Question 104 of 1,040
SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
This SAA-C03 practice question tests your understanding of design high-performing architectures. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. 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 company is designing a high-performance architecture for a real-time analytics platform that ingests millions of events per second. The events must be processed with minimal latency and then stored for long-term analysis. Which three services should be combined to build this architecture? (Choose three.)
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 Kinesis Data Streams for real-time data ingestion
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is correct because it is designed for real-time data ingestion of millions of events per second with low latency, providing durable storage and ordered processing. AWS Lambda is correct because it can process events from Kinesis in near real-time with automatic scaling, making it ideal for minimal-latency processing. Amazon Redshift is correct because it is a petabyte-scale data warehouse optimized for long-term storage and complex analytics on large datasets, supporting high-performance queries.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Amazon SQS with Kinesis for streaming ingestion, or assume Amazon RDS can handle long-term analytics storage, but the exam tests the specific use case of high-throughput, low-latency streaming and petabyte-scale analytics.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Kinesis Data Streams uses shards to scale throughput, with each shard supporting up to 1 MB/s or 1,000 records/s for writes; Lambda can poll shards in parallel, processing records in batches with configurable concurrency. Redshift uses columnar storage and massively parallel processing (MPP) to execute queries across nodes, with automatic compression and sort keys for fast retrieval. In a real-world scenario, a company might use Kinesis to ingest clickstream data, Lambda to transform and enrich events, and Redshift to store aggregated data for business intelligence dashboards.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
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
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
What to study next
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SAA-C03 question test?
Design High-Performing Architectures — This question tests Design High-Performing Architectures — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for real-time data ingestion — Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is correct because it is designed for real-time data ingestion of millions of events per second with low latency, providing durable storage and ordered processing. AWS Lambda is correct because it can process events from Kinesis in near real-time with automatic scaling, making it ideal for minimal-latency processing. Amazon Redshift is correct because it is a petabyte-scale data warehouse optimized for long-term storage and complex analytics on large datasets, supporting high-performance queries.
What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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