SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Test 34 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A financial services company is designing a new application that processes sensitive transactions. The application runs on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The compliance team requires that all data in transit between the application and the database must be encrypted. The database is an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. The application connects to the database using a connection string that includes the database endpoint. The security team has enabled encryption in transit on the RDS instance using a certificate. The application is currently failing to connect to the database with an error related to SSL/TLS. The development team verified that the connection string includes the sslmode=require parameter. What is the most likely cause of the connection failure?

Accepted Answer

The RDS DB parameter group does not have the 'rds.force_ssl' parameter set to 1.. Option C is correct. By default, TLS is not enforced on RDS; you must set the rds.force_ssl parameter to 1. Option A is wrong because Fargate containers can use SSL. Option B is wrong because security groups don't block SSL/TLS. Option D is wrong because the parameter group is correctly assigned.

Answer

The RDS instance is using a public certificate that is not trusted by the application.

Answer

The security group for the RDS instance does not allow inbound traffic on port 443.

Answer

The Fargate task does not have the necessary SSL libraries installed.

Question 2

A media company is designing a new video processing pipeline on AWS. Videos are uploaded to an S3 bucket, which triggers an AWS Lambda function to start an AWS Elemental MediaConvert job. The MediaConvert job uses a custom job template. The pipeline must handle bursty uploads of up to 50 videos simultaneously. The company has noticed that some uploads are not being processed. The Lambda function is configured with a reserved concurrency of 10. The S3 event notification is configured to send events to the Lambda function. The MediaConvert job template is configured correctly. What is the most likely reason for the missed processing?

Accepted Answer

The Lambda function's reserved concurrency of 10 is too low, causing throttling and missed events.. Option A is correct. With reserved concurrency set to 10, only 10 Lambda invocations can happen concurrently; if more than 10 uploads occur simultaneously, the remaining events will be throttled. Option B is wrong because event notifications are reliable. Option C is wrong because there is no information about errors. Option D is wrong because the template is correct.

Answer

The MediaConvert job template is not being applied correctly.

Answer

The S3 event notification is not guaranteed to deliver events.

Answer

The Lambda function is failing due to a timeout.

Question 3

A startup is designing a new web application that will be hosted on AWS. The application consists of a static frontend and a backend API. The frontend is built with React and the backend is a RESTful API built with Node.js. The startup expects low traffic initially but wants to be able to scale to millions of users. The team wants to minimize operational overhead and cost. Which architecture should they use?

Accepted Answer

Host the frontend on Amazon S3 with static website hosting and the backend as AWS Lambda functions behind Amazon API Gateway.. Option B is correct. S3 for static hosting and API Gateway with Lambda provides a serverless, scalable solution with low overhead. Option A is wrong because EC2 requires management. Option C is wrong because Lightsail has limited scalability. Option D is wrong because Elastic Beanstalk has more overhead than serverless.

Answer

Host the frontend and backend on a single EC2 instance using Amazon Lightsail.

Answer

Host the frontend on EC2 instances behind an ALB and the backend on EC2 instances behind another ALB.

Answer

Host the frontend on S3 and the backend on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk with a load balancer.

Question 4

A company is migrating a monolithic e-commerce application to AWS. The application consists of a web frontend, a REST API, and a PostgreSQL database. The migration plan is to containerize the frontend and API using Amazon ECS with Fargate, and use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The company expects variable traffic with peak loads during promotional events. The architecture must be highly available and cost-effective. The operations team wants to minimize manual scaling interventions. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the API and frontend on Amazon ECS with Fargate. Use Application Auto Scaling with target tracking based on average CPU and memory utilization. Use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ deployment and Auto Scaling for storage.. Option D is correct because it combines ECS with Auto Scaling using target tracking based on CPU/memory, which is cost-effective and handles variable traffic automatically. Option A is wrong because ECS with manual scaling is not automated. Option B is wrong because DynamoDB is not the right database for this relational workload. Option C is wrong because EC2 instances with Auto Scaling add management overhead and Fargate is more serverless.

