SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
An application is experiencing intermittent performance issues due to high IOPS demand. The application currently uses a standard General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume. Which action will provide the best performance improvement?
⚠ Common exam trap
SAA-C03 often tests the misconception that increasing gp2 volume size is the best way to increase IOPS, but it is inefficient; provisioned IOPS volumes are specifically designed for high IOPS workloads.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Change the volume type to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2).
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2) volumes are designed for I/O-intensive workloads and allow you to specify a consistent IOPS rate. They provide significantly higher IOPS than gp2 volumes and are the best choice for applications with high IOPS demand. This directly addresses the performance issue.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the volume type to gp3.
Why it's wrong here
While gp3 allows for independent IOPS and throughput provisioning, io1/io2 volumes provide higher, guaranteed performance levels for extreme IOPS needs. If the application is truly struggling with high IOPS, Provisioned IOPS volumes provide a more robust and predictable performance tier compared to gp3, especially for mission-critical databases.
- ✓
Change the volume type to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2).
Why this is correct
Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes are designed for mission-critical, throughput-intensive, and latency-sensitive workloads. They allow you to provision a specific number of IOPS that the volume will consistently maintain, effectively eliminating the throttling issues associated with general-purpose storage when the workload exceeds the burst capacity of gp2/gp3 volumes.
- ✗
Increase the size of the gp2 volume.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the size of a gp2 volume increases performance, but only up to a point, as IOPS are linked to the volume size. This approach is inefficient and costly if you only need more IOPS. Provisioned IOPS allows for decoupling IOPS from volume size, providing more granular control.
- ✗
Switch to Cold HDD (sc1) storage.
Why it's wrong here
Cold HDD volumes are designed for infrequently accessed data and have significantly lower IOPS performance compared to SSDs. Moving to HDD storage would drastically worsen the performance issues for an application already experiencing high IOPS demand. HDD storage is intended for large-scale, low-cost archival or batch processing workloads.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SAA-C03 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAA-C03 exam.