SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Test 21 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a microservices application on Amazon ECS with the Fargate launch type. The application consists of multiple services that communicate over HTTP. The company wants to improve the observability of the application to quickly identify performance bottlenecks and failures. Currently, they use Amazon CloudWatch Logs for application logs, but they lack detailed tracing of requests across services. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend to provide end-to-end tracing with minimal operational overhead?

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

Accepted Answer

Implement AWS X-Ray tracing by adding the X-Ray SDK to each microservice and configuring the ECS task definition to run the X-Ray daemon as a sidecar container.. AWS X-Ray is designed for distributed tracing and integrates seamlessly with ECS Fargate by running the X-Ray daemon as a sidecar container. Adding the X-Ray SDK to each microservice enables the collection of trace data with minimal code changes and operational effort. This provides end-to-end visibility into request paths, latency, and errors, which is exactly what the company needs to identify bottlenecks and failures.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail data events for the ECS cluster and analyze the logs with Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights.

Answer

Configure ECS tasks to send custom metrics to Amazon CloudWatch and create a dashboard to visualize service latencies.

Answer

Use AWS App Mesh with Envoy proxies to collect metrics and traces, and send them to AWS X-Ray.

Question 2

A financial services company runs a latency-sensitive trading platform on Amazon EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone. The business now requires the platform to survive an Availability Zone failure with a recovery point objective of zero and minimal recovery time objective. The database is an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance with Multi-AZ enabled. Which two changes should a solutions architect make to meet the new requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Convert the RDS for PostgreSQL instance to a Multi-AZ DB cluster deployment with two readable standby instances in different Availability Zones.. Meeting a zero recovery point objective with fast recovery requires synchronous replication and automatic failover at both tiers. Distributing the application across zones behind a Network Load Balancer removes the compute single point of failure, while an RDS for PostgreSQL Multi-AZ DB cluster provides a writer and two synchronous readable standbys that fail over automatically. Backups, NoSQL migration, and single-instance scaling do not deliver zero data loss.

Answer

Replace the RDS instance with an Amazon DynamoDB table using on-demand capacity mode and a global secondary index.

Answer

Create an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group with a minimum capacity of one instance and a scheduled scaling policy for market open.

Answer

Enable automated backups with a 35-day retention period and copy the snapshots to a second AWS Region.

Question 3

A company is migrating a legacy on-premises application to AWS. The application uses a shared file system that must be accessible from multiple Amazon EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. The file system must be highly available, scalable, and support POSIX permissions. The company wants to minimize operational overhead. Which two AWS services should a solutions architect recommend? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS). The correct services are Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx for Lustre. Both are fully managed file systems that support POSIX permissions and can be mounted on multiple EC2 instances across Availability Zones. EFS is a general-purpose, elastic file system ideal for a wide range of workloads, while FSx for Lustre is optimized for high-performance computing. Together, they meet the requirements of high availability, scalability, and minimal operational overhead for a shared file system.

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway file gateway

Answer

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Answer

Amazon S3 with Mountpoint for Amazon S3

Question 4

A company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application experiences occasional spikes in traffic, and the operations team wants to ensure that the Auto Scaling group responds quickly to increased load while minimizing costs during low traffic. The current scaling policy is based on average CPU utilization with a target value of 50%. The team observes that during spikes, new instances take several minutes to become healthy and receive traffic, causing latency. What should a solutions architect recommend to improve responsiveness?

Accepted Answer

Enable predictive scaling in addition to the target tracking policy to forecast traffic and provision capacity ahead of spikes.. Predictive scaling analyzes historical patterns and forecasts future capacity needs, launching instances ahead of predicted spikes. This pre-warming reduces the time instances take to become healthy and serve traffic, directly improving responsiveness. Target tracking alone reacts to current load and may be too slow. Increasing the target CPU or adding lifecycle hooks would delay scaling, not help.

Answer

Replace the target tracking policy with a step scaling policy that adds instances based on CPU utilization thresholds.

Answer

Configure a lifecycle hook to perform additional initialization steps before instances are put into service.

Answer

Increase the target CPU utilization value to 70% to allow more headroom before scaling out.

Question 5

A company has a stateful web application running on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances behind a Network Load Balancer (NLB). The application stores session state in local memory, and users are experiencing intermittent session loss during scaling events. The company wants to improve the reliability of the application without modifying the application code. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Migrate the application to an Auto Scaling group with a launch template that uses a lifecycle hook to drain connections and store session state on an Amazon EFS file system mounted to each instance.. The requirement is to improve reliability without modifying application code. Storing session state on a shared Amazon EFS file system and using Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks to gracefully drain connections allows sessions to survive instance replacement. Sticky sessions on the NLB do not persist data and are unreliable for stateful applications. ElastiCache for Redis would require code changes. Combining EFS with lifecycle hooks addresses the root cause of session loss during scaling.

Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the NLB by configuring a target group attribute for source IP affinity.

Answer

Store session state in an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster and configure the application to use it via a configuration file.