Answer

Deploy the API and frontend on Amazon ECS with Fargate. Use Application Auto Scaling with target tracking based on average CPU and memory utilization. Use Amazon DynamoDB for the database with on-demand capacity mode.

Answer

Deploy the API and frontend on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. Use Auto Scaling groups with dynamic scaling policies. Use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ deployment.

Answer

Deploy the API and frontend on Amazon ECS with Fargate. Configure a scheduled task to scale out during known promotional events. Use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ deployment.

Question 5

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 6

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 7

A media company is designing a new video transcoding pipeline on AWS. Raw video files (up to 10 GB each) are uploaded by users to an S3 bucket. Each upload must be transcoded into multiple formats (MP4, WebM, HLS) and stored in another S3 bucket. The transcoding job can take up to 30 minutes per file. The company needs a solution that is cost-effective and can handle hundreds of concurrent uploads. The operations team wants to minimize maintenance. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use S3 event notifications to invoke a Lambda function that submits a job to AWS Elemental MediaConvert for each file.. Option B is correct because AWS Elemental MediaConvert is a fully managed, serverless media transcoding service designed for high-volume, multi-format video processing. Using S3 event notifications to invoke a Lambda function that submits a job to MediaConvert offloads the transcoding complexity, scales automatically to handle hundreds of concurrent uploads, and requires no infrastructure maintenance, making it both cost-effective and operationally minimal.

Answer

Use S3 event notifications to invoke an AWS Lambda function that performs transcoding and stores results.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances with transcoding software installed. Configure S3 events to send messages to an SQS queue, which the instances poll.

Answer

Use S3 event notifications to trigger an AWS Step Functions workflow that runs an ECS Fargate task for each file.

Question 8

A global e-commerce company is designing a new recommendation engine on AWS. The engine processes user behavior data (clicks, purchases) from multiple sources in real time and updates recommendations stored in Amazon DynamoDB. The data stream can reach 100,000 events per second. The solution must be highly available and process events with minimal latency (< 1 second). The company wants to use a managed streaming service and a real-time processing framework. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest events, process them in real time with Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics using SQL, and write results to DynamoDB.. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams can ingest up to 100,000 events per second with shard-level scaling, and Kinesis Data Analytics (SQL) provides sub-second processing latency for real-time transformations. Writing directly to DynamoDB from the analytics application meets the <1 second latency requirement while maintaining high availability through Kinesis's built-in replication across three Availability Zones.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to ingest events, transform data with Lambda, and deliver to DynamoDB.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest events, use AWS Lambda to process each event, and write results to DynamoDB.

Answer

Use Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka) to ingest events, process them with Apache Spark Streaming on Amazon EMR, and write to DynamoDB.

Question 9

A small business wants to host a simple static website on AWS. The website consists of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images. The company expects low traffic and wants to minimize costs. The website must be highly available and load quickly for users globally. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Store the website files in an S3 bucket configured for static website hosting, and use Amazon CloudFront as a CDN.. Option C is correct because S3 static website hosting with CloudFront provides low cost, high availability, and global low latency. Option A is wrong because EC2 instances are overkill and expensive for static content. Option B is wrong because Lightsail is more expensive than S3 for static sites. Option D is wrong because Elastic Beanstalk is designed for dynamic web apps, not static sites.

Answer

Host the website on Amazon Lightsail with a load balancer and two instances.

Answer

Host the website on a single EC2 instance running Apache web server, with an Elastic IP address.

Answer

Deploy the website on AWS Elastic Beanstalk with a single EC2 instance.

Question 10

A company is building a new microservices-based application on AWS using Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application has a frontend service, an order service, and a payment service. Services communicate synchronously via REST APIs. The company expects variable traffic and wants to ensure that failures in one service do not cascade to others. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Implement retry logic with exponential backoff, circuit breakers, and timeouts in each service's client code.. Option D is correct because implementing circuit breakers, retries, and timeouts is a standard pattern to prevent cascading failures. Option A is wrong because synchronous communication is already in place; adding an API Gateway doesn't prevent cascading failures. Option B is wrong because adding more instances does not protect against service failures. Option C is wrong because converting to asynchronous messaging is a larger architectural change and may not be suitable for all interactions.

