Question 1hardmulti select
Full question →SAA-C03 · topic practice
Cost Optimization practice questions
Use this page to practise SAA-C03 Cost Optimization practice questions. The goal is not to memorise dumps, but to understand the concept, review the explanation and improve your exam readiness.
What the exam tests
What to know about Cost Optimization
QoS questions usually test traffic classification (DSCP/CoS), queuing strategies, policing vs shaping and where each mechanism is applied.
DSCP and CoS marking and trust boundaries.
Queuing mechanisms: FIFO, WFQ, CBWFQ, LLQ.
Policing (drops excess) vs shaping (delays excess).
Where QoS is applied: ingress, egress, LAN, WAN.
Practice set
Cost Optimization questions
20 questions · select your answer, then reveal the explanation
Question 2mediummultiple choice
Full question →A company runs an application on EC2 instances in private subnets. The instances must access Amazon S3, and the team currently routes all outbound traffic to the internet through a NAT Gateway. Monthly NAT Gateway charges increased significantly, even though the application only needs to call S3 (not access other public internet services). Which change will most directly reduce NAT Gateway charges while keeping S3 access working?
Question 3easymultiple choice
Full question →A company runs EC2 workloads in one region with somewhat steady overall demand. Over time, the team frequently changes instance families (for performance/optimization) and sometimes changes instance size, but wants predictable cost discounts. Which purchase option provides the best balance of cost savings and flexibility?
Question 4mediummultiple choice
Full question →A data engineering team runs a nightly ETL job on EC2. The job can be checkpointed every 5 minutes and can be retried from the last checkpoint if the instance terminates. The job runtime varies from 2 to 4 hours, and the team has no need for a specific instance type, as long as it completes before 7:00 AM local time. They currently run the job on On-Demand EC2, leading to high monthly compute cost.
Which change best reduces cost while maintaining the business deadline?
Question 5easymultiple choice
Full question →A company keeps daily database backups in an S3 bucket. They may restore from backups during the first 30 days if there is an issue. After 30 days, backups are rarely restored, but must be retained for 2 years. Which lifecycle strategy most cost-effectively meets these requirements?
Question 6easymultiple choice
Full question →A company keeps daily database backups in an S3 bucket. They may restore from backups during the first 30 days if there is an issue. After 30 days, backups are rarely restored, but must be retained for 2 years. Which lifecycle strategy most cost-effectively meets these requirements?
Question 7easymultiple choice
Full question →A media company runs a batch job that processes image thumbnails. The job can be restarted from checkpoints and does not have user-facing SLAs. The batch capacity can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option is the best cost optimization choice?
Question 8mediummultiple choice
Full question →A marketing site stores logs in S3. Logs are queried for 30 days, rarely accessed for one year, and then retained for compliance. What should reduce storage cost?
Question 9mediummultiple choice
Full question →A media company runs a fleet of EC2 instances using Auto Scaling across multiple instance families (for example, m-series and c-series) in a single region. The business wants to commit to steady usage for one year to reduce cost, but the application team must retain flexibility to switch instance families and scale up/down as demand changes. They need the cost-reduction approach that best matches this flexibility. Which option is the best fit?
Question 10mediummultiple choice
Full question →A data engineering team runs a nightly ETL job on EC2. The job can be checkpointed every 5 minutes and can be retried from the last checkpoint if the instance terminates. The job runtime varies from 2 to 4 hours, and the team has no need for a specific instance type, as long as it completes before 7:00 AM local time. They currently run the job on On-Demand EC2, leading to high monthly compute cost.
Which change best reduces cost while maintaining the business deadline?
Question 11easymultiple choice
Full question →A Lambda function processes CPU-heavy JSON transformations and often runs slower than expected. The team wants to improve performance without changing the code. What should they try first?
