SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question
This SAA-C03 practice question tests your understanding of design cost-optimized architectures. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. A key principle to apply: compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend.. 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 production log archive 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? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.
Why wrong: Dedicated Instances isolate hardware but do not primarily optimize cost.
C
Compute Savings Plan
Compute Savings Plans provide discounts for a committed spend while allowing flexibility across instance families, sizes, Regions, and compute services.
D
Spot Instances only
Why wrong: Spot is interruptible and not ideal for always-on production baselines.
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 compute usage (up to 66% off On-Demand) in exchange for a 1- or 3-year commitment, while allowing instance-family flexibility across any region, OS, or tenancy. This matches the predictable three-year workload and the team's requirement for instance-family flexibility, and it is a managed AWS-native offering (no manual reservation management).
Key principle: Compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Why it's wrong here
S3 Intelligent-Tiering optimizes object storage, not EC2 compute spend.
✗
Dedicated Instances
Why it's wrong here
Dedicated Instances isolate hardware but do not primarily optimize cost.
✓
Compute Savings Plan
Why this is correct
Compute Savings Plans provide discounts for a committed spend while allowing flexibility across instance families, sizes, Regions, and compute services.
Related concept
Compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend.
✗
Spot Instances only
Why it's wrong here
Spot is interruptible and not ideal for always-on production baselines.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is confusing Savings Plans (which offer flexibility across instance families) with Reserved Instances (which lock to a specific instance family), or assuming Spot Instances can be used for a continuous production workload despite their interruption risk.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Compute Savings Plans apply to EC2, Fargate, and Lambda usage, automatically covering any instance family within a region (e.g., switching from c5 to m5) without manual modification. The discount is based on a committed hourly spend ($/hour) for a 1- or 3-year term, and unused commitment is charged at the committed rate, making it ideal for predictable baselines with some flexibility. Under the hood, AWS applies the Savings Plan rate to eligible usage first, then bills any overage at On-Demand rates.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend.
They provide flexibility across EC2 instance families, sizes, and Regions.
Savings Plans also cover Fargate and Lambda usage.
Commitment terms are available for one or three years.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Review compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend., then practise related SAA-C03 questions on the same topic to reinforce the concept.
Design Cost-Optimized Architectures — This question tests Design Cost-Optimized Architectures — Compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Compute Savings Plan — A Compute Savings Plan offers the lowest prices on EC2 compute usage (up to 66% off On-Demand) in exchange for a 1- or 3-year commitment, while allowing instance-family flexibility across any region, OS, or tenancy. This matches the predictable three-year workload and the team's requirement for instance-family flexibility, and it is a managed AWS-native offering (no manual reservation management).
What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?
Review compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend., then practise related SAA-C03 questions on the same topic to reinforce the concept.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Compute Savings Plans offer discounts for a committed hourly spend.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Share a tip, memory trick, or ask about the reasoning behind this question. Do not post real exam questions, leaked content, braindumps, or copyrighted exam material. Comments are moderated and may be removed without notice.
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.
Question Discussion
Share a tip, memory trick, or ask about the reasoning behind this question. Do not post real exam questions, leaked content, braindumps, or copyrighted exam material. Comments are moderated and may be removed without notice.
Sign in to join the discussion.