SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Test 18 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is designing a new solution to host a static website with global low latency. The website content is stored in an S3 bucket and must be secured with HTTPS. Which three services or features should be used together to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

S3 bucket configured as an origin with Origin Access Control (OAC). Amazon CloudFront provides global content delivery with low latency and supports HTTPS. The S3 bucket must be configured as an origin with OAI or OAC to restrict direct access, and a custom SSL certificate can be used for HTTPS. Option A, C, and D are correct. Option B is wrong because Route 53 is not required for CloudFront (CloudFront provides its own domain). Option E is wrong because ALB is not needed for a static website.

Answer

Application Load Balancer

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Question 2

A company is building a new application that requires a relational database with high availability across multiple Availability Zones. The database must automatically failover with minimal downtime. Which two AWS services or features meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Aurora DB cluster with multiple Availability Zones. Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment provides synchronous replication and automatic failover across AZs. Option A and D are correct. Option B is wrong because read replicas are for read scaling, not automatic failover. Option C is wrong because single AZ is not highly available. Option E is wrong because DynamoDB is NoSQL, not relational.

Answer

Amazon RDS Single-AZ deployment with automated backups

Answer

Amazon DynamoDB with global tables

Answer

Amazon RDS Read Replica

Question 3

A company is designing a new data lake on AWS. The data lake will store raw data from various sources in Amazon S3. The data will be processed using AWS Glue ETL jobs and queried using Amazon Athena. To optimize costs and performance, which three practices should the solutions architect implement?

Accepted Answer

Compress data using Snappy or Gzip compression.. Partitioning data in S3 reduces the amount of data scanned by Athena. Using columnar formats like Parquet improves query performance and reduces scan costs. Compressing data reduces storage costs and I/O. Option A, C, and E are correct. Option B is wrong because JSON is not columnar. Option D is wrong because using many small files increases overhead.

Answer

Store data in JSON format for flexibility.

Answer

Store data in many small files to improve parallel processing.

Question 4

A company runs a critical e-commerce platform on AWS. The application is deployed across multiple Availability Zones in a single region (us-east-1). The architecture includes an Application Load Balancer (ALB), an EC2 Auto Scaling group, and an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ database. The application experiences periodic spikes in traffic, and the Auto Scaling group scales out successfully. However, during a recent traffic spike, the database CPU utilization reached 90%, causing increased latency and some database connection timeouts. The company needs to improve the database performance to handle the spikes without over-provisioning. The solutions architect must design a solution that reduces the load on the primary database instance and improves read scalability. The application is read-heavy, with a read-to-write ratio of 80:20. Which solution should the architect implement?

Accepted Answer

Create one or more Amazon RDS Read Replicas in the same region and configure the application to route read queries to the read replica endpoint.. Amazon RDS Read Replicas can offload read traffic from the primary instance, reducing CPU utilization. The application must be configured to use the reader endpoint for read queries. Option A is correct. Option B is wrong because scaling up the instance class vertically has limits and may not be cost-effective; it also doesn't provide read scalability. Option C is wrong because ElastiCache is for caching, not for offloading database reads; it requires application changes and may not support all query patterns. Option D is wrong because DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is for DynamoDB, not RDS MySQL.

Answer

Implement an Amazon ElastiCache Redis cluster to cache frequent database queries.

Answer

Increase the DB instance class to a larger size and enable Multi-AZ with synchronous replication.

Answer

Migrate the database to Amazon DynamoDB and use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for read performance.

Question 5

A company is designing a new microservices application on AWS. The application consists of several services that need to communicate asynchronously. One service generates orders and sends them to a processing service. The order volume can vary significantly, and the processing service must scale independently. The company wants to use a managed service to decouple the services and ensure that messages are not lost. The processing service is written in Python and runs on AWS Lambda. The solutions architect needs to design the message delivery mechanism. The architect decides to use Amazon SQS. However, the Lambda function sometimes fails to process a message due to a transient error, and the message should be retried. After a maximum of three retries, the message should be moved to a dead-letter queue for analysis. Which configuration should the architect use?