Answer

Enable session stickiness on the NLB using a target group attribute for source IP affinity and increase the deregistration delay.

Question 6

A company is migrating a legacy on-premises application to AWS. The application consists of a web front end and a backend that processes messages from a queue. The company wants to modernize the application to be highly available and scalable. The backend currently uses a custom polling mechanism to read messages from a local RabbitMQ queue. The company decides to use Amazon SQS for the queue and wants to minimize operational overhead. Which two actions should the solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Refactor the backend to use AWS Lambda functions triggered by Amazon SQS events, and configure the SQS queue as an event source for the Lambda function.. The two actions that best minimize operational overhead and modernize the backend are using Lambda with SQS as an event source and using Step Functions triggered by SQS. Both eliminate custom polling and provide serverless scaling. The other options either retain polling, require more management, or do not address the queue processing modernization.

Answer

Use Amazon SQS FIFO queues to ensure exactly-once processing and maintain message order, and update the backend to use the SQS API for polling.

Answer

Deploy the backend on Amazon ECS with Fargate tasks that poll the SQS queue using the AWS SDK, and configure an Auto Scaling policy based on the queue depth.

Answer

Deploy the web front end on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer, and store session state in Amazon ElastiCache for Redis.

Question 7

A company runs a microservices application on Amazon ECS with the Fargate launch type. The application consists of multiple services that communicate over HTTP. The company wants to improve the observability of the application to quickly identify performance bottlenecks and failures. Currently, they use Amazon CloudWatch Logs for application logs, but they lack detailed tracing of requests across services. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend to provide end-to-end tracing with minimal operational overhead?

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

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon ECS Service Connect for service discovery and load balancing.. Amazon ECS Service Connect is a fully managed service discovery and load balancing solution for ECS services. It eliminates the need to manage load balancers or service registries. It provides built-in health checks, dynamic scaling support, and integrates seamlessly with Fargate. Other options either require managing infrastructure, add complexity, or do not provide the same level of integration.

Answer

Use Amazon Route 53 with a private hosted zone and Network Load Balancers for each service.

Answer

Use AWS Cloud Map for service discovery and an Application Load Balancer for load balancing.

Answer

Use AWS App Mesh with Envoy sidecar proxies for service mesh capabilities.

Question 8

A company runs a serverless application using AWS Lambda functions that process messages from an Amazon SQS queue. The company wants to ensure that messages are not lost if a Lambda function fails to process a message. The Lambda function is configured with a maximum of 3 retries. After 3 failed attempts, where are the messages sent by default?

Accepted Answer

To a dead-letter queue configured on the SQS queue, if one is set up.. When a Lambda function fails to process an SQS message after the configured retries, the message is not automatically deleted. If the SQS queue has a redrive policy with a dead-letter queue, the message is moved to that DLQ after exceeding the maximum receive count. Without a DLQ, the message remains in the source queue and will be retried again after the visibility timeout. The default is not to send to S3 or SNS, and messages are not deleted automatically.

Answer

The messages are automatically deleted from the queue after the maximum number of retries.

Answer

To an Amazon S3 bucket configured as a dead-letter queue for the SQS queue.

Answer

To an Amazon SNS topic that the Lambda function publishes to after exhausting retries.

Question 9

A company runs a production database on an Amazon RDS for MySQL instance. The database is heavily used during business hours and experiences low traffic at night. The operations team wants to reduce costs without impacting performance during peak hours. They also need to ensure that the database can scale read capacity automatically during sudden spikes in read traffic. Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Use RDS for MySQL with a Multi-AZ deployment and enable automatic scaling of read replicas using AWS Auto Scaling.. Using RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ and AWS Auto Scaling for read replicas allows automatic scaling of read capacity based on demand. This handles sudden spikes without manual intervention and reduces costs by removing replicas during low traffic. Other options either do not provide automatic scaling, are more expensive, or require manual intervention.

Answer

Migrate the database to Amazon Aurora MySQL and add an Aurora Replica that is automatically scaled based on read load.

Answer

Create an RDS for MySQL read replica and configure it to be promoted during spikes, then demoted after.

Answer

Enable RDS Storage Auto Scaling and modify the instance class to a smaller size during off-peak hours using a scheduled Lambda function.

Question 10

A company runs a microservices application on Amazon ECS with the Fargate launch type. The application consists of multiple services that communicate over HTTP. The company wants to improve the observability of the application to quickly identify performance bottlenecks and failures. Currently, they use Amazon CloudWatch Logs for application logs, but they lack detailed tracing of requests across services. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend to provide end-to-end tracing with minimal operational overhead?

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

Accepted Answer

Deploy the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT) as a collector in the EKS cluster, instrument the services with the OpenTelemetry SDK, and send traces to AWS X-Ray.. ADOT with OpenTelemetry SDK and X-Ray export provides distributed tracing with minimal code changes through auto-instrumentation. It integrates with AWS services and allows visualization of request flows. The other options require more code changes, add operational overhead, or do not provide application-level tracing.

