SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Test 33 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is designing a web application that must support millions of concurrent users. The application uses a RESTful API frontend and a relational database backend. Which TWO strategies should be implemented to improve scalability?

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

Accepted Answer

Implement read replicas for the database.. Read replicas (Option C) offload read traffic from the primary database instance, allowing the relational database to handle a higher volume of concurrent read queries without degrading write performance. This directly improves scalability for read-heavy workloads common in web applications.

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Use Amazon SQS to queue database write requests.

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Use sticky sessions (session affinity) on the load balancer.

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Use a single large EC2 instance for the database.

Question 2

A company is migrating a legacy application to AWS. The application consists of several components that communicate via TCP. The solutions architect must design a solution that minimizes operational overhead and provides high availability. Which TWO strategies should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use managed services like Amazon RDS and Amazon ElastiCache to reduce operational overhead.. Using managed services like Amazon RDS and Amazon ElastiCache offloads administrative tasks such as patching, backups, and replication setup, significantly reducing operational overhead. Option E is correct because an Application Load Balancer (ALB) distributes incoming TCP traffic across multiple EC2 instances in different Availability Zones, providing high availability and fault tolerance for the application components.

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Use instance store volumes for data persistence.

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Use Spot Instances for all compute resources.

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Use VPC Peering to connect components.

Question 3

A company wants to implement a serverless data processing pipeline on AWS. The pipeline reads CSV files from Amazon S3, transforms the data, and loads it into Amazon Redshift. Which THREE AWS services should be used to build this pipeline?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda is correct because it can be triggered by S3 events when a CSV file is uploaded, and it can execute lightweight data transformation logic (e.g., parsing CSV rows, filtering, or converting formats) before loading the data into Amazon Redshift. Lambda is serverless, scales automatically, and integrates natively with S3 and Redshift via the AWS SDK, making it ideal for event-driven, short-running transformations in a serverless pipeline.

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AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

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Amazon EC2

Question 4

A company is designing a multi-tier web application that must be fault-tolerant and scalable. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The instances run a web server and a backend application. Which TWO steps should be taken to ensure the application can scale without data loss?

Accepted Answer

Store session state in an external data store such as ElastiCache.. Storing session state in an external data store like ElastiCache decouples session data from individual EC2 instances. This ensures that if an instance is terminated or replaced during scaling events, the session data persists and can be served by any other instance in the Auto Scaling group, preventing data loss and maintaining user experience.

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Use instance store volumes for temporary data.

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Use a custom CloudWatch metric to scale based on CPU utilization.

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Use a fixed number of EC2 instances instead of Auto Scaling.

Question 5

A company is deploying a containerized application on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application needs to be accessible from the internet and must be secured with an AWS WAF. Which TWO steps should be taken to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Associate the ALB with an AWS WAF web ACL.. AWS WAF can be associated with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to filter HTTP/HTTPS traffic at the application layer. This allows you to protect the containerized application from common web exploits like SQL injection or cross-site scripting. Option B is correct because an ALB is required to route internet traffic to the ECS Fargate service and to terminate TLS, which is necessary for WAF to inspect the request payload.

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Use a Network Load Balancer in front of the ECS service.

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Assign public IP addresses to the Fargate tasks.

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Use Amazon CloudFront as a CDN.

Question 6

A company is running a production web application on AWS using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in front of an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The application uses a MySQL database hosted on Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ enabled. Recently, during a traffic spike, some users experienced increased latency and occasional 503 errors. The operations team noticed that the database CPU utilization reached 100% and the number of database connections peaked at the maximum limit. The application team confirmed that the application uses connection pooling on the EC2 instances but the pool size is fixed. Which solution should the solutions architect recommend to prevent recurrence?

Accepted Answer

Implement Amazon RDS Proxy to manage database connections.. The issue stems from database connections hitting the maximum limit, causing CPU saturation and 503 errors. Amazon RDS Proxy sits between the application and the database, efficiently managing and pooling connections from the EC2 instances, reducing the number of open connections to the RDS instance and preventing connection exhaustion. This allows the existing connection pooling on the EC2 side to scale without overwhelming the database, directly addressing the root cause.

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Add read replicas to offload read queries.

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Increase the DB instance class to a larger size.

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Increase the maximum number of EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group.

Question 7

A company is designing a new microservices architecture on AWS. They need to ensure that services can communicate asynchronously without tight coupling. Which AWS service should they use to decouple the services while providing durable message storage?

Accepted Answer

Amazon SQS. Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed message queue that enables asynchronous communication between microservices, decoupling them so that producers and consumers operate independently. SQS offers durable message storage by persisting messages across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring messages are not lost even if a consumer fails. This aligns with the requirement for loose coupling and reliable message delivery.

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Amazon SNS

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Amazon EventBridge

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Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Question 8

A company is designing a new application that will store sensitive data in Amazon S3. The data must be encrypted at rest using a key that is rotated every 90 days. The company wants to use AWS managed services to minimize operational overhead. Which encryption solution should they choose?

