SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A Lambda-based travel booking site has unpredictable traffic spikes and users see latency caused by cold starts. The function must respond consistently during expected campaign windows. What should be configured?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse reserved concurrency (a limit) with provisioned concurrency (a pre‑warming mechanism), assuming any concurrency setting solves cold starts, when only provisioned concurrency actively eliminates them.
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
✓
Provisioned concurrency during campaign windows
Provisioned concurrency initializes a specified number of execution environments in advance, eliminating cold starts for those instances. During campaign windows, this ensures consistent sub‑millisecond latency because the function is always warm and ready to handle requests immediately.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Provisioned concurrency during campaign windows
Why this is correct
Provisioned concurrency keeps execution environments initialized and reduces cold-start latency.
- ✗
A larger deployment package
Why it's wrong here
A larger package can increase cold-start time.
- ✗
CloudTrail data events
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API activity and does not reduce Lambda latency.
- ✗
Reserved concurrency only
Why it's wrong here
Reserved concurrency limits and reserves capacity but does not pre-initialize execution environments.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SAA-C03 question from scratch — 302 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.