A company processes product-image uploads in bursts. Each transform takes up to ten minutes, and every job can be retried safely from the beginning. The current EC2 worker fleet is idle most of the day. Which two changes most reduce cost and idle capacity? Select two.

Keep a fixed fleet of m6i.large instances in an Auto Scaling group with a higher minimum.

Incorrect. A higher minimum keeps capacity running even when the queue is empty, so idle cost remains high. It also does not provide the burst efficiency that queued, event-driven processing gives you.

Use Reserved Instances for the workers even though demand is highly bursty.

Incorrect. Reserved Instances work best for stable, predictable utilization. Bursty workers would leave committed capacity unused much of the time, which wastes money.

Process uploads only during a nightly window so the fleet looks busier.

Incorrect. Batch scheduling may reduce perceived complexity, but it increases latency and does not inherently reduce compute cost if the same amount of work must still be done.

What does this SAA-C03 question test?

Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Buffer jobs in Amazon SQS and let workers scale from queue depth. — The cheapest design for bursty, retry-safe work is to decouple requests from compute and use discounted container capacity. SQS prevents the worker fleet from sitting idle while waiting for uploads, and scaling from queue depth matches supply to demand. Fargate Spot then lowers the unit price for the workers because interruptions are acceptable and every job can be retried from the beginning. This combination reduces both idle time and orchestration overhead. Why others are wrong: Keeping a fixed minimum fleet or buying Reserved Instances makes sense only when utilization is consistently high. Neither choice fits bursty upload processing. A nightly batch window may appear simpler, but it increases end-user delay and does not solve the underlying idle-capacity problem. The workload is already retry-safe, so forcing a time-based schedule adds friction without meaningful savings.

What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?

Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.