SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application stores user-uploaded images in an Amazon S3 bucket. Users report slow image upload times, especially from mobile devices in remote locations. The solutions architect needs to improve upload performance for these users. Which action should the architect take?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is thinking that a CDN like CloudFront accelerates uploads by default, when it is primarily for download acceleration; S3 Transfer Acceleration is the service specifically designed for faster uploads.
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
✓
Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and configure the application to use the accelerated endpoint for uploads.
S3 Transfer Acceleration leverages CloudFront edge locations to accelerate uploads to S3. Data is uploaded to the nearest edge location and then transferred to S3 over the optimized AWS network. This reduces latency and improves throughput for users far from the bucket's Region, making it the right choice for slow image uploads from remote mobile devices.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure the S3 bucket for cross-region replication to a bucket in a region closer to the users.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-region replication replicates objects asynchronously to another bucket, but it does not accelerate the initial upload from the user to the primary bucket. Users would still upload to the original bucket, experiencing the same slow speeds. Replication only helps with read access from other regions after the object is uploaded. It does not address the upload performance issue for remote users.
- ✓
Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and configure the application to use the accelerated endpoint for uploads.
Why this is correct
S3 Transfer Acceleration uses Amazon CloudFront edge locations to accelerate uploads over long distances. When enabled, uploads go to the nearest edge location and are then routed to S3 over the AWS global network, reducing latency and improving throughput. This is ideal for mobile users in remote locations. The application must use the accelerated endpoint, which is a simple configuration change, to benefit from the acceleration.
- ✗
Use Amazon CloudFront with a custom origin pointing to the S3 bucket to cache uploads.
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is a content delivery network primarily designed for accelerating downloads, not uploads. While CloudFront can be configured to forward POST/PUT requests to an origin, it does not provide the same upload acceleration as S3 Transfer Acceleration. CloudFront edge locations can accept uploads, but they are optimized for caching and delivering content. Transfer Acceleration is specifically designed to accelerate uploads to S3 over the AWS global network.
- ✗
Increase the size of the EC2 instances to improve their network bandwidth for handling uploads.
Why it's wrong here
The EC2 instances are behind an ALB and likely receive the uploads from users. However, the bottleneck is the network path from the remote users to the AWS Region, not the EC2 instance capacity. Increasing instance size might improve processing after the upload, but it does not reduce latency or improve throughput over the long-distance network. The upload speed is limited by the user's connection to the Region, which Transfer Acceleration addresses.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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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.