SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to decouple components in a new microservices architecture? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse caching services (ElastiCache) or network services (Direct Connect, Route 53) with messaging services, failing to recognize that decoupling requires asynchronous communication via queues or pub/sub topics.
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 Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables microservices to communicate asynchronously. One service can publish a message to an SNS topic, and multiple subscriber services (e.g., Lambda, SQS, HTTP endpoints) can receive and process that message independently, decoupling the producer from the consumers.
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)
Why this is correct
SNS is a pub/sub service for decoupling.
- ✗
AWS Direct Connect
Why it's wrong here
Direct Connect is a dedicated network connection.
- ✗
Amazon Route 53
Why it's wrong here
Route 53 is a DNS service.
- ✓
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why this is correct
SQS is a message queue service for decoupling.
- ✗
Amazon ElastiCache
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache is a caching service, not for decoupling.
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 |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on SAP-C02
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company wants to decouple a microservices architecture where one service (producer) sends events to another service (consumer). The producer can generate bursts of events, and the consumer processes them in batches. The solution must be serverless and handle potential consumer failures without losing events. Which AWS service should be used as the message broker?
easy- A.Amazon SNS
- B.Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
- C.Amazon EventBridge
- ✓ D.Amazon SQS
Why D: Amazon SQS is a serverless message queue that can buffer bursts and retain messages until the consumer processes them, with dead-letter queues for failures. Option A is wrong because Amazon SNS pushes messages to subscribers and does not support polling or batch processing. Option B is wrong because Kinesis Data Streams is for real-time streaming, not simple decoupling with batch processing. Option C is wrong because EventBridge is for event routing, not a message queue.
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.