Accepted Answer

SSE-S3. SSE-S3 (Amazon S3 managed keys) provides encryption at rest with automatic key rotation every 90 days, meeting the requirement without any operational overhead. The company wants AWS managed services to minimize operational overhead, and SSE-S3 handles key management and rotation entirely on the customer's behalf, with no configuration needed.

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SSE-C

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Client-side encryption with AWS KMS

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SSE-KMS with automatic rotation

Question 9

A company is designing a new web application that will run on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application must handle sudden spikes in traffic without manual intervention. Which scaling approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Target tracking scaling policies. Target tracking scaling policies are the correct choice because they allow Auto Scaling to automatically adjust capacity based on a target value for a specific CloudWatch metric (e.g., average CPU utilization or request count per target). This approach handles sudden traffic spikes without manual intervention by continuously monitoring the metric and adding or removing EC2 instances to maintain the target, making it ideal for unpredictable workloads.

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Manual scaling

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Scheduled scaling

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Simple scaling policies

Question 10

A company is designing a new data lake on Amazon S3. They need to query the data using standard SQL and expect to run complex queries that scan large datasets. The query performance should be optimized to minimize data scanned. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Athena. Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that uses standard SQL to analyze data directly in Amazon S3. It is optimized for querying large datasets with a pay-per-query model, and it automatically minimizes data scanned by leveraging features like columnar data formats (Parquet, ORC), partitioning, and compression to reduce the amount of data read per query.

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Amazon Redshift Spectrum

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Amazon EMR

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Amazon QuickSight

Question 11

A company is designing a new serverless application using AWS Lambda. The function must process a file uploaded to S3 and then send a notification to an external API. The external API has a rate limit of 10 requests per second. Which approach should they use to handle throttling?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon SQS to buffer the requests and set a Lambda reserved concurrency to limit the processing rate. Amazon SQS acts as a durable buffer that decouples the S3 event from the Lambda invocation, allowing the function to poll messages at a controlled rate. By setting a Lambda reserved concurrency, you limit the number of concurrent executions, which directly caps the processing rate to stay within the external API's 10 requests per second limit. This combination ensures that the Lambda function does not exceed the API's throttling threshold while still processing all events reliably.

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Increase the Lambda function timeout and retry on failure

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Configure a Lambda function destination on failure to reprocess

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Use Amazon SNS to fan out the notification to multiple Lambda functions

Question 12

A company is designing a new cloud-native application that will run on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application must store logs centrally for analysis. Which TWO services can be used to collect and analyze logs from ECS Fargate tasks?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Amazon CloudWatch Logs is the native log management service for AWS, and ECS Fargate tasks can be configured to send stdout/stderr logs directly to CloudWatch Logs using the 'awslogs' log driver. This provides centralized log collection, storage, and analysis with features like metric filters and log insights, making it a correct choice for collecting and analyzing logs from Fargate tasks.

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Amazon S3

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AWS CloudTrail

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Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics

Question 13

A company is designing a new disaster recovery solution for a critical application running on Amazon EC2. They need to replicate data across AWS Regions with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour. Which THREE actions should they take to meet these objectives?

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudFormation template to provision the infrastructure in the secondary region. AWS CloudFormation templates enable infrastructure-as-code, allowing rapid and consistent provisioning of the secondary region environment. This automation is essential to meet the 1-hour RTO, as it eliminates manual setup and reduces recovery time to minutes by deploying pre-defined stacks.

Answer

Manually create and copy AMIs to the secondary region weekly

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Configure the EC2 instances in a Multi-AZ Auto Scaling group

Question 14

A company is designing a new VPC for a web application that must be accessible from the internet. The application will run on EC2 instances in private subnets. Which TWO components are required to allow the EC2 instances to access the internet for updates?

Accepted Answer

A route table in the private subnet with a default route pointing to the NAT Gateway. A route table in the private subnet with a default route (0.0.0.0/0) pointing to a NAT Gateway is required to direct outbound internet traffic from the EC2 instances to the NAT Gateway. The NAT Gateway then forwards this traffic to the Internet Gateway, enabling the instances to download updates while remaining inaccessible from the internet.

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An Internet Gateway attached to the VPC

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VPC Flow Logs

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A virtual private gateway

Question 15

A company is designing a new CI/CD pipeline for a containerized application. They want to automatically build, test, and deploy the application to Amazon EKS. Which THREE AWS services should they use to implement this pipeline?

Accepted Answer

AWS CodePipeline. AWS CodePipeline is correct because it orchestrates the CI/CD workflow by integrating with other AWS services to automate the build, test, and deployment stages. For a containerized application on Amazon EKS, CodePipeline can pull source code from CodeCommit, trigger CodeBuild to build and test the Docker image, and then deploy the image to an EKS cluster using a deployment action or a custom action. This provides a fully managed, continuous delivery pipeline that automates the entire release process.

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AWS CloudFormation

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AWS CodeDeploy