazon CloudFront cache if a CloudFront distribution is used. Which solution meets these requirements with the least operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS CodePipeline with a source stage tied to CodeCommit, a build stage using AWS CodeBuild, and a deploy stage that syncs the S3 bucket and invalidates CloudFront.. Option A is correct because AWS CodePipeline integrated with CodeBuild and CodeCommit provides a fully managed CI/CD service. Option B is wrong because Lambda@Edge is for edge computing, not deployment. Option C is wrong because S3 triggers are for event notifications, not full CI/CD. Option D is wrong because CloudFormation is for infrastructure, not deployment pipeline.

Answer

Use AWS CloudFormation with a custom resource that triggers a build on CodeCommit push.

Answer

Configure an S3 event notification to invoke an AWS Lambda function that builds and deploys the website.

Answer

Use AWS Lambda@Edge to generate the website on the fly and cache at CloudFront.

Question 16

An e-commerce company runs a customer-facing application on AWS. The application architecture includes an Application Load Balancer (ALB), EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group, and an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance. The application uses a custom web server that stores session data in a local file system. During peak traffic, users experience session timeouts and errors. The operations team observes that the Auto Scaling group launches new instances and terminates old ones frequently. The team wants to improve the user experience and ensure session persistence. The Solutions Architect proposes to modify the application to store session data in an external store. However, due to a legacy code dependency, the application cannot be modified in the short term. Which solution should the Solutions Architect implement to resolve the session persistence issue without modifying the application?

Accepted Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB and configure the Auto Scaling group to use a lifecycle hook to drain connections before instance termination.. Option A is correct because enabling sticky sessions on the ALB ensures that a user's requests are always routed to the same instance, preserving the local session files. Option B is wrong because ElastiCache still requires application code changes to use it. Option C is wrong because DynamoDB also requires code changes. Option D is wrong because scaling down based on memory does not prevent session loss; it may cause more terminations.

Answer

Replace the local file system storage with an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster that is external to the instances.

Answer

Store session data in Amazon DynamoDB and configure the application to use the DynamoDB session handler.

Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to scale down based on memory utilization rather than CPU, to reduce termination frequency.

Question 17

A company runs a batch processing application on AWS. The application reads input files from an S3 bucket, processes them on EC2 instances, and writes results to another S3 bucket. The processing job runs once a day and takes approximately 3 hours. The company wants to reduce costs and operational overhead. The Solutions Architect suggests using AWS Lambda for processing, but the processing time per file can exceed the Lambda maximum execution time of 15 minutes. The architect also considers using AWS Batch. The company wants to minimize the need for infrastructure management. Which solution should the Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Batch with a managed compute environment that uses Spot Instances and a job queue.. Option B is correct because AWS Batch manages the compute environment, automatically scales, and handles long-running jobs without managing EC2 instances directly. Option A is wrong because Lambda has a 15-minute limit. Option C is wrong because it requires manual management of EC2 instances. Option D is wrong because Fargate launch type for ECS can run long tasks but requires more setup than AWS Batch for batch jobs.

Answer

Provision a fleet of EC2 instances and use Auto Scaling to manage the processing.

Answer

Use AWS Lambda with a larger memory allocation to increase CPU and reduce processing time.

Answer

Use Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type and run the processing as a task.

Question 18

A company hosts a static website on Amazon S3 with public read access. The website uses a custom domain name (www.example.com). The company wants to improve performance for global users and also add HTTPS support. They have already set up a CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin. However, users still cannot access the website via HTTPS. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Configure the CloudFront distribution to use a custom SSL certificate and set the alternate domain name (CNAME) to www.example.com.. Option D is correct. An SSL/TLS certificate must be associated with the CloudFront distribution, and the custom domain must be configured in the distribution settings. Option A: S3 supports HTTPS but CloudFront needs its own certificate. Option B: ELB is not needed for static websites. Option C: ACM certificates can be used but must be in US East (N. Virginia) region for CloudFront.

Answer

Request an SSL certificate from AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and import it into CloudFront.

Answer

Enable static website hosting on the S3 bucket and configure the bucket policy to allow HTTPS.

Answer

Place an Application Load Balancer in front of the S3 bucket and attach an SSL certificate.

Question 19

A company runs a critical e-commerce platform on AWS. The application consists of an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that distributes traffic to an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances running a web server. The web servers store session data locally on the instance's ephemeral storage. The Auto Scaling group is configured with a min of 2, max of 10, and desired of 2. Recently, during a flash sale, traffic surged and the Auto Scaling group scaled out to 10 instances. However, many users reported that their shopping carts were lost and they were logged out during the event. The Cognito user pool was used for authentication, and the application uses cookies to maintain session state. The ALB's stickiness is enabled. The team observed that the ALB's RequestCountPerTarget metric was well below the instance's capacity, but the error rate increased. The CloudWatch logs show that the web server returned 503 errors for a subset of requests. After the flash sale ended, the Auto Scaling group scaled back to 2 instances, and the issue disappeared. The team wants to prevent this from happening in future events. Which solution should the Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Modify the application to store session data in an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster instead of local ephemeral storage.. Option A is correct. The root cause is that session data stored on ephemeral storage is lost when instances are terminated or replaced. Even with ALB stickiness, if an instance is scaled in (terminated) or replaced, the session data is gone. Using ElastiCache for session storage decouples sessions from instances, ensuring persistence across scaling events. Option B is wrong because increasing the min size does not solve the data loss; sessions are still lost on instance termination. Option C is wrong because disabling stickiness would make it worse, as requests would go to different instances, potentially losing sessions even without scaling. Option D is wrong because increasing health check interval does not solve the data loss; it only delays detection of unhealthy instances.

Answer

Increase the minimum size of the Auto Scaling group to 10 to handle the surge without scaling down.

Answer

Disable stickiness on the ALB so that any instance can handle any request.

Answer

Increase the health check interval on the ALB to prevent instances from being marked unhealthy too quickly.

Question 20

A startup runs a containerized microservices application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic. The application consists of 10 services, each with its own ECS service. Recently, the startup launched a marketing campaign and traffic increased 10x. The application started returning HTTP 503 errors. The ECS service metrics show that the number of running tasks is at the maximum desired count for each service. The ALB target group health checks are failing intermittently. The startup needs to handle the increased traffic and prevent 503 errors. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Increase the desired count and maximum number of tasks for each ECS service.. Option A is correct. Increasing the desired count and maximum tasks allows the service to scale out to handle more traffic. Option B: Increasing task CPU/memory may help but tasks are already at max count, so scaling out is needed. Option C: Adding more ALBs does not address the capacity issue. Option D: Reducing health check interval may cause premature task termination.

Answer

Increase the CPU and memory limits for each task definition.

Answer

Decrease the health check interval to detect failures faster.

Answer

Add additional Application Load Balancers and split traffic across them.