Accepted Answer

Configure the SQS queue with a visibility timeout of 6 minutes and a redrive policy with maxReceiveCount of 3, pointing to a DLQ.. Amazon SQS supports redrive policy with maxReceiveCount to specify the number of retries before moving to a DLQ. Setting maxReceiveCount to 3 and specifying a DLQ ARN meets the requirement. Option B is correct. Option A is wrong because setting the visibility timeout too high delays retries. Option C is wrong because Lambda's retry behavior is separate; SQS handles retries via visibility timeout. Option D is wrong because DLQ must be configured on the source queue, not the DLQ itself.

Answer

Configure the SQS DLQ with a redrive policy that allows messages to be sent back to the source queue after 3 retries.

Answer

Configure the SQS queue with a visibility timeout of 30 seconds and a redrive policy with maxReceiveCount of 3, pointing to a DLQ.

Answer

Configure Lambda with a reserved concurrency of 1 and set the SQS queue's redrive policy to maxReceiveCount of 3.

Question 6

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 7

A company is migrating a monolithic e-commerce application to a microservices architecture on AWS. The application consists of several services that need to communicate asynchronously. The company wants to decouple the services and ensure that messages are processed exactly once and in order. The current solution uses a single Amazon SQS queue with multiple consumers, but messages are sometimes processed out of order or duplicated. The company needs a solution that guarantees order and exactly-once processing without introducing significant latency. Which approach should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use an Amazon SQS FIFO queue with a message group ID to ensure messages are processed exactly once and in order.. Option B is correct because Amazon SQS FIFO queues guarantee exactly-once processing and preserve message order. Option A: SQS standard queues do not guarantee order or exactly-once. Option C: SNS does not provide ordering or exactly-once delivery to subscribers. Option D: Kinesis Data Streams can provide ordering within a shard but does not guarantee exactly-once processing; also adds complexity.

Answer

Use a single Amazon SQS standard queue with a deduplication ID to ensure each message is processed only once.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams with a single shard and implement idempotent processing in the consumer.

Answer

Use Amazon SNS with a FIFO topic and subscribe SQS FIFO queues to ensure ordered delivery.

Question 8

A healthcare startup is building a HIPAA-compliant application on AWS. The application uses Amazon RDS for MySQL to store patient data. The compliance team requires that all database changes be audited, including SELECT statements. The current solution enables general query logs on the RDS instance, but the logs are stored locally and are lost when the instance is rebooted. Additionally, the logs are consuming significant storage on the instance. The startup needs a durable, scalable, and cost-effective solution for storing and querying database audit logs. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure RDS to publish audit logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, then export logs to Amazon S3 using a subscription filter and Lambda. Use Athena to query the logs in S3.. Option C is correct because it provides durable, scalable, and cost-effective storage for audit logs with the ability to query using Athena. Option A: Storing logs in CloudWatch Logs is scalable but querying can be expensive for large volumes; also CloudWatch Logs is not the best for long-term ad-hoc queries. Option B: S3 with Athena is cost-effective for querying, but Kinesis Data Firehose is not the best for real-time streaming; also adding a Lambda adds complexity. Option D: RDS for MySQL does not support exporting logs directly to S3; also the logs are lost on reboot.

Answer

Enable audit logs on RDS and use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to stream logs to Amazon S3. Use Amazon Athena to query the logs.

Answer

Enable the general query log on RDS and set the log_output to TABLE. Write a scheduled script to copy the log table to Amazon S3.

Answer

Enable audit logs on RDS and stream them to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Use CloudWatch Logs Insights to query logs.

Question 9

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 10

A company is deploying a new microservices application on Amazon ECS using Fargate. The application consists of several services that need to communicate with each other. The company wants to use service discovery so that services can find each other by name. Additionally, the company needs to ensure that traffic between services is encrypted in transit. The security team requires that all inter-service traffic uses TLS. Which combination of services should be used to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Cloud Map for service discovery and AWS App Mesh with TLS enforcement for inter-service communication.. Option A is correct because AWS Cloud Map provides service discovery and AWS App Mesh can enforce TLS encryption for inter-service traffic. Option B: Service discovery via Cloud Map works, but ALB is for external traffic, not inter-service mTLS. Option C: Service discovery is not provided by default in ECS; you need Cloud Map. Option D: ALB can route traffic but does not provide service discovery by service name.

