SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
Exhibit
Topology notes: - 12 x Amazon EC2 c6i.large instances - All instances run in us-east-1a - Current network path between nodes averages 0.9 ms and occasionally spikes above 2 ms - Workload logs: "gossip sync lag detected" and "broadcast step exceeded SLA" - Requirement: minimize latency and jitter between nodes, not maximize fault isolation
Based on the exhibit, a distributed analytics workload runs on 12 EC2 instances in one Availability Zone. The nodes exchange thousands of small messages per second and require the lowest possible intra-cluster latency and jitter. Which EC2 placement strategy is the best fit?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse 'spread' or 'partition' placement groups as providing better performance due to isolation, but they fail to recognize that cluster placement groups are the only strategy designed specifically for the lowest latency and jitter within a single AZ.
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
✓
Cluster placement group, because it places instances physically close together in one Availability Zone.
A cluster placement group is the best choice because it places all 12 EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone within the same high-bandwidth, low-latency logical segment of the network. This minimizes the physical distance and network hops between nodes, achieving the lowest possible intra-cluster latency and jitter required for the thousands of small messages exchanged per second.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Spread placement group, because it places each instance on distinct underlying hardware.
Why it's wrong here
A spread placement group is optimized for availability by reducing correlated failure risk across individual instances. It intentionally separates instances across distinct hardware, which is useful for fault tolerance but not for minimizing east-west latency or jitter for a tightly coupled cluster.
- ✗
Partition placement group, because it isolates nodes across rack partitions.
Why it's wrong here
Partition placement groups help large distributed systems reduce the impact of correlated infrastructure failures by separating instances into logical partitions. They are a resilience feature, not a performance feature, and they do not provide the close network proximity needed for the lowest-latency message exchange.
- ✓
Cluster placement group, because it places instances physically close together in one Availability Zone.
Why this is correct
Cluster placement groups are designed for workloads that need very low network latency, low jitter, and high packet-per-second performance. Placing the instances physically close together within the same Availability Zone reduces network hop distance and is the best match for a message-heavy distributed analytics cluster.
- ✗
Move the workload behind an Application Load Balancer so node-to-node traffic is balanced more efficiently.
Why it's wrong here
An Application Load Balancer operates at Layer 7 and is designed to distribute external client requests across a fleet of instances or containers, not to mediate server-to-server (east-west) traffic. Placing an ALB between cluster nodes would insert an extra proxy hop, adding latency and jitter rather than reducing it, and it would terminate and re-establish TCP connections, which is catastrophic for a tightly coupled analytics cluster that relies on persistent, high-throughput streams. Furthermore, ALB does not alter the physical placement of instances, so it cannot shorten the underlying network path that determines east-west latency.
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