Answer

Implement AWS CloudTrail data events for all services and analyze the logs with CloudWatch Logs Insights to trace requests.

Answer

Enable AWS X-Ray tracing by adding the X-Ray SDK to each service and configuring the X-Ray daemon as a sidecar in each pod.

Answer

Use AWS App Mesh with Envoy sidecars to collect metrics and traces, and send them to CloudWatch ServiceLens.

Question 11

A company has an application that writes millions of small objects to an Amazon S3 bucket. The objects are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, and then rarely accessed. The company wants to optimize storage costs without affecting application performance. The application requires immediate access to all objects when needed. Which S3 storage class should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

S3 Intelligent-Tiering. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the best choice because it automatically optimizes storage costs by moving objects between frequent and infrequent access tiers based on access patterns. It provides immediate access to all objects and has no retrieval fees. It is ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns, such as the scenario described. Other storage classes either require lifecycle policies, have retrieval fees, or are not suitable for frequently accessed data.

Answer

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)

Answer

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Answer

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)

Question 12

A company has a large Amazon S3 bucket with millions of objects. The company wants to optimize storage costs by moving infrequently accessed objects to a lower-cost storage class. The access patterns are unpredictable, and objects are accessed less than once per month on average. The company wants to minimize retrieval costs and management overhead. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering on the bucket.. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed for unpredictable access patterns. It automatically moves objects between frequent and infrequent access tiers and an archive instant access tier, without retrieval fees and with minimal management overhead. Lifecycle policies require manual configuration and may incur retrieval fees. Glacier Instant Retrieval has a 90-day minimum and retrieval costs. S3 Analytics is only a reporting tool and does not automate transitions.

Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.

Answer

Transition all objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 30 days using a lifecycle policy.

Answer

Use S3 Analytics to analyze access patterns and manually transition objects to S3 One Zone-IA.

Question 13

A company uses AWS Lambda functions to process messages from an Amazon SQS standard queue. The functions write to an Amazon DynamoDB table. During a recent marketing campaign, the queue depth increased dramatically, and many Lambda invocations failed with ProvisionedThroughputExceededException. The DynamoDB table is provisioned with 1000 read capacity units and 1000 write capacity units. The company wants to ensure the application can handle sudden spikes in traffic without manual intervention. Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Switch the DynamoDB table to on-demand capacity mode.. The workload experiences unpredictable spikes in write traffic that exceed provisioned capacity. DynamoDB on-demand mode automatically scales to handle sudden spikes and charges per request, eliminating capacity planning and manual intervention. This is the most cost-effective for variable workloads. Auto scaling reacts too slowly, over-provisioning wastes money, and retries do not address the root cause.

Answer

Enable DynamoDB auto scaling with a target utilization of 70% and set a maximum write capacity of 5000.

Answer

Configure the Lambda function to use a dead-letter queue and retry failed messages with exponential backoff.

Answer

Increase the provisioned write capacity to 10000 and enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX).

Question 14

A company runs a microservices application on Amazon ECS with the Fargate launch type. The application consists of multiple services that communicate over HTTP. The company wants to improve the observability of the application to quickly identify performance bottlenecks and failures. Currently, they use Amazon CloudWatch Logs for application logs, but they lack detailed tracing of requests across services. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend to provide end-to-end tracing with minimal operational overhead?

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

Accepted Answer

Instrument the application code to create custom X-Ray subsegments for each downstream call and include the service name as an annotation.. To identify the failing service in a distributed trace, the trace context must be complete from the entry point and include service-level details. Enabling X-Ray on the ALB ensures the trace starts at the load balancer and propagates downstream. Adding custom subsegments with annotations provides granular visibility into each service call. Together, these actions give a full picture of the request path and pinpoint failures.

Answer

Configure the ECS tasks to send container logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs with the awslogs driver and create metric filters for 5xx errors.

Answer

Enable ECS Exec on the tasks and use it to run tcpdump to capture network traffic between services.

Answer

Increase the X-Ray sampling rate to 100% for all services to capture every request.

Question 15

A company has a multi-account AWS environment managed by AWS Organizations. The security team wants to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets across all accounts have server access logging enabled. They need a solution that automatically remediates non-compliant buckets and provides a centralized dashboard. Which approach meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Config with an organization-wide conformance pack that includes a rule for S3 server access logging and an automatic remediation action using AWS Systems Manager Automation.. AWS Config conformance packs can be applied organization-wide to continuously monitor S3 server access logging. The managed rule detects non-compliance, and automatic remediation using Systems Manager Automation enables logging without manual effort. This provides a centralized dashboard and scales across accounts, meeting the requirements with least operational overhead.

Answer

Use AWS Trusted Advisor to check for S3 server access logging and manually enable it where needed.

Answer

Create an AWS Lambda function in each account that runs on a schedule to check and enable S3 server access logging, and aggregate results in Amazon CloudWatch.

Answer

Implement an S3 bucket policy that denies bucket creation unless server access logging is enabled.