SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
This SAA-C03 practice question tests your understanding of design resilient architectures. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. A key principle to apply: dLQs/failure destinations capture failed asynchronous Lambda invocations.. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A inventory service uses Lambda functions that call an unreliable third-party API. Failed events must be retained for later investigation after retries are exhausted. What should be configured? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
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A Lambda dead-letter queue or failure destination
A Lambda dead-letter queue (DLQ) or failure destination allows you to capture events that have exhausted all retry attempts from an asynchronous invocation. When the Lambda function fails after the maximum retries (default 3), the event is sent to the configured SQS queue or SNS topic for later investigation, without requiring custom scripts or manual polling.
Package size does not affect failed-event capture.
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CloudFront error pages
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront does not manage Lambda asynchronous retry failures.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may confuse Lambda's DLQ/failure destination with other error-handling mechanisms like SQS redrive policies or CloudFront custom error pages, which serve different purposes and operate at different layers of the architecture.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Lambda's asynchronous invocation retries twice (total 3 attempts) with a built-in backoff. When all retries fail, the event is sent to the configured DLQ (SQS or SNS) or failure destination (SQS, SNS, Lambda, or EventBridge). The DLQ retains the original event payload, allowing you to reprocess or analyze it later. Note that failure destinations are more flexible than DLQs because they support multiple target types and can include invocation context metadata.
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What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Review dLQs/failure destinations capture failed asynchronous Lambda invocations., then practise related SAA-C03 questions on the same topic to reinforce the concept.
The correct answer is: A Lambda dead-letter queue or failure destination — A Lambda dead-letter queue (DLQ) or failure destination allows you to capture events that have exhausted all retry attempts from an asynchronous invocation. When the Lambda function fails after the maximum retries (default 3), the event is sent to the configured SQS queue or SNS topic for later investigation, without requiring custom scripts or manual polling.
What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?
Review dLQs/failure destinations capture failed asynchronous Lambda invocations., then practise related SAA-C03 questions on the same topic to reinforce the concept.
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