SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A payments API requires point-in-time recovery and accidental-delete protection for a DynamoDB table. Which two settings should the architect enable? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse deletion protection (which protects the table resource) with item-level delete prevention, or think that GSIs or DAX provide data durability or recovery features when they do not.
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
✓
Deletion protection or tightly controlled delete permissions
Deletion protection (option A) prevents accidental deletion of the DynamoDB table itself, which is critical for the accidental-delete protection requirement. Point-in-time recovery (option B) enables restoring the table to any point within the last 35 days, satisfying the point-in-time recovery requirement. Both features are native DynamoDB capabilities that require no custom scripts.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Deletion protection or tightly controlled delete permissions
Why this is correct
Deletion protection is a DynamoDB table attribute that blocks DeleteTable operations until explicitly disabled, while tightly scoped IAM policies that deny dynamodb:DeleteTable reduce the risk of a single misissued CLI command or console action taking down a payments table. Without this guard, an accidental deletion is immediate and permanent, taking all data, indexes, and backup history with it. It is therefore a required complement to backup features.
- ✓
Point-in-time recovery
Why this is correct
Point-in-time recovery (PITR) continuously records changes to a DynamoDB table for the last 35 days, letting you restore the table to any specific second in that window using the AWS console or API. PITR is ideal for recovering from erroneous writes, logical corruption, or unintended data-deletion patterns, and it restores into a fresh table rather than overwriting the original. However, PITR alone does not protect against the table being deleted, because deleting the table also deletes its PITR backups.
- ✗
Global secondary indexes
Why it's wrong here
Global secondary indexes (GSIs) are maintained as copies of a DynamoDB table's data reorganized around an alternative partition and sort key so that you can run fast queries on non-primary attributes. They offer no resilience or recovery capabilities; they are stored as part of the same table's physical infrastructure, and when the base table is dropped the GSIs disappear with it. They solve access-pattern problems, not durability or availability problems.
- ✗
DAX
Why it's wrong here
DAX (DynamoDB Accelerator) is an in-memory write-through cache that offloads repeated reads from the underlying table, cutting read latency to microseconds for hot keys. It holds data transiently and is not a durable, independently restorable store; a cached item can be stale, and if the source table is corrupted or deleted, DAX only propagates the loss or continues serving cached values that no longer exist. It is a performance optimization, not a point-in-time recovery mechanism.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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