Question 12mediummulti select
Full question →A marketing site serves versioned JavaScript and CSS files from an Amazon S3 origin through Amazon CloudFront. After a frontend release, the CloudFront cache hit ratio dropped because browsers now send an Authorization header on every static asset request even though the assets are public and do not require authentication. The team wants to lower origin load and improve cache efficiency. Which two actions should it take? Select two.
Question 13mediummultiple choice
Full question →A media company runs a 24/7 recommendation engine on EC2 in one AWS Region. The workload is interruption-intolerant, and the team expects steady usage but may change instance families and sizes during planned optimizations. Compared to the current On-Demand setup, they want the lowest cost while avoiding the rigidity of locking to a specific instance type.
What should the solutions architect recommend?
Question 14mediummultiple choice
Full question →A marketing site stores logs in S3. Logs are queried for 30 days, rarely accessed for one year, and then retained for compliance. What should reduce storage cost? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 15easymultiple choice
Full question →A media company runs a batch job that processes image thumbnails. The job can be restarted from checkpoints and does not have user-facing SLAs. The batch capacity can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option is the best cost optimization choice?
Question 16mediummultiple choice
Full question →A media company runs a 24/7 recommendation engine on EC2 in one AWS Region. The workload is interruption-intolerant, and the team expects steady usage but may change instance families and sizes during planned optimizations. Compared to the current On-Demand setup, they want the lowest cost while avoiding the rigidity of locking to a specific instance type.
What should the solutions architect recommend?
Question 17hardmulti select
Full question →A media company stores raw project files in Amazon S3. Files are accessed heavily for the first 60 days, occasionally for legal review during the next six months, and must be retained for 7 years. Retrieval for the oldest files can take hours. Which three actions should the architect recommend? Select three.
Question 18easymultiple choice
Full question →A media processing pipeline runs batch jobs overnight. The jobs are stateless, can be restarted from checkpoints, and can tolerate interruptions. The team wants to minimize compute cost. Which EC2 approach is the best fit?
Question 19hardmulti select
Full question →A SaaS vendor has a steady 24/7 control plane on ECS and several small event-driven tasks that currently run on a separate always-on service. Management wants the billing discount that applies across both ECS and Lambda usage without committing to a specific instance family. Which two actions are best? Select two.
Question 20hardmulti select
Full question →A SaaS vendor has a steady 24/7 control plane on ECS and several small event-driven tasks that currently run on a separate always-on service. Management wants the billing discount that applies across both ECS and Lambda usage without committing to a specific instance family. Which two actions are best? Select two.
Watch out for
Common Cost Optimization exam traps
- ▸Policing drops traffic; shaping buffers it — they solve different problems.
- ▸DSCP EF (46) is for voice; AF classes are for data tiers.
- ▸QoS must be configured end-to-end to be effective.
- ▸CoS values are Layer 2; DSCP is Layer 3.
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the SAA-C03 exam test about Cost Optimization?
- QoS questions usually test traffic classification (DSCP/CoS), queuing strategies, policing vs shaping and where each mechanism is applied.
- How should I use these practice questions?
- Select your answer before revealing the explanation. Then read why each option is right or wrong — this active recall approach builds retention far faster than re-reading notes.
- Can I practise just Cost Optimization questions in a focused session?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page draws every question from the Cost Optimization domain. Use a 10-question session first to gauge your baseline, then move to 20 or 30 once the weak spots are clear.
- Where can I practise other SAA-C03 topics?
- Use the topic links above to move to related areas, or go back to the SAA-C03 question bank to see all topics.
- Are these real exam questions or dumps?
- These are original practice questions written to test the same concepts the SAA-C03 exam covers. They are not copied from any real exam or dump site.
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Exam traps to avoid
- ▸Policing drops traffic; shaping buffers it — they solve different problems.
- ▸DSCP EF (46) is for voice; AF classes are for data tiers.
- ▸QoS must be configured end-to-end to be effective.
- ▸CoS values are Layer 2; DSCP is Layer 3.