SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Test 25 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a production database on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The database experiences high write latency during peak hours. The company wants to improve write performance with minimal cost. Which action should a solutions architect take?

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

Accepted Answer

Increase the allocated storage and provisioned IOPS.. High write latency on RDS for PostgreSQL is typically caused by insufficient storage IOPS or throughput. Increasing allocated storage and provisioned IOPS (on gp3/io1/io2) directly addresses the storage bottleneck that limits write performance, and it is the lowest-cost targeted fix compared to architectural changes. Read replicas and Multi-AZ do not improve write throughput on the primary.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ deployment for automatic failover.

Answer

Add multiple read replicas in different Availability Zones.

Answer

Use RDS for PostgreSQL with multiple write replicas and configure application-level sharding.

Question 2

A company is running a stateful web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. Users report that their sessions are lost when instances are terminated during scale-in. What should a solutions architect do to preserve session state?

Accepted Answer

Store session state in Amazon ElastiCache.. ElastiCache provides a centralized, fast session store that persists across instance terminations, ensuring session state is retained even when instances are scaled in. Option A is wrong because using lifecycle hooks to save session data to Amazon S3 is unreliable due to the high latency and the risk that the termination process may not complete the save in time. Option B is wrong because sticky sessions (session affinity) on the Application Load Balancer can cause uneven load distribution and still result in session loss if all instances in a target group are replaced or if the specific instance with the session is terminated. Option D is wrong because increasing the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period only delays the next scaling activity but does not preserve session state when instances are eventually terminated.

Answer

Use lifecycle hooks to save session data to Amazon S3 before instance termination.

Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the Application Load Balancer.

Answer

Increase the Auto Scaling group's cooldown period to prevent rapid scaling.

Question 3

A company is migrating a legacy application to AWS. The application requires a fixed IP address for whitelisting by a third-party service. The application will run on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The company needs a solution that provides a static IP address for outbound traffic. What should a solutions architect do?

Accepted Answer

Place the EC2 instances in a private subnet and route outbound traffic through a NAT Gateway with an Elastic IP.. Placing the EC2 instances in a private subnet and routing outbound traffic through a NAT Gateway with an Elastic IP provides a static IP address for outbound traffic. The third-party service whitelists this Elastic IP, and all outbound traffic from the instances will appear to originate from that IP. This is the standard AWS solution for providing static outbound IPs for instances behind an ALB, as ALBs do not support Elastic IPs and cannot provide a static IP for outbound traffic.

Answer

Replace the ALB with a Network Load Balancer and assign Elastic IPs.

Answer

Assign an Elastic IP address to the Application Load Balancer.

Answer

Attach an Internet Gateway to the VPC and assign an Elastic IP to it.

Question 4

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. A recent change to a stack failed because an IAM role name already exists. The company wants to avoid this issue in the future. What should a solutions architect do?

Accepted Answer

Use the Fn::Sub function with a reference to the AWS::StackName in the IAM role name.. Using `Fn::Sub` with a reference to `AWS::StackName` (e.g., `${AWS::StackName}-role`) makes the IAM role name unique per stack, preventing collisions when multiple stacks are deployed in the same account. This is the standard CloudFormation pattern for avoiding hardcoded name conflicts and enabling repeatable deployments.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the stack.

Answer

Use a DeletionPolicy of Retain on the IAM role resource.

Answer

Create a custom resource with an AWS Lambda function to generate a random role name.

Question 5

A solutions architect deployed an AWS Lambda function using a deployment package. The function logs the error shown in the exhibit. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The deployment package does not include the 'express' npm dependency.. The error indicates that the 'express' module is not found, which means it was not included in the deployment package. Option B is wrong because the function ran, so the handler is correct. Option C is wrong because the Lambda execution role does not affect module availability. Option D is wrong because the error is a missing module, not a memory issue.

Answer

The Lambda function has exceeded the maximum memory limit.

Answer

The Lambda function handler is incorrectly configured.

Answer

The Lambda execution role does not have permissions to access the module.

Question 6

A company uses Amazon CloudFront with an S3 origin to serve static content. They recently updated the content in S3, but users still see the old files. What is the MOST likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The CloudFront distribution's cache TTL is too long. CloudFront caches objects at edge locations based on the cache TTL. If the TTL is set to a long duration, CloudFront continues to serve the cached old version even after the S3 origin is updated. The most likely reason users see old files is that the cached objects have not expired. To resolve, you can invalidate the objects or use versioned filenames.

Answer

S3 versioning is enabled and the objects are not updated

Answer

CloudFront is not configured to forward the Cache-Control header

Answer

S3 Transfer Acceleration is disabled

Question 7

A company is migrating a monolithic application to microservices on Amazon ECS. They want to implement a service mesh for observability and traffic management. Which THREE AWS services should they consider?

Accepted Answer

AWS X-Ray. Options B, C, and D are correct. AWS App Mesh is a service mesh that provides observability and traffic management. AWS X-Ray provides tracing for microservices. Amazon CloudWatch provides monitoring and logs. Option A is wrong because Amazon Route 53 is DNS, not a service mesh. Option E is wrong because AWS Step Functions is for orchestrating workflows, not service mesh.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Step Functions

Question 8

Refer to the exhibit. A solutions architect runs the AWS CLI command to check the state of an EC2 instance. The output shows the instance is running. However, the application team reports that the instance is unreachable over SSH. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

A security group rule blocks inbound SSH traffic. The instance state is 'running', so it is not stopped or terminated. The most likely cause for being unreachable over SSH is that a security group rule blocks inbound SSH traffic (port 22). Option B is correct. Option A is wrong because the query is for the correct instance. Option C is wrong because the instance is running. Option D is wrong because EBS optimization does not affect network connectivity.