Answer

Use Amazon API Gateway in front of each service to throttle requests and protect against traffic spikes.

Answer

Convert all inter-service communication to asynchronous messaging using Amazon SQS or SNS.

Answer

Deploy multiple instances of each service across multiple Availability Zones and use an Application Load Balancer.

Question 11

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 12

A company wants to build a serverless backend for a mobile application. The backend provides user authentication, a REST API for data access, and stores data in a NoSQL database. The company expects the application to have unpredictable traffic, and wants to minimize costs. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon Cognito for authentication, API Gateway with Lambda for the API, and Amazon DynamoDB for the database.. Option B is correct because Cognito provides authentication, API Gateway + Lambda provides serverless API, and DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that scales automatically. Option A is wrong because RDS is relational, not NoSQL. Option C is wrong because EC2 instances are not serverless. Option D is wrong because S3 is not a database; it can store data but not suitable for transactional data access.

Answer

Use IAM for authentication, EC2 instances behind an ALB for the API, and DynamoDB for the database.

Answer

Use Amazon Cognito for authentication, API Gateway with Lambda for the API, and Amazon RDS for the database.

Answer

Use Amazon Cognito for authentication, API Gateway with Lambda for the API, and Amazon S3 for the database.

Question 13

A company is designing a new application on AWS that processes real-time IoT sensor data from thousands of devices. The data must be ingested, processed, and stored for analysis. The company wants to use a serverless architecture to reduce operational overhead. The processing includes filtering, aggregation, and transformation. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS IoT Core to ingest data, use IoT rules to route data to Kinesis Data Analytics for real-time processing, and store results in S3.. Option C is correct because IoT Core is purpose-built for IoT device ingestion, rules engine can process and route data, Kinesis Data Analytics provides real-time SQL processing, and S3 stores results. Option A is wrong because SQS is not a streaming ingestion service. Option B is wrong because Lambda functions triggered by SQS may have concurrency limits and are not ideal for high-throughput streaming. Option D is wrong because Kinesis Data Firehose delivers data in batches, not real-time processing.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest data, use Kinesis Data Firehose to deliver data to S3, and use Athena for queries.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest data, trigger a Lambda function for processing, and store results in DynamoDB.

Answer

Use Amazon SQS to ingest sensor data, trigger a Lambda function for processing, and store results in DynamoDB.

Question 14

A company is designing a new multi-region disaster recovery solution for a critical application running on AWS. The primary region is us-east-1. The application uses Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ, and runs on EC2 instances behind an ALB. The RPO must be less than 5 minutes, and RTO less than 30 minutes. The company wants to minimize costs when the DR solution is not in use. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Set up an RDS MySQL cross-Region read replica in us-west-2. Keep a standby EC2 environment with Auto Scaling configured to scale from 0 to minimum instances using a CloudWatch alarm on health checks. Use Route 53 failover routing to switch DNS to us-west-2.. Option A is correct because RDS cross-Region replication provides RPO of seconds, and using a standby EC2 environment with Auto Scaling configured for minimum zero instances (scaling based on DNS or health checks) minimizes cost. Option B is wrong because Multi-AZ does not provide cross-Region failover. Option C is wrong because read replicas are for read scaling, not DR failover, and cannot be promoted quickly. Option D is wrong because S3 is not a database; this doesn't meet RPO/RTO.

Answer

Use RDS MySQL with cross-Region read replicas in us-west-2. Use a hot standby EC2 environment with a single instance. Use Route 53 failover routing.

Answer

Back up RDS MySQL to S3 using automated snapshots and copy them to us-west-2. Use EC2 instances with S3-mounted volumes to serve traffic from the backup.

Answer

Use RDS MySQL with Multi-AZ in us-east-1 and a second Multi-AZ deployment in us-west-2. Keep EC2 instances running in us-west-2 behind an ALB with cross-Region load balancing.

Question 15

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.