SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Test 39 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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?

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

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.

Answer

Amazon Redshift Spectrum

Answer

Amazon EMR

Answer

Amazon QuickSight

Question 2

A company is designing a new multi-region application that requires a global database with low-latency reads and writes. The application must be able to survive a regional outage. Which database solution should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Amazon DynamoDB global tables. Amazon DynamoDB global tables provide a fully managed, multi-region, multi-primary database that delivers low-latency reads and writes globally. The service replicates data across multiple AWS Regions automatically, allowing writes to be performed in any region with conflict resolution. In the event of a regional outage, traffic can be directed to another region, ensuring high availability. In contrast, Amazon Aurora Global Database has a single primary region for writes, so writes are not low-latency across regions.

Answer

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ

Answer

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis global datastore

Answer

Amazon Aurora Global Database

Question 3

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

Answer

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

Question 4

A developer ran the AWS CLI command shown in the exhibit. The instance has an attached EBS volume with 'DeleteOnTermination' set to false. The instance will be started again soon. What will happen to the EBS volume when the instance is stopped?

Accepted Answer

The EBS volume remains attached to the instance and the data persists.. Stopping an EC2 instance does not affect the attached EBS volumes; they remain attached and their data persists. The 'DeleteOnTermination' attribute only controls behavior when the instance is terminated, not stopped. Since the instance will be started again soon, the volume stays attached with its data intact.

Answer

The EBS volume is detached but the data is preserved.

Answer

The EBS volume is deleted.

Answer

The EBS volume is deleted because the instance is stopped.

Question 5

A security engineer created the S3 bucket policy shown in the exhibit. The policy is intended to allow the role MyAppRole to get objects only if they are encrypted with SSE-S3. However, the role is getting access denied errors when trying to get objects that are encrypted with SSE-S3. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The condition key 's3:x-amz-server-side-encryption' checks the request header, not the object's encryption state.. The condition key `s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption` evaluates the `x-amz-server-side-encryption` request header sent by the client during the GET request, not the encryption state of the object stored in S3. Since the role is making GET requests without this header (or with a different value), the condition fails even though the object is encrypted with SSE-S3. To enforce that only objects encrypted with SSE-S3 can be retrieved, you must use a different approach, such as a bucket policy with `s3:ExistingObjectTag` or a pre-signed URL that includes the required header.

Answer

The Principal is incorrect; it should be the role name, not ARN.

Answer

The Resource ARN is incorrect; it should be 'arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket'.

Answer

The condition key is misspelled.

Question 6

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.. 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 7

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.. S3 event notifications can invoke a Lambda function directly on each object-created event, giving a fully serverless, event-driven pipeline with no polling, no servers to manage, and pay-per-invocation pricing that scales automatically with unpredictable traffic. This satisfies the reliability, cost, and operational-overhead requirements in one step.

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 8

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.. 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 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.. S3 static website hosting with CloudFront provides low cost, high availability, and global low latency. Option B is wrong because Lightsail with a load balancer and two instances is more expensive and overkill for a simple static site. Option C is wrong because a single EC2 instance is not highly available and costs more than S3. Option D is wrong because Elastic Beanstalk is designed for dynamic web apps, not static sites, and a single EC2 instance lacks high availability.

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.. For synchronous REST-based microservices on ECS Fargate with variable traffic and a requirement to prevent cascading failures, implementing retry logic with exponential backoff, circuit breakers, and timeouts in each service's client code is the correct approach. These patterns handle transient failures gracefully, prevent a failing service from overwhelming upstream callers, and ensure that a slow or unavailable dependency does not cause thread exhaustion or cascading timeouts.

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.. Amazon Redshift is a petabyte-scale, columnar data warehouse optimized for complex analytical SQL queries over structured data, which fits the lab results workload. Amazon Comprehend Medical is a HIPAA-eligible, purpose-built NLP service that extracts medical entities (medications, conditions, PHI) from unstructured clinical notes without requiring custom model training. Both services are fully managed, minimizing administrative overhead, and the combination is cost-effective for this mixed workload. S3 provides durable, low-cost storage for the unstructured notes that Comprehend Medical reads directly.

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.. The requirement is a serverless backend with authentication, REST API, NoSQL storage, unpredictable traffic, and minimized cost. Amazon Cognito provides managed user authentication, API Gateway with Lambda provides a fully serverless REST API that scales automatically, and DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database with on-demand capacity. This combination is fully serverless, scales with traffic, and charges only for usage, matching all requirements.

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 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.. Amazon ECS with Fargate allows running containers without managing servers, and each microservice can be defined as a separate task definition with its own scaling policies. This decouples services, supports independent scaling, and provides container consistency across environments. Fargate eliminates infrastructure management, making it ideal for rapid growth and microservices.

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.

Question 14

A gaming company is designing a new real-time multiplayer game backend on AWS. The game requires low-latency communication between players (< 50 ms) and the ability to handle up to 100,000 concurrent players. The backend must manage game state, player matchmaking, and chat. The company wants to use managed AWS services to reduce operational overhead. Which solution should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon GameLift for session-based game server hosting, with its built-in matchmaking and fleet management.. Amazon GameLift is a managed service specifically designed for session-based multiplayer game hosting. It provides low-latency game server hosting, built-in matchmaking (FlexMatch), and fleet management, which reduces operational overhead. It can scale to handle large numbers of concurrent players and integrates with other AWS services for game state and chat.

Answer

Use Amazon DynamoDB for game state, AWS Lambda for game logic, and API Gateway for client communication.

Answer

Deploy game servers on EC2 instances behind a Network Load Balancer. Use ElastiCache for Redis for game state and SQS for chat messages.

Answer

Use Amazon ECS with Fargate to run game server containers, and use Application Auto Scaling to handle load.

Question 15

A media company is deploying a new video transcoding pipeline on AWS. The pipeline will process thousands of small input files stored in Amazon S3, and each file must be transcoded independently. The transcoding jobs are short (under 5 minutes) and stateless. The company wants a solution that scales automatically, minimizes operational overhead, and provides near-real-time processing. Which design should a solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Lambda functions triggered by S3 event notifications to process each file as it is uploaded.. The requirement for near-real-time processing of small, independent files with minimal operational overhead points to a serverless, event-driven architecture. AWS Lambda integrates natively with S3 event notifications, allowing each uploaded file to trigger a function immediately. Lambda scales automatically and eliminates server management. Other options introduce polling, orchestration overhead, or unsuitable services, failing to meet the low-latency and low-ops goals.

Answer

Use AWS Step Functions to orchestrate a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances that poll an Amazon SQS queue for new files.

Answer

Use AWS Batch with a managed compute environment to run transcoding jobs on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to stream the video files to Amazon Elastic Transcoder for processing.