Answer

Use AWS Cloud Map for service discovery and an Application Load Balancer for inter-service communication with TLS termination.

Answer

Use the built-in service discovery in Amazon ECS and encrypt traffic using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) certificates.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer with target groups for each service and enable TLS on the load balancer.

Question 11

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 12

A company is building a new serverless application using AWS Lambda functions. The application processes images uploaded to an Amazon S3 bucket. Each image triggers a Lambda function that resizes the image and stores the result in another S3 bucket. The company expects a high volume of uploads, up to 10,000 images per minute. The current Lambda function is configured with a timeout of 5 minutes and 1024 MB of memory. During testing, the Lambda function times out for large images. What should the company do to ensure the function can process large images without timing out?

Accepted Answer

Increase the Lambda function memory to 3008 MB to get more CPU and network throughput.. Option C is correct because increasing Lambda memory also increases CPU and network throughput, which can speed up processing and reduce the chance of timeout. Option A: Increasing timeout may not help if the function is CPU-bound; also max timeout is 15 minutes. Option B: Lambda is not ideal for long-running tasks; moving to ECS would require significant rework. Option D: SQS does not help with processing speed; it only decouples invocation.

Answer

Increase the Lambda function timeout to 15 minutes.

Answer

Use Amazon SQS to decouple the S3 event and Lambda invocation, allowing Lambda to pull messages in batches.

Answer

Migrate the image processing to Amazon ECS on Fargate with a long-running task.

Question 13

A company is designing a new application that will run on AWS. The application needs to store and retrieve user session data with low latency. The session data is small (less than 1 KB per user) and must be highly available. The company expects up to 10 million active users per day. Which AWS service should be used as the session store?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis. Option B is correct because Amazon ElastiCache for Redis is designed for low-latency session storage and can scale to millions of users. Option A: DynamoDB is good for persistence but has higher latency than in-memory stores. Option C: RDS is relational and slower for session data. Option D: S3 has high latency for small, frequent reads/writes.

Answer

Amazon DynamoDB

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon RDS for MySQL

Question 14

A company is deploying a new web application on AWS that requires a highly available and scalable architecture. The application consists of a stateless web tier and a stateful database tier. The web tier runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The database tier uses Amazon Aurora MySQL. The company expects variable traffic patterns and wants to automatically scale the web tier based on CPU utilization. Additionally, the company wants to ensure that the database can handle increased read traffic without manual intervention. Which combination of actions should the company take?

Accepted Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Enable Aurora Auto Scaling to add read replicas based on CPU or connections.. Option D is correct because Auto Scaling based on CPU utilization scales the web tier, and Aurora Auto Scaling adds read replicas automatically. Option A: DynamoDB is not the database; the question specifies Aurora. Option B: ElastiCache is not the database; it's a cache. Option C: SQS does not scale the web tier.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Use Amazon SQS to queue read requests during peak traffic.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a simple scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Use DynamoDB Auto Scaling for the database.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Use ElastiCache Auto Scaling to add cache nodes for read traffic.

Question 15

A company is building a new data analytics platform on AWS. The platform ingests streaming data from multiple sources, processes it in real time, and stores the results in Amazon S3 for later analysis. The data volume is expected to be up to 50 GB per day. The company needs to choose a service for real-time stream processing. Which AWS service is most appropriate for this use case?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. Option A is correct because Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics enables real-time stream processing using SQL or Apache Flink. Option B: Kinesis Data Streams is for data ingestion, not processing. Option C: Kinesis Data Firehose is for loading data into stores, not for real-time processing. Option D: Amazon EMR is for batch processing, not real-time.

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Answer

Amazon EMR