SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a serverless application that processes images uploaded to an S3 bucket. The processing must be asynchronous and can take up to 15 minutes per image. Which AWS service should be used to trigger the processing?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume Lambda's synchronous invocation (Option C) is suitable because it can run up to 15 minutes, but they overlook that S3 synchronous invocation is not designed for asynchronous workloads and can cause timeouts or lost events if the processing takes the full duration.
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
✓
Configure S3 Event Notifications to send an event to an Amazon SQS queue, which is polled by an AWS Lambda function
S3 Event Notifications can asynchronously deliver events to an SQS queue, and an AWS Lambda function can poll that queue. This decouples the processing from the S3 upload, allowing the Lambda function to handle the 15-minute processing limit asynchronously without timing out, since Lambda's maximum execution time is 15 minutes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure S3 Event Notifications to send an event to an Amazon SQS queue, which is polled by an AWS Lambda function
Why this is correct
S3 event to SQS decouples the upload from processing. Lambda polls SQS and can process messages asynchronously; Lambda can run up to 15 minutes.
- ✗
Configure S3 Event Notifications to publish a message to an Amazon SNS topic, which triggers an AWS Lambda function
Why it's wrong here
SNS can trigger Lambda, but if processing takes up to 15 minutes, it's still subject to Lambda timeout; also SNS does not provide a queue for decoupling.
- ✗
Configure S3 Event Notifications to invoke an AWS Lambda function synchronously
Why it's wrong here
Lambda synchronous invocation would time out if processing takes more than 15 minutes (Lambda max timeout is 15 minutes).
- ✗
Use Amazon EventBridge to capture S3 events and trigger an AWS Step Functions workflow
Why it's wrong here
EventBridge and Step Functions can be used, but the simplest and most direct way is S3 event to SQS to Lambda, as Step Functions adds complexity.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SAP-C02 question from scratch — 1,660 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.