SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A retail company hosts a product catalogue API on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The API serves mostly small JSON responses and is read-heavy. Users in a distant continent report slow response times even though the origin servers are not heavily loaded. The company cannot change the application and wants the lowest-latency read experience globally. Which service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Global Accelerator's network-path optimization with actual content caching at the edge.
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
✓
Amazon CloudFront with the Application Load Balancer as the origin, configuring cache behaviors for the API paths.
A read-heavy API returning cacheable JSON is a strong fit for a CDN. CloudFront terminates user connections at nearby edge locations and serves cached responses, while forwarding cache misses to the ALB origin. This reduces round-trip time for distant users without changing the application or standing up a second Region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
An Application Load Balancer with cross-zone load balancing enabled and a larger instance fleet.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-zone load balancing distributes traffic evenly across Availability Zones and can improve resilience, but it does not shorten the network path for users on another continent. Adding instances increases capacity, not proximity, so distant users still traverse the same long-haul links and see the same latency.
- ✗
An Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing policy with additional EC2 instances in a second Region.
Why it's wrong here
Latency-based routing directs users to the Region with the lowest measured latency, but it still requires building and operating a second Regional stack, which the company wants to avoid. It also does not cache responses, so it adds cost and operational overhead without the edge-caching benefit that solves repeated read latency.
- ✓
Amazon CloudFront with the Application Load Balancer as the origin, configuring cache behaviors for the API paths.
Why this is correct
CloudFront caches responses at edge locations close to users, so repeated reads of the same catalogue JSON are served from the edge with low latency. It supports the ALB as a custom origin, honors cache headers, and can forward dynamic requests to the origin while caching cacheable GET responses, which directly solves the distant-user latency for a read-heavy API.
- ✗
AWS Global Accelerator with an accelerator in front of the Application Load Balancer.
Why it's wrong here
Global Accelerator improves performance by routing traffic over the AWS global network to the nearest edge and then to the endpoint, which helps with TCP and UDP latency and failover. However, it does not cache content, so every request still travels to the origin Region, meaning distant users do not get the cached-response speedup they need for a read-heavy JSON API.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.