Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
Exhibit
Current deployment: Application Load Balancer subnets: subnet-a1 (AZ-a), subnet-a2 (AZ-a) Auto Scaling group subnets: subnet-a1 (AZ-a) only Desired capacity: 4 instances Minimum capacity: 4 instances Incident report: 2026-04-18T09:21Z AZ-a experienced a power issue 2026-04-18T09:22Z all targets became unhealthy 2026-04-18T09:25Z service returned HTTP 503 to users
Based on the exhibit, the application should continue serving requests if one Availability Zone fails. Which change best improves resilience with the least operational complexity?
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 in AZ-a so more instances can absorb the failure of that same Availability Zone.
Adding more instances in the same Availability Zone does not protect against an AZ-wide outage because all of those instances fail together.
B
Best answer
Add at least one subnet from a second Availability Zone to both the ALB and the Auto Scaling group.
A resilient design needs the load balancer and the Auto Scaling group to span multiple Availability Zones. If one AZ fails, the ALB can still route to healthy targets in the remaining AZs and the Auto Scaling group can replenish capacity there. This is the simplest and most common way to achieve AZ-level fault tolerance.
C
Distractor review
Disable health checks so the ALB stops removing targets during brief infrastructure issues.
Disabling health checks hides failures instead of recovering from them. The load balancer would continue sending traffic to unhealthy targets, which makes the outage worse rather than better.
D
Distractor review
Move the application to a single larger instance type so the fleet has fewer moving parts.
A single larger instance increases concentration risk and does not remove the Availability Zone single point of failure. It reduces the number of instances, but it also reduces redundancy.
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 at least one subnet from a second Availability Zone to both the ALB and the Auto Scaling group. — The issue is that both the ALB and the Auto Scaling group are pinned to one Availability Zone. To survive an AZ loss, they need subnets in at least two AZs so traffic and capacity can shift to healthy infrastructure automatically. This is the standard high-availability pattern for EC2 applications behind an ALB, and it adds resilience without major operational complexity. Scaling up inside the same AZ does not help when the entire AZ fails. Disabling health checks prevents the system from removing bad targets and delays recovery. Using one larger instance makes the design less resilient, not more, because it creates a larger single point of failure with no redundancy.
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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