SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new serverless application that processes files uploaded to Amazon S3. The processing involves multiple steps, each implemented as a separate AWS Lambda function. The company needs to coordinate these steps, handle retries, and maintain a visual workflow. The solution must be highly available and scalable. Which service should be used to orchestrate the workflow?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse event routing with workflow orchestration; EventBridge and SNS can trigger functions but do not maintain state or sequence.
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
✓
AWS Step Functions
AWS Step Functions is designed for orchestrating multi-step serverless workflows. It provides state management, built-in retries, error handling, and a visual interface, all while scaling automatically. Other options are messaging or event services that lack orchestration features, or manual approaches that are not robust.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) with Lambda subscriptions
Why it's wrong here
SNS is a pub/sub messaging service that can trigger Lambda functions, but it does not provide workflow orchestration, state management, or built-in retries with backoff. Coordinating multiple steps would require complex, custom logic. SNS is best for fan-out notifications, not for maintaining a sequenced workflow with error handling.
- ✓
AWS Step Functions
Why this is correct
AWS Step Functions is a serverless orchestration service that allows you to coordinate multiple Lambda functions into a state machine. It provides built-in retry and error handling, and a visual console to monitor workflows. It scales automatically and is highly available, making it ideal for this multi-step serverless application.
- ✗
AWS Lambda with recursive invocations and dead-letter queues
Why it's wrong here
Using recursive Lambda invocations to chain steps is an anti-pattern; it can lead to infinite loops, difficult debugging, and lack of visibility. Dead-letter queues only capture failed events and do not provide orchestration. This approach is error-prone and does not offer the built-in retry and state management of Step Functions.
- ✗
Amazon EventBridge with rules to trigger Lambda functions
Why it's wrong here
EventBridge is an event bus that can route events to Lambda, but it does not maintain workflow state or sequence. While it can trigger multiple Lambda functions based on events, it lacks the orchestration capabilities needed for multi-step processing with retries and visual tracking. It is more suited for event-driven architectures with independent consumers.
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 |
Go deeper
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.