Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →easymultiple choiceObjective-mapped
Exhibit
Auto Scaling group configuration: - Desired capacity: 4 - VPC subnets: subnet-0a11 (us-east-1a) only - Health check type: ELB Application Load Balancer configuration: - Enabled subnets: subnet-0a11 (us-east-1a), subnet-0b22 (us-east-1b) Incident note: - A planned test stopped all instances in us-east-1a and the application became unavailable.
Based on the exhibit, a web application must stay available if one Availability Zone fails. What is the best change to improve resilience?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Increase the desired capacity to 8 instances in the same subnet.
More instances in one Availability Zone do not protect against the Zone itself failing. Capacity increases, but resilience does not.
B
Best answer
Add a subnet in another Availability Zone to the Auto Scaling group and keep the ALB spanning both AZs.
This places application instances across multiple Availability Zones, which protects the stateless tier from a single-AZ failure. The ALB already spans two AZs, so the missing piece is the Auto Scaling group using subnets in more than one AZ. That allows AWS to replace unhealthy instances and continue serving traffic from the surviving Zone.
C
Distractor review
Replace the Application Load Balancer with a Network Load Balancer.
A different load balancer type does not fix the single-AZ compute placement problem. The application still has no surviving instances in another Zone.
D
Distractor review
Move the instances to a larger instance type with more CPU and memory.
Bigger instances can improve performance, but they do not add Availability Zone redundancy. A larger instance in one AZ is still a single point of failure.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: usable hosts are not the same as total addresses
Subnetting questions often tempt you into counting all addresses. In normal IPv4 subnets, the network and broadcast addresses are not usable host addresses.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
Subnetting questions test whether you can identify the network, broadcast address, usable range, mask and correct subnet. Slow down enough to calculate the block size correctly.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
- Block size helps identify subnet boundaries.
- Network and broadcast addresses are not usable hosts in normal IPv4 subnets.
- The required host count determines the smallest suitable subnet.
TExam Day Tips
- Write the block size before choosing the subnet.
- Check whether the question asks for hosts, subnets or a specific address range.
- Do not confuse /24, /25, /26 and /27 host counts.
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More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A team needs to distribute TCP traffic (not HTTP) across multiple services. The services must see the original client source IP for auditing. Which AWS load balancer is the best fit?
Question 2
A team wants to run containerized services with AWS-managed orchestration and autoscaling. They do NOT require Kubernetes compatibility. Which AWS service choice is most appropriate to meet these goals?
Question 3
A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a IoT ingestion API. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 4
A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a claims portal. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure?
Question 5
A team wants to delegate IAM management to developers, but must ensure developers can never grant themselves permissions beyond a specific limit. Which AWS mechanism best matches this requirement?
Question 6
A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a healthcare document service. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SAA-C03 question test?
CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Add a subnet in another Availability Zone to the Auto Scaling group and keep the ALB spanning both AZs. — For high availability, the application tier must be spread across at least two Availability Zones. The exhibit shows the ALB already spans us-east-1a and us-east-1b, but the Auto Scaling group launches instances only in us-east-1a. If that Zone fails, no instances remain to serve traffic. Adding a second subnet from another AZ lets the ASG place and replace instances across Zones, which is the standard multi-AZ pattern for resilient stateless applications. Why others are wrong: Increasing instance count, changing load balancer type, or using larger instances may help capacity or performance, but none of them eliminate the single-AZ dependency. The problem is placement, not size or load balancer selection. The application needs instances in more than one Availability Zone to survive an AZ outage.
What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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