SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question
A production internal reporting portal runs continuously on EC2 with predictable usage for the next three years. The team wants a discount while retaining some instance-family flexibility. What should they buy?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Compute Savings Plans with EC2 Instance Savings Plans, assuming any Savings Plan locks you to a specific instance family, but Compute Savings Plans provide broader flexibility across families and services.
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
✓
Compute Savings Plan
A Compute Savings Plan offers the lowest prices on EC2 usage (up to 66% off On-Demand) in exchange for a 1- or 3-year commitment, and it automatically applies to any EC2 instance family in any region, giving the flexibility the team needs. Since the workload runs continuously with predictable usage for three years, this plan is ideal for reducing costs while retaining the ability to change instance families if needed.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Spot Instances only
Why it's wrong here
Spot Instances are unsuitable for this always-on internal reporting portal because they are interruptible: AWS can reclaim capacity with only a two-minute warning when EC2 needs the resources back. Although Spot offers up to a 90% discount, the risk of unpredictable termination breaks the continuous availability and reliability required for a production reporting workload, so it cannot serve as the baseline for this running 24/7 system.
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Dedicated Instances
Why it's wrong here
Dedicated Instances isolate your hardware for compliance or licensing requirements, but they do not provide a cost optimization benefit for a continuously running reporting portal. In fact, Dedicated Instances typically cost more than standard On-Demand instances, and switching to them does not introduce a pricing model based on consistent usage that would lower the bill; the question is about reducing EC2 spend, not about hardware isolation.
- ✓
Compute Savings Plan
Why this is correct
A Compute Savings Plan is the most cost-effective option because it provides a significant discount (up to 66% versus On-Demand) in exchange for a one- or three-year hourly spend commitment, while allowing flexibility across instance families, sizes, availability zones, regions, and even compute services like Lambda and Fargate. For a production portal that runs continuously, the predictable, always-on usage justifies the commitment, and the plan automatically applies to any EC2 instance usage without needing specific instance configurations.
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S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Why it's wrong here
S3 Intelligent-Tiering is an Amazon S3 storage class that automatically moves objects between access tiers to optimize storage costs. It has no effect on EC2 compute costs, and this portal is an EC2 workload, so using S3 Intelligent-Tiering would not change how EC2 instances are billed; it is relevant only to storage patterns, not to compute usage.
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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.