Answer

The CLI command is querying the wrong instance

Answer

The instance is in a 'stopped' state

Answer

The instance does not have EBS optimization enabled

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. A CloudFormation template is used to create an S3 bucket with versioning enabled and a DeletionPolicy of Retain. The stack is deleted. What happens to the bucket and its objects?

Accepted Answer

The bucket and its objects are retained. When a CloudFormation stack is deleted, the resource with DeletionPolicy set to Retain is preserved. Since the S3 bucket has DeletionPolicy: Retain, the bucket and all its objects (including versioned objects) are retained. Option A is incorrect because the bucket is not deleted. Option C is incorrect because DeletionPolicy overrides stack deletion behavior regardless of contents. Option D is incorrect because versioning information is also retained along with the bucket.

Answer

The bucket and all its objects are deleted

Answer

The bucket is deleted only if it is empty

Answer

The bucket is deleted, but versioning information is retained

Question 10

A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Users report intermittent 503 errors. The ALB target group health checks are failing. Which step is MOST likely to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Increase the health check timeout and decrease the unhealthy threshold.. Increasing the health check timeout gives instances more time to respond before being marked unhealthy, and decreasing the unhealthy threshold allows more consecutive failed health checks before considering an instance unhealthy, reducing false positives. Option A is incorrect because changing the protocol does not address the underlying cause of health check failures; it might even fail if the application does not support HTTPS. Option B is incorrect because using a Network Load Balancer does not resolve health check failures; NLB health checks are different but still need proper configuration. Option C is incorrect because simply increasing the number of instances does not fix the health check issue; instances may still fail health checks if they are not healthy.

Answer

Change the health check protocol from HTTP to HTTPS.

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer instead of ALB.

Answer

Increase the number of instances in the target group.

Question 11

A company wants to reduce costs for its Amazon RDS for MySQL database without affecting performance. The database is used by a read-intensive application. Which action should the company take?

Accepted Answer

Implement a Read Replica and direct read traffic to it.. Implementing a Read Replica allows offloading read traffic from the primary DB instance. This reduces the load on the primary, potentially enabling the use of a smaller instance size or lowering provisioned IOPS, thereby reducing costs without affecting performance for the read-intensive application. Option A is incorrect because Multi-AZ deployment adds a standby instance and synchronous replication, increasing costs without direct performance benefit. Option B is incorrect; upgrading to the latest generation instance type may improve performance but generally does not reduce costs. Option D is incorrect; purchasing Reserved Instances provides a discount on hourly rates but does not address the utilization or instance size, so it does not directly reduce costs based on workload.

Answer

Change the DB instance to a Multi-AZ deployment.

Answer

Upgrade to the latest generation instance type.

Answer

Purchase Reserved Instances for the database.

Question 12

A company has a serverless application using AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. The application experiences cold starts that cause latency spikes. Which solution would reduce the impact of cold starts?

Accepted Answer

Configure Provisioned Concurrency for the Lambda function.. Provisioned Concurrency pre-initializes a specified number of Lambda execution environments so they are ready to respond immediately, eliminating cold starts for that concurrency level. This directly addresses latency spikes caused by cold starts. It is the purpose-built feature for latency-sensitive serverless workloads.

Answer

Increase the Lambda function memory allocation.

Answer

Decrease the Lambda function timeout.

Answer

Use a VPC and enable Lambda to access resources in the VPC.

Question 13

Refer to the exhibit. A CloudFormation stack was successfully created. The stack's template includes an S3 bucket and a Lambda function. A developer runs the CLI command shown but receives an error that the stack does not exist. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The AWS CLI is configured to use a different region than where the stack was deployed.. The CLI command is querying the wrong region. The stack was created in us-east-1 but the CLI default region might be different. Option B is wrong because the stack was created successfully. Option C is wrong because outputs are returned correctly. Option D is wrong because the stack name is exactly as used.

Answer

The stack was deleted after creation.

Answer

The stack name is case-sensitive and should be 'MyApp'.

Answer

The '--query' parameter is incorrectly formatted.

Question 14

Refer to the exhibit. A company has an Amazon ECS task definition with two containers. The 'web' container is essential, and the 'sidecar' container is not. The 'sidecar' container exits unexpectedly. What will happen to the task?

Accepted Answer

The task continues running as normal.. In an ECS task definition, only containers marked as essential cause the entire task to stop if they exit. Since the 'web' container is essential and the 'sidecar' container is not, the sidecar exiting does not stop the task; the task continues running with the web container unaffected.

Answer

The sidecar container will be marked as essential.

Answer

ECS will automatically restart the sidecar container.

Answer

The ECS task will be stopped.

Question 15

A company runs a production web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an ALB. The application logs are stored on an EBS volume attached to each instance. The operations team notices that the logs are not being sent to a central location. What is the MOST efficient way to centralize log collection with minimal code changes?

Accepted Answer

Install the CloudWatch Logs agent on each EC2 instance and configure it to stream the log files to CloudWatch Logs.. The CloudWatch Logs agent can be installed on each EC2 instance and configured to stream log files from the EBS volume to CloudWatch Logs without modifying application code. This centralizes logs efficiently and is the standard AWS approach for EC2 log collection. It requires only agent installation and configuration, meeting the minimal-code-change requirement.

Answer

Modify the application to use the AWS SDK to send logs to CloudWatch Logs via PutLogEvents API.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Agent to send logs to Kinesis Data Firehose and then to S3.

Answer

Set up an S3 bucket with a lifecycle policy to transition logs to Glacier.