SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is building a serverless application using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB. They need to ensure that the application can handle sudden spikes in traffic without throttling. Which design should they implement?
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
✓
Enable DynamoDB auto scaling and configure Lambda function reserved concurrency.
Enabling DynamoDB auto scaling automatically adjusts read/write capacity to handle traffic spikes, while configuring Lambda reserved concurrency ensures that the function has a guaranteed pool of concurrency available, preventing throttling from other functions. Option A (Lambda provisioned concurrency) reduces cold starts but does not prevent throttling; API Gateway usage plans control client access rates but do not handle backend spikes. Option C (reserved concurrency) alone prevents other functions from using concurrency but does not address DynamoDB throttling; API Gateway cache reduces read load but not write spikes. Option D (DAX) is a caching layer for DynamoDB reads, not a scaling mechanism for traffic spikes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Lambda provisioned concurrency and an API Gateway usage plan.
Why it's wrong here
Provisioned concurrency helps cold starts, not throttling; usage plan limits clients.
- ✓
Enable DynamoDB auto scaling and configure Lambda function reserved concurrency.
Why this is correct
Auto scaling handles throughput spikes; reserved concurrency prevents throttling of the function.
- ✗
Configure Lambda function reserved concurrency and an API Gateway cache.
Why it's wrong here
Reserved concurrency prevents throttling but cache doesn't help with compute spikes.
- ✗
Use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) and Lambda function reserved concurrency.
Why it's wrong here
DAX is for read caching, not write scaling; doesn't handle write spikes.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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This SAP-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAP-C02 exam.