Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →SAA-C03 · topic practice
Design Cost practice questions
Use this page to practise SAA-C03 Design Cost 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 Design Cost
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
Design Cost questions
20 questions · select your answer, then reveal the explanation
Question 2hardmultiple choice
Full question →A media processing workflow in private subnets downloads large amounts of data from S3 through a NAT gateway. NAT data processing charges are high. What should the architect use to reduce cost? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 3mediummultiple choice
Full question →A log archive serves infrequently accessed user documents that must be available immediately when requested. Which S3 storage class is likely the best cost fit? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 4mediummultiple choice
Full question →A media processing workflow uses CloudWatch Logs heavily. Retaining all debug logs forever is increasing costs. What should be configured? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 5hardmulti select
Full question →A CI system runs on EC2 instances in private subnets and uploads build artifacts to an S3 bucket. The security team wants to eliminate NAT Gateway costs, force all uploads to use TLS, and require SSE-KMS with an approved customer managed key. Which three changes should be made? Select three.
Question 6hardmulti select
Full question →A company processes product-image uploads in bursts. Each transform takes up to ten minutes, and every job can be retried safely from the beginning. The current EC2 worker fleet is idle most of the day. Which two changes most reduce cost and idle capacity? Select two.
Question 7easymultiple choice
Full question →A company stores compliance reports in Amazon S3. Objects are written once and rarely accessed. They need to keep the data for 3 years. When retrieval is needed for an audit, the reports can be restored within hours (not minutes). What storage class should the company use for new objects, assuming minimal operational overhead?
Question 8easymultiple choice
Full question →A company has a steady, predictable workload that must run continuously (24/7) in a single AWS Region. The team wants the lowest cost option available for this steady usage, but also expects they may choose different EC2 instance families in the future (without re-buying compute discounts). Which AWS purchase option best meets these goals?
Question 9mediummultiple choice
Full question →A company hosts an application on EC2 instances in private subnets. The instances must (1) read objects from Amazon S3 and (2) retrieve secrets from AWS Secrets Manager. The team currently sends all outbound traffic through a NAT gateway to reach both services. They want to reduce monthly cost while keeping traffic private (no internet egress) and without changing application logic. Which change is the most cost-effective?
Question 10easymultiple choice
Full question →A company wants to protect a critical application from a full Region outage. The secondary Region should keep only a small amount of infrastructure running most of the time to control cost. Which disaster recovery strategy fits best?
Question 11hardmulti select
Full question →A company processes product-image uploads in bursts. Each transform takes up to ten minutes, and every job can be retried safely from the beginning. The current EC2 worker fleet is idle most of the day. Which two changes most reduce cost and idle capacity? Select two.
Question 12easymultiple 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 13mediummulti select
Full question →A CPU-bound batch rendering service runs on EC2. The application is Linux-based, compatible with ARM64, and the team wants the best throughput per dollar without changing the workload's architecture. Which two instance-family choices should the team consider first? Select two.
Question 14easymultiple choice
Full question →A company stores compliance reports in Amazon S3. Objects are written once and rarely accessed. They need to keep the data for 3 years. When retrieval is needed for an audit, the reports can be restored within hours (not minutes). What storage class should the company use for new objects, assuming minimal operational overhead?
Question 15mediummultiple choice
Full question →A dev sandbox has unpredictable DynamoDB traffic with long idle periods and occasional spikes. Which capacity mode should minimize operational overhead and avoid paying for idle provisioned capacity? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 16mediummultiple choice
Full question →A internal reporting portal serves infrequently accessed user documents that must be available immediately when requested. Which S3 storage class is likely the best cost fit? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 17mediummultiple choice
Full question →A dev sandbox runs for several hours each night and can be interrupted and restarted. Which EC2 purchasing option should minimize cost? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 18hardmulti select
Full question →A internal reporting portal has old unattached EBS volumes and many stale snapshots. Which two actions reduce storage cost without affecting running instances? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 19hardmulti select
Full question →A log archive has old unattached EBS volumes and many stale snapshots. Which two actions reduce storage cost without affecting running instances? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 20mediummultiple choice
Full question →A marketing site runs on x86 EC2 instances and uses open-source software with no architecture-specific licensing restriction. What should be evaluated to reduce compute cost? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Watch out for
Common Design Cost 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 Design Cost?
- 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 Design Cost questions in a focused session?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page draws every question from the Design Cost 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.