SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new serverless application that uses AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon API Gateway. The application must handle burst traffic and cannot lose any data. The company wants to use a dead-letter queue (DLQ) for failed Lambda invocations. Which TWO services can be used as a DLQ for Lambda? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Lambda's event sources (like DynamoDB Streams or Kinesis) with supported DLQ destinations, but Lambda only allows SQS and SNS as DLQ targets for asynchronous invocations.
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 SNS
Amazon SNS and Amazon SQS are the two supported destinations for Lambda's dead-letter queue (DLQ) configuration, but only for asynchronous invocations. When a Lambda function is invoked asynchronously and fails after the configured number of retries, the event can be redirected to an SNS topic or an SQS queue for later reprocessing or analysis. This ensures no data is lost during burst traffic, as failed events are persisted in the DLQ. Synchronous invocations do not support DLQ.
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 DynamoDB Streams
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB Streams is not a DLQ.
- ✓
Amazon SNS
Why this is correct
Lambda can use SNS as a DLQ for asynchronous invocations.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis is not supported as a Lambda DLQ.
- ✓
Amazon SQS
Why this is correct
Lambda can use SQS as a DLQ for asynchronous invocations.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
Why it's wrong here
SES is for email, not a DLQ.
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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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.