SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a serverless data processing pipeline using AWS Lambda functions. The pipeline processes messages from an Amazon SQS queue. Each message takes approximately 30 seconds to process, and the pipeline must handle bursts of up to 10,000 messages per minute. The messages must be processed in the order they are received. Which solution meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse 'Concurrency limit' (which caps maximum concurrency) with 'reserved concurrency' (which guarantees availability), and they may overlook that SQS Standard queues do not preserve order, leading them to choose Option A or C incorrectly.
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
✓
Use an SQS FIFO queue with a Lambda function configured with a reserved concurrency of 1000.
An SQS FIFO queue guarantees first-in-first-out delivery within each message group, and with multiple message group IDs, messages can be processed in parallel. The Lambda function can be configured with a batch size of up to 10 messages from the same group. Assuming that messages are distributed across many groups, each invocation processes a batch of messages in approximately 30 seconds, yielding a per-group throughput of up to 20 messages per minute. With a reserved concurrency of 1000, the pipeline can handle up to 1000 groups concurrently, achieving a total throughput of 20,000 messages per minute, which exceeds the required burst of 10,000 messages per minute. Reserved concurrency also ensures that the necessary capacity is available when needed, preventing throttling.
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 an SQS FIFO queue with a Lambda function that sets the Concurrency limit to 100.
Why it's wrong here
Reserved concurrency is needed to handle burst of 10,000/min; 100 may be insufficient.
- ✓
Use an SQS FIFO queue with a Lambda function configured with a reserved concurrency of 1000.
Why this is correct
FIFO queues preserve order; Lambda with reserved concurrency avoids throttling.
- ✗
Use an SQS Standard queue with a Lambda function that processes messages in batches.
Why it's wrong here
Standard queues do not guarantee order.
- ✗
Use an Amazon Kinesis Data Stream with a Lambda function that processes multiple records per invocation.
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis does not guarantee order across